Cyprus: Where Jews Were Held-Prisoners- By British During WWII

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                  

Cyprus is an island in the Mediterranean Sea, of 3,572 sq miles.    It is the third largest and third most populous island in the Mediterranean and is located south of Turkey; west of Syria; northwest of the Gaza Strip, Israel, and Lebanon; north of Egypt; and southeast of Greece. The country's capital and largest city is Nicosia. 

As a strategic location in the Eastern Mediterranean, it was subsequently occupied by several major powers, including the empires of the Assyrians, Egyptians and Persians, from whom the island was seized in 333 BC by Alexander the Great.

 In 115-117, the Jews of Cyprus, under Artemion, took part in the universal Jewish revolt against Rome and slew many of the general population that must have been Roman.  The revolt was bloodily suppressed, and Jews were then excluded from the island. Some, however, returned and inscriptions, evidence gives the existence of communities in the late Classical Period.  Benjamin of Tudela in 1165 found heretics there who observed the Sabbath on Sundays.  As a later date in the Middle Ages, there were communities as Nicosia, Paphos, and especially Famagusta.  Joseph Nasi was partly responsible for the conquest of Cyprus by the Turks in 1571. He was not made King, as he figured he would.  Jews were later deported from Safed (Israel) to help repopulate Cyprus, but there is little record of Jews there under Turkish rule.  At the end of the 19th century, under the British, several attempts were made to establish Jewish agricultural settlements in  Cyprus, but with limited success.                 

 The Ottoman Empire had sided with Germany.  August 3, 1914 - Germany declares war on France. August 4, 1914 - Germany invades Belgium, leading Britain to declare war on Germany.  Cyprus remained nominally a part of the Turkish Empire (Ottoman Empire) , however, and it was only formally annexed by Britain on November 5, 1914, following the declaration of war between Turkey and Great Britain. 

Cyprus was placed under the UK's administration based on the Cyprus Convention in 1878 and was formally annexed by the UK in 1914 at the beginning of WWI. The future of the island became a matter of disagreement between the two prominent ethnic communities, Greek Cypriots, who made up 77% of the population in 1960, and Turkish Cypriots, who made up 18% of the population.                                            

Cyprus was a center for the deportation of "illegal immigrants" from trying to get to Palestine in 1945 to 1949, 11,000 being interned there.  This was the period when Jews of Europe were trying to get to Palestine in any boat they could find, and the English would stop them and they would be dumped in Cyprus, thus the 11,000.                                                     

Then they were imprisoned.   25 Jews were still there by 1990.  The cemetery is at Margo near Nicosia, and another older one is at Larnaca, and hasn't been used for some time. 

                                            

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Seventy years later, Murray Greenfield of New York can still remember  the anger he felt when he was locked up with hundreds of Jewish Holocaust 

survivors in a British detention camp on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

“Your first reaction is you’re mad as hell,” 90-year-old Greenfield told The Associated Press from his home in Israel, recalling the feelings of many stuck behind double 

rows of barbed wire fences and under armed guard. “Why should we, the survivors, 

be behind barbed wire?”

Tens of thousands of Jews saw no future in postwar Europe and sought to start over again in Palestine, but the British were not about to let them in. Some 250 American sailors had volunteered to help Jews sail to Palestine aboard 10 surplus World War II vessels purchased with secret donations from Jewish Americans, he said.

                                                                          

After picking up passengers from the coasts of Italy and France, Greenfield’s ship — 

the Hatikva — was spotted as it sailed across the Mediterranean and British naval 

vessels towed it to Haifa port. Most of the crew and passengers were taken to nearby Cyprus — itself a British colony at the time — and placed in internment camps.

More than 50,000 Jews are believed to have been interned in Cyprus from 1945-1948 and an estimated 2,200 children were born in those camps.

In 2014 a "Garden of Peace" to commemorate the plight of thousands 

Jewish refugees imprisoned in British run camps on Cyprus after World 

War Two was opened in Xylotympou on the east coast of Cyprus.

                                                   

Biblically, Cyprus was called Kittim.  Kittim was a settlement in present-day Larnaca on the west coast of Cyprus, known in ancient times as Kition, or

 Citium. On this basis, the whole island became known as "Kittim" in Hebrew, 

including the Hebrew Bible (Is.23:1, etc). tt was often applied to all the Aegean islands and even to "the W[est] in general, but esp[ecially] the seafaring W[est]". Flavius Josephus records in his 

Antiquities of the Jews that The expression "isles of Kittim", found in the Book of Jeremiah 2:10 and Ezekiel 27:6, indicates that, some centuries 

prior to Josephus, this designation had already become a general 

descriptor for the Mediterranean islands. Sometimes this designation was further extended to apply to Romans, Macedonians or Seleucid Greeks. 

The Septuagint translates the occurrence of "Kittim" in the Book of Daniel 11:30 as ῥωμαῖοι. 1 Maccabees 1:1 states that "Alexander the Great the Macedonian" had come from the "land of Kittim". In the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Kittim 

are referred to as being "of Asshur". Eleazar Sukenik argued that this reference to Asshur should be understood to refer to the Seleucid Empire which controlled the territory of the former Assyrian Empire at that time,

 but his son Yigael Yadin interpreted this phrase as a veiled reference to the Romans.  In Modern Hebrew usage, as Kaphrisin.  Jews lived here 

before the Christian era.  During New Testament times, there were 

important communities at Salamis and Paphos.

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.loc.gov/item/a22000924/  on Cyprus

https://www.theweek.co.uk/59782/how-did-the-first-world-war-start

https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-world-war-ii-new-york-city-international-news-events-d4bc0bff836143b59637b76b5afb33cd

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4467036

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Cyprus

  

Roman Christianity and How Popes and Emperors' Laws Hurt Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                                Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, who went to Palestine.  She was considered a saint in the eastern and western churches, reported to be the discoverer of the "true cross." His mother, Helena, was Greek and of low birth. Dates: About 248 CE to about 328 CE; her birth year is estimated from a report by the contemporary historian Eusebius that she was about 80 near the time of her death. I would guess that she was born in 276 CE.   Over time, the Christian church and faith grew with the help of Helena, emperor Constantine's mother,  and was more organized.

                                               

 In 313 AD, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which accepted Christianity: 10 years later,  In 323, Christianity  had become the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from 306 to 337. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterranea, he was the son of Flavius Constantius.                                                

892 years later at the 4th Lateran Council, at a meeting of Catholic officials in 1215, Pope Innocent III announced measures designed to keep the Jews in permanent state of humiliation.  His goal was to break the soul of the Jews and force them to baptism, or, failing that, to reduce them to a condition which would prove that the Lord hated those who refused to worship Jesus as the son of G-d.   

1. According to these new laws, Jews were to be totally isolated from the Christian world.  

2. Jews and Christians were forbidden to live in the same house.

3. No Jew was to be appointed to any office which gave him control over a Christian.                               

4. Jews were forbidden to leave their buildings or even to open their shutters on Easter, to make sure that they would not "insult" Christians on that holiday.  

Finally, to make sure that no Christian would accidentally become friendly with an unbeliever, Jews were required to wear a special hat or badge whenever they appeared in public.  Like the the Blood Libel, this anti-Jewish practice survived to modern times:  Jews were again forced to wear distinctive badges by the Nazis. 

Christians tried to destroy Jewish scholarship.  In France a wave of book-burning was begun by King Louis IX, a man whose Christian zeal earned him the title of "Saint Louis."  

                                               

     

The Talmud, a book written by rabbis, explaining the records of academic discussion and judicial administration of Jewish Law, among many Jewish books, were burned in Paris by the church on June  17, 1242 when 24 cartloads of Talmud mss were burned as a sequel to the religious Disputation there 2 years earlier.  This burning of Jewish books recurred intermittently thereafter, like in Italy in 1322, and again in the 16th century when vast numbers of volumes comprising all types of Jewish literature was begin destroyed in Rome on September 9, 1553. 

 It served as an example to be followed all over northern Italy, and only deferred at Cremona until 1559. Rabbinic works were found in raids on the Jewish quarters and were thereafter burned sporadically.  Thousands of volumes of the Talmud were burned in Poland by order of Bishop Dembowski after the disputation between the rabbis and the "Zoharists"  led by Jacob Frank at Kamenetz-Podolsk in 1757. More than 20 public burning of the Talmud were held in Rome, Italy;  Barcelona, Spain, and other cities.                               

Besides that, the Christians worked toward bringing the teachings of Judaism into public scorn by using disputation---a formal discussion of the teachings of Judaism and Christianity between spokesmen for each religion, conducted by a government or Church official.  These were supposed to be fair debates.  In fact, the Jews were placed in an almost impossible position:  a weak defense of their religion would be a disgrace, but a strong defense that could be interpreted as critical of Christianity was  punishable as a crime.  Maybe this is when the phrase, "between the devil and the deep blue sea," came into fashion.  

                                                           

The most famous disputation was held in Barcelona in 1263 in the presence of the king of Aragon and his court.  The Jewish spokesman was a 69 year old scholar and physician, rabbi Moses ben Nahman, also known as Nahmanides.  He asked for and was promised the right of free speech during the debate, and freedom from prosecution for what he might say.  Nevertheless, after arguing his position with strength and skill, he was forced to leave Spain.    Nahmanides made the hard and dangerous voyage to Palestine in 1267. By then, Jerusalem had endured over a century of fighting between Christians and Muslims;  and only a few years before, the Tatars, a warlike people from Asia, had sacked the Holy City.  Finding himself at last in Jerusalem, Nahmanides wrote an emotional letter to his son in Spain.  His emotions must have been much like those felt by the ancient Hebrews as they returned from exile in Babylon some 1800 years earlier.  They too beheld Jerusalem in ruins---and they too set about to restore it to its former glory.  And to think, Jews have had to do it again from 1880 on.                                                                     

One more target on Jews was attacked;  one's livelihood.  In the Early Middle Ages, Jews were doing it all:  in agriculture, dyeing, silk-weaving, silver and gold working Smiths, glass-blowing, commerce, and many others.  They had education and skills and were the key element in many branches of European life. 

During the High Middle Ages, however, Christians learned many of these profitable trades and THEN forced Jews out of areas where they offered competition, not by being better competitively, but by making anti-Jewish laws. 

1. Jews were forbidden to farm.

2. Jews were kept out of craft unions (guilds). (Everyone had to be in a union).

3. Jews were even forced out of international commerce, a trade they had sustained for centuries.                                  

Only one field was left open to them, something which no Christian wanted to do;  money-lending.   In any growing economy, businessmen need to borrow money for new projects.  When they make profits, they repay their loans, plus an additional % in interest as payment for use of the money.  Today, bankers who provide such funds are a respected part of the business world, but in medieval times, lending money at interest was regarded by the Church as the sin of "usury" and forbidden to Christians.  The need for loans remained, however, and so Jews were invited----then forced----to become the moneylenders of Europe.  Of our 613 laws to be a better people, that was not listed, thank goodness.  Jewish fathers had the responsibility to make sure their sons could make a living, though. 

 Thus, Jews found themselves in a necessary but hated profession, maintaining the flow of cash into the pockets of Christian princes.  He ran the risk of if the borrower was unable to repay his loan---but also the dangers connected with  his insecure position.  ordinary borrowers might accuse him of ritual murder or desecrating the Host, organize a riot, kill him.  Kings might simply refuse to pay, threatening the "infidel moneylender" with imprisonment or death.  When large losses were common, interest rates had to be very high.  This fueled the hatred of the masses, who were convinced that the Jews were getting rich by bleeding poor Christians. More Jews were killed by kings getting out of paying interest than there were Jews charging high rates of interest.  

                                   Shylock, played by Italian Al Pacino

But, this is how stereotyping happens and one heard of the crafty, money-mad Jew.  this idea has poisoned Jewish-Christian relations ever since.  The most famous example dates from late in the 16th century:  Shylock in Shakespeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and even today, some dictionaries define "To Jew someone down" as "to get the better of" in bargaining, as by sharp practices.  Notice that Shakespeare was English and Jews had been banned from the country till 1655.  The creation of The Merchant of Venice can be dated between 1596 and 1598. Shakespeare must have written the play by the summer of 1598, since it was entered on the Stationers' Register on 22 July 1598.

Actually, Shakespeare never knew one single Jew in his life. Jews were only allowed back into the country 58 years after than the play had been on stage.  What was he basing his facts on?  Gossip in his family, gossip from friends, and gossip is not the same as facts;  It's usually exaggerated and mean and said out of wanting attention.                                             

Actually, the Jews didn't even control the dangerous and degrading field of  moneylending for very long.  Clever Christians found ways to get around the usury laws, and once they had established themselves in the profession, they forced the Jews out of  it.  This meant that Jews were no longer needed in the only trade they had been allowed to practice.  They could be looked on as totally useless members of society.  King after king breathed a sigh of relief as he freed himself of the "Jewish problem" by the simplest of all means:  complete expulsion.  When all efforts to convert the Jews failed, and when they could be eliminated from their key roles in the economy, they were expelled.  

Jews wondered if a Pope would help the Jews.  The 1st popes, like the earliest Christians, were born Jewish.  In medieval times, there was at least one Pope who came from a Jewish family.  His life may have given rise to a popular medieval legend about a "Jewish Pope."  Add to this the fact that during the High Middle Ages, Popes often had Jews as their personal physicians and you can see that history sometimes works in very curious ways. 

                                                                  

                                          Pope Martin V b: 1369-d: 1431.  

A Jewish delegation called on Martin V in 1417 to find out.  He belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Rome. His brother Giordano became Prince of Salerno and Duke of Venosa, while his sister Paola was Lady of Piombino between 1441 and 1445.  The excitement of the Church during the Hussite movement rendered the Jews apprehensive, and through Emperor Sigismund, they obtained from Pope Martin V various bulls (1418 and 1422) in which their former privileges were confirmed and in which he exhorted the friars to use moderate language. In the last years of his pontificate, however, he repealed several of his ordinances. A gathering, convoked by the Jews in Forlì, sent a deputation asking Pope Martin V to abolish the oppressive laws promulgated by Antipope Benedict XIII. The deputation succeeded in its mission.

The pattern was set by Gregory I (also called "Gregory the Great."), who was Pope from 590 to 604. first he said that no Jew could ever be a social superior or even the equal of any Christian, but he also said that Jews were protected by Church law from being physically hurt.   A tradition grew up that when the Messiah came, he would personally come to see the Pope and convince him to allow the Jews  to return to the Holy Land.  

In 1524, an African Jew, a false Messiah named David Reubeni, tried to do just that.  One historian has actually called Reubeni "the first Zionist."  He grandly entered Rome on a white horse, hoping to talk the Pope into approving a Catholic-Jewish mission to recapture Palestine.  of course, the scheme fell through---Reubeni later was burned at the stake---and the cause of Zionism had to wait another 4 centuries.                                 

At Pius IX's accession in 1846, Catholicism and Judaism were the only religions allowed by law (Protestant worship was allowed to visiting foreigners, but forbidden to Italians; atheism was unthinkable). Jews in Rome were required to live in a ghetto, a separated quarter of the city, and had very limited rights. His relations with them changed over time, from good to worse. He initially repealed laws that forbade Jews to practice certain professions and rescinded laws which forced them to listen four times per year to sermons aimed at their conversion.

After the pope's 1849 overthrow, the short-lived Roman Republic issued wide-ranging religious freedom measures. After French troops brought him back to power in 1850, the Pope issued a series of anti-liberal measures that eliminated even some his early openings, including re-instituting the Ghetto.     

This is the thing.  Jews have only been tolerated when the going is smooth for leaders. Let  the climate change and leaders are pressured,

and  the Jews are the 1st to  suffer.  Jews  have been so lucky in the USA.  Let things change and see what happens.  German Jews lasted for about 932 years before Nazis came along and slaughtered 6 million of them.   We have Israel again.  Let's hold onto it.  

 

Resource:

Book:  My People, Abba Eban's History of the Jews, volume I, Adapted by David Bamberger

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/03/how-emperor-constantine-started-anti.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/helena-mother-of-constantine-3530253

Slander of Blood Libel and How It Started

 Nadene Goldfoot                           

Jack, born in 1980 in Damascus, Syria, heard Israel being blamed for whatever happened, even the weather.  Jews had become the scapegoat of all of the world's problems way before that date. Actually, the scapegoat concept started in Judaism, but used in a very different way.  Sins of the community  were thought to be placed on a goat which was taken out into the desert. (Scapegoat, Hebrew saʿir la-ʿAzaʾzel, (“goat for Azazel”), in the Yom Kippur ritual described in the Torah (Leviticus 16:8–10), goat ritually burdened with the sins of the Jewish people.) This goes back to the year 1391 BCE, a very long time ago of 3,412 years ago.    

                                                 

      Iranian President Ahmadinejad riding a rocket to hit Israel.  
     Iran has been catching up and blaming  Israel for all problems in their world. It's been happening since the Ayatollahs took over the country, before thought of nuclear missiles hitting Israel.  Ahmadinejad had been very vocal.  Now Iran plots to wipe out Israel with their nuclear facilities. Israel is taking defensive steps.

                                                 

 

Saint William Depicted holding nails, with nail wounds or     undergoing crucifixion  b: February 2, 1132-d: March 22, 1144.                                             

 The last of the Crusades were petering out.  The Christian world no longer waited for wars to attack Jewish people.  By 1144, the notorious "BLOOD LIBEL" was invented in England. March 22 – The first example of an anti-Semitic blood libel is recorded in England, in connection with the murder of William of Norwich was when a 12-year-old boy, William, was found murdered in Norwich.  His death was unexplained, and there was no evidence linking Jews to this. 

                                                  

 However, around four years later, the monk ,Thomas of Monmouth, visited Norwich. He soon claimed that the Jews of the town had tortured and killed William. Soon accusations of ritual murders of children were spread across the country.

These accusations were almost always followed by intense persecution and the murder of Jews in the local community. Blood Libel accusations have continued throughout history. In 1928 in New York, Jews were falsely accused of kidnapping a four-year-old girl.                                            

What is so disgusting to Jews, is that in the 613 laws of Moses that they follow is to NOT eat any blood from any source whatever.  That's why Jews only eat certain parts of an animal, that part with less veins carrying blood.  Then they remove such arteries or veins, and soak the meat in salted water to remove blood. Meat is not served rare; but very much overdone by others' standards.  No one wants to see or eat blood if they are followers of Jewish laws.  At this period, there wasn't any fraternizing between Jews and others.  Others did not realize the stupidity of such a claim about Jews putting blood in the food.  The very thought is digusting to them.  Blood sausages, oy vey, how others can eat that!  Black pudding is a distinct regional type of blood sausage originating in Great Britain and Ireland. It is made from pork or beef blood, with pork fat or beef suet, and a cereal, usually oatmeal, oat groats or barley groats.              

 In fact,  it was in the late 6th century, that a man was sent from Rome to England to bring Christianity to the Anglo-Saxons. He would ultimately become the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who establish one of medieval England's most important abbeys, and kickstarted the country's conversion to Christianity.  The first archbishop of Canterbury was St. Augustine of Canterbury (d. 604/605), a Benedictine monk who was sent from Rome by Pope Gregory I to convert the Anglo-Saxons in England.   Whatever religion were the English in 1144? 

                              Woden, a Germanic god, 

Woden was widely known as a god of war, but he was important also as a god of learning, of poetry, and of magic. His wife was Frigg, and his children included Thor, Balder, and Tiw. He was identified with the Roman god Mercury, and among Germanic peoples Mercury's day became Woden's day (Wednesday).  This was common among the Scandinavian countries as well.  

Anglo-Saxon paganism, sometimes termed Anglo-Saxon heathenism ,  refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons. This refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Anglo-Saxons between the 5th and 8th centuries AD, during the initial period of Early Medieval England. A variant of Germanic paganism found across much of north-western Europe, it encompassed a heterogeneous variety of beliefs and cultic practices, with much regional variation.                    

Thunor was the god of weather. ... Anglo-Saxons believed that the sound of thunder was made by Thunor using his incredible strength to strike his hammer against his anvil. Thunor was probably the most famous of all the gods - archaeologists have found loads of pendants devoted to him in Anglo-Saxon graves.

Anglo-Saxon paganism was a polytheistic belief system, focused around a belief in deities known as the ése . The most prominent of these deities was probably Woden; other prominent gods included Thunor and Tiw. There was also a belief in a variety of other supernatural entities which inhabited the landscape, including elves, nicor, and dragons. Cultic practice largely revolved around demonstrations of devotion, including sacrifice of inanimate objects and animals, to these deities, particularly at certain religious festivals during the year.  Little is known about pagan conceptions of an afterlife, although such beliefs likely influenced funerary practices, in which the dead were either inhumed or cremated, typically with a selection of grave goods. The belief system also likely included ideas about magic and witchcraft, and elements that could be classified as a form of shamanism. The pre-Christian society of Anglo-Saxon England was illiterate. Thus there is no contemporary written evidence produced by Anglo-Saxon pagans themselves.  This history comes from other sources.   The people themselves had to rely on gossip, hearsay.   

                                                                           

By 1290, England kicked out all Jews living in their country.  They didn't let them back in until 365 YEARS LATER, IN 1655. Talk about an anti-Semitic country!  This was the most extreme in the world. 

Somehow, either through Rome's attitude towards Jews or England, this idea of Blood Libelism was picked up and repeated on the European mainland.  The "guilty" Jews were Massacred, their property taken, and the goods given to the local church.  More than a few parishes gained sudden wealth from such attacks.

                                                 

Another slander of slightly later origin was that of "desecrating the Host."  Thee Host is a wafer of unleavened bread which, according to Catholic belief, becomes the body of Jesus during their religious service.  Jews were accused of stealing the the wafer and torturing it. It was even said that they had been able to force the blood of the suffering Jesus to flow from it!  

Silly, even ridiculous as all this sounds to us today, it was given as a reason for waves of violence that in one case alone, resulted in attacks on 140 Jews communities.  If 200 people lived in one community each, that would be the suffering of 28,000 Jews being attacked by such nonsensical belief.                  

Jews have been blamed for events that had never taken place, and also blamed for any real disasters.  when wells went bad, the Jews were blamed for poisoning them.  for every calamity, Jews were blamed then and in Syria today.                    

 The worst time was when Jews were named as the cause of the Black Death, a plague which killed about 1/3 of the population of Europe in 1347 and 1351. This was the  bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Afro-Eurasia from 1346 to 1353. 

Hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed. Jews in Basel were burned in a structure created solely for that purpose, walking distance from the casino in which the First Zionist Congress was held 550 years later. More than 1,000 Jews were killed on the night of Valentine’s Day, and Jews were forbidden from living in the city for 100 years. A mass suicide of Jews took place in Frankfurt and the Jewish community of Erfurt was completely wiped out. 

It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causing the death of 75–200 million people in Europe, Eurasia and North Africa. 

The Jewish people, because of their knowledge and practice of their keeping kosher, understanding about health and medicine, had a lower death rate than the Christian communities, but they too suffered heavy losses-clear proof that they had not set out to infect Christians.  Nevertheless,  amongst illiterate Christians, many Jews were murdered, even in healthy towns which hoped that by killing their Jews they could escape the dreaded disease.  

A protester wearing a shirt with the QAnon slogan 'Trust the plan' talks to police inside the US Capitol building on Wednesday

Some specialized groups in the US are still practicing such anti-Semitic accusations.  The QAnon conspiracy theory's main tenet, that a secret world-dominating cabal is posing a danger to children worldwide, builds on centuries-old anti-Semitic tropes. The movement's anonymous figurehead, "Q," posts "Q drops" with cryptic messages on the 8kun messageboard that have sometimes contained anti-Semitic references.  Sunrise DC is another one.  The popularity of QAnon comes at a time when anti-Semitism has already been on the rise in the US, according to the Anti-Defamation League, a nongovernmental organization that tracks racism and anti-Semitism worldwide. The ADL reported in May that there was a 12% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the US from 2018 to 2019. 

Today, everyone has been in a public educational system and should be able to read.  It doesn't seem to stop their hatred towards Jews.  Once a bad thing gets started, its not easily dropped out of the culture.  

Resource: 

Book:  My People-Abba Eban's History of the Jews, volume 1, adapted by David Bamberger

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_paganism#:~:text=Anglo%2DSaxon%20paganism%2C%20sometimes%20termed,followed%20by%20the%20Anglo%2DSaxons

https://www.amazon.com/Murder-William-Norwich-Origins-Medieval/dp/0190219629