Anti-Semitism Today's All Time High Compared to Pandemic of Jewish Hatred In The 30s.

 Nadene Goldfoot                           

            A harsh Syrian Winter- and they'll blame the Jews

It started again, this anti-Semitism, which doesn't say much about people of today still needing someone to put all their blame on.  It's as if they think they have the right to blame Jews for their mistakes or outcomes of their decisions.  It was just a few years ago when Syrians were used to blaming bad weather on the Jews.  Jews have been the scapegoats of the world ever since civilization began, it seems.                                                                                

The Meir and Frank that I grew up with in Downtown Portland, started by Jews because they couldn't get jobs from other people so started their own businesses.  Meier & Frank was founded in Portland, Oregon in 1857, and acquired in 1966 by May Department Stores. ... This location later became Macy's at Meier & Frank Square and closed in May 2017. The building was restored with little attention to historical accuracy paid to the interior.   Gone are the great windows with beautiful displays or having a Winter Girl or Summer Girl to drink.  It was one of the attractions in Portland that made it wonderful to be alive.                      

 In 1857, Aaron Meier (1831–1889) arrived in the Oregon Territory at the age of 26 and opened a 35-by-50-foot (11 m × 15 m) mercantile store at 137 Front Street in Portland, which had a population of 1,300. He had come to California from Bavaria during the Gold Rush, spending time as an itinerant peddler in southern Oregon. He formed a partnership with a Mr. Mariholtz and began selling merchandise that arrived by steamer from San Francisco and in the covered wagons rolling along the Oregon Trail. Ten years later, Meier returned to Ellerstadt (in today's Rhineland-Palatinate) after his father died, leaving Mariholtz to run the business. During his extended stay in Ellerstadt, Meier married a local woman, Jeanette Hirsch (1843–1925) and returned with her to Portland. Meanwhile, back in Portland the dry goods store had collapsed financially, bringing the partnership to an end. Aaron Meier started a new store with his $14,000 inheritance, in larger quarters of 25 by 100 feet (7.6 m × 30.5 m), at 136 Front Street. He hired Emil Frank (1845–1898) in 1870 and Emil's younger brother Sigmund Frank (1850–1910) in 1872. A year later, Emil Frank became Meier's partner and the store became known as "Meier & Frank".  Jews make up only 2% of the USA population.  This was one store that Jews would be hired.                               

   In the 30s we were in the Depression

"Our parents and grandparents living in the 30s lived in an even more hateful environment.  In the   1930s, anti-Semitism was the official policy of the Catholic church, many Lutheran churches, and numerous other Christian denominations.  Priests and ministers preached that "the Jews" killed Jesus and were being punished for their refusal to accept the true Messiah.  

Religious schools taught anti-Semitism, and the faithful practiced it with the blessing of their spiritual leaders.  Jews were terrified of priests and were the frequent targets of physical abuse by parishioners.                    

Anti-Semitism was also the official policy of many governments, certainly those allied with Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union, but also of the most Central European countries like Poland and Lithuania.  Those nations that did not officially sponsor anti-Semitism certainly did little to oppose it among the large numbers of political parties, universities, and other institutions that practiced it openly.               

     President Harry S. Truman backed Israel's creation, but his advisors were against it.  Here he is with David Ben Gurion, Israel's 1st Prime Minister and Founding Father.  

Even in the United States--historically among the least anti-Semitic nations in the world--the State Department was rife with anti-Semitism in the 1930s and 1940s, as our government's reaction to the Holocaust demonstrated.  Many of the largest corporations, universities, and churches also practiced institutional anti-Semitism."                            

    Henry Ford-anti-Semite.  He bought the newspaper-Dearborn Independent in 1918 and wrote articles about the great Jewish conspiracy infecting America.  Because he was a famous and important man, his ideas were looked upon as truth.  

Some of the USA's greatest leaders in the 1st decades of the 20th century thought anti- Semitism was certainly not a mark of shame.  Many of the best and brightest---such as HL Mencken, TS Eliot, Henry Adams, George Bernard Shaw, HG Wells, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Edison---Henry Ford---openly expressed it without fear of social ostracism.  It was practiced flagrantly in Resort clubs, by real estate agents,  and banks boasted of their anti-Semitic policies. 

Great Britain was even worse, as evidenced by its active suppression during the war of documented information about the Holocaust and in adamant refusal to open Palestine to Jewish immigration which they had been given as their goal to achieve.   They were admonished to help Jews create their Jewish Homeland but they did the very opposite.    "No Jews  Allowed" signs were pervasive.  "Gentile-Only" want ads were as common as "White-Only" ads.                                 

Politicians were overly anti-Semitic.  Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi publicly called Jews "little kikes" in the 1940s and his voters loved him for it.   Patriotic organizations such as the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Daughters of the American Revolution expressed anti-Semitic views."  The popular radio broadcasts of Father Charles E. Coughlin in the 1930s were patently anti-Semitic, as was the opposition to involvement in World War II of America's greatest hero, Charles Lindbergh, and its most influential industrialist, Henry Ford.                            

After World War II when we were fighting on 2 Fronts, Germany in Europe and Japan in the Orient, Americans were asked who the "greatest menace was, they cited "The Jews" immediately after our declared enemies, the Germans and the Japanese.  We were almost totally wiped out as a people, losing 6 million lives, and this was AMERICANS saying this.  It's deporable!

More than half of American Gentiles polled expressed negative views toward "the Jews" whom they excluded from their clubs, corporations, universities faculties---and indeed from the country itself, under the anti-Semitic immigration laws enacted 2 decades earlier that were expressly designed to end the influx of Jews from Eastern Europe.  The door had closed to Jewish immigrants in 1924.                                             

Jewish comedians used anti-Semitism for their humor, as they have learned to laugh about it instead of cry.  Groucho Marx asked if his son,  whose mother was not Jewish, could use a restricted swimming pool and was told that he could go "up to his waist." 

                                            

Leo Max Frank was an Jewish -American factory superintendent who was convicted in 1913 of the murder of a 13-year-old employee, Mary Phagan, in Atlanta, Georgia. His trial, conviction, and appeals attracted national attention.  He was found innocent but lynched anyway and killed.   On August 16, 1915, he was kidnapped from prison by a group of armed men, and lynched at Marietta, Mary Phagan's hometown, the next morning. 

The PM of Poland, Ignancy Paderewski was talking about his country's problems with President Woodrow Wilson.  "If our demands are not met at the conference table," Paderewski said, "I can foresee serious trouble  in my country.  Why, my people will be so irritated that many of them will go out and massacre the Jews."

     "And what will happen if your demands are granted?" asked Wilson.

    "Why my people will be so happy that they will get drunk and go out and massacre the Jews "

Anti-Semitism in the USA has never reached the point of Eastern Europe with pogroms.  It was never a matter of life and death with the striking exception of Leo Frank, American Jews were not lynched or forced to live in ghettos though excluded from certain neighborhoods so voluntarily created their own neighborhoods like South Portland in Oregon.  For this we can be thankful.  However, it's time that anti-Semitism ended=everywhere.  Places like Lithuania and Poland are in denial of their behavior during WWII while still  promoting and practicing anti-Semitism.  That's not admirable.     

Resource:

The Vanishing American Jew by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/haventohome/haven-century.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meier_%26_Frank#:~:text=Meier%20%26%20Frank%20was%20founded%20in,1966%20by%20May%20Department%20Stores.&text=This%20location%20later%20became%20Macy's,accuracy%20paid%20to%20the%20interior.

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

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/henryford-antisemitism/