A People Massacred From Hundreds to Millions At A Time React

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

                                 First came expelling with slaughter    

740 BCE

During the Assyrian captivity (or the Assyrian exile), several thousand Israelites of ancient Samaria are resettled as captives by Assyria. The Northern Kingdom of Israel is then conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and presuming not without pain and blood.                                     

       Expelling to Babylon with slaughter, and later the mass killing  This picture looks like they're going off to Disneyland.  They were NOT!  They were most unhappy!!!

We mustn't forget we began under harrowing circumstances/massacres: 

586 BCE

During the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar II, the Neo-Babylonian Empire destroys the temple in Jerusalem and captures the Kingdom of Judah, expelling as many as 10,000 families to Babylon. Judeans are seen here by the Babylonians as a uniform group, marking the beginning of collective persecution              

Our first massacre might have been 70 CE when thousands to a million  Jews were slaughtered by the Romans in Jerusalem.  Jews were first starved to death, as the situation was so bad that Josephus wrote about cannibalism occurring;  and those who remained standing were bludgeoned down, and then some were captured and taken as slaves to Rome, or deposited along the way elsewhere, probably sold off as slaves.  The Romans were taking this land and all it had in it, especially the goods in the Temple of Solomon where they found golden items.  During the Siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE, historians Tacitus and Flavius Josephus estimated that approximately 600,000 to 1,100,000 people were killed.  

Over 1,000,000 Jews perish and 97,000 are taken as slaves following the destruction of the Second Temple. The Romans, under the command of Titus, besieged and conquered Jerusalem, destroying the Second Temple and sacking the city. Many of the casualties were non-combatants from various parts of the Jewish world who had come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover, and the city was filled with refugees.

1066                                                       

                      

December 30 marks 959 years since the Granada massacre, a brutal event when a Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada in Muslim-ruled Spain, crucified the Jewish vizier and slaughtered thousands of Jewish residents of the city.

Granada massacre:;  A Sephardi massacre, one of many also, and this one in Spain;   Muslim mob stormed the royal palace in Granada, crucified Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred most of the Jewish population of the city. "More than 1,500 Jewish families, numbering 4,000 persons, fell in one day."

                                                             

1236

Crusaders attack Jewish communities of Anjou and Poitou and attempt to baptize all the Jews. Those who resisted (est. 3,000) were slaughtered

                                                              

           Catholic Dutch  marching with cross; 

Black Death Flagellants in the Netherlands scourging themselves in atonement, believing that the Black Death is a punishment from God for their sins, 1349. The  pandemic that ravaged Europe between 1347 and 1351, took a proportionately greater toll of life than any other known epidemic or war up to that time. It is estimated that 25 million people died.

1349

The Erfurt, Germany massacre was a massacre of around 3,000 Jews as a result of Black Death Jewish persecutions;, blaming Jews for the death.  

676 years ago, on the first day of Nisan 5109 (March 21, 1349), one of the greatest tragedies in Jewish history occurred – the Erfurt Massacre. Approximately 3,000 members of the Jewish community in the German city were murdered in riots that erupted during Sabbath prayers, part of the 1349 persecutions that swept across Europe during the Black Death.

The Black Death – the plague epidemic that ravaged Europe in the 14th century – claimed the lives of tens of millions, but that wasn't the end of it. In the midst of the chaos, blood libels spread accusing Jews of poisoning wells and causing the epidemic. The result was a wave of brutal riots in many cities, including Erfurt, which sealed the fate of entire Jewish communities.

1648                                                                

The Chmielnicki Massacres were a series of brutal attacks against the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe between 1648 and 1657. These massacres were carried out by Ukrainian Cossack rebels led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, as part of a larger uprising against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.  Estimates of Jewish deaths vary, but it's clear that  tens of thousands were killed, with some estimates suggesting several hundred thousand. Hundreds of communities were destroyed.

The book, 1929 Hebron tells of the massacre of the city and how it has led to the  problems of today, by Eleanor Whitfield.  Whitfield, a historian specializing in 20th-century European history, with a particular focus on World War II and Cold War intelligence earned her Ph. D. from Oxford University, and since then,  dedicated her career to uncovering the intricate stories behind some of history's most pivotal moments.  She was interviewed and shared some of her findings.  The mob of 3,000 had attacked the Jews who had no police helping them.  Jews were castrated, raped, had limbs cut off, sounding so similar to what was done to Jews on October 7, 2023 near Gaza.  

The second massacre may have been in 1929 in Hebron.  It was a city going back to biblical days called Kiriath-Arba found in Judah, 18 miles south of Jerusalem.  It holdsthe cave with the remains of  Abraham, who bought the cave to bury his wife/cousin in.  Today it holds a mosque, the common act of claiming land by the Muslims.In 1929, the Arabs massacred many Jews of the town with population of 700,  though in 1890 had 1,500;  and the survivors fled for their lives.   Hebron was administered as part of the British mandate of Palestine (1920–48); after the first of the Arab-Israeli wars in 1948–49, it was in the territory annexed by Jordan (1950). Following the Six-Day War of June 1967, it was part of the West Bank territory that came under Israeli occupation.  This gripping narrative transports readers to a time when Hebron's streets ran red with blood, yet the story is more than one of violence. Whitfield expertly weaves the massacre into the larger narrative of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, examining how this moment of horror still shapes Hebron’s divided present and influences the broader quest for peace in the Holy Land.

The third massacre of course was the Holocaust where 6 million Jews' lives were taken horribly by mass shootings as if in a shooting gallery, gassing in chambers after being told they would take a shower, taking lives in any which way.  

• The Holocaust itself is defined as the period from 1933 to 1945, beginning with Hitler's rise to power and the systematic persecution of Jews in Germany, and culminating in their mass murder during World War II.  1933 brought the HELL upon the Jews as life in Germany for them was ending with hatred and cruel attacks and behaviors; treating them as non-humans without any rights;  forcing them out of their business and schools, etc. 
• Babyn Yar in Kyiv was the site of one of the largest mass shootings of Jews in German-occupied Europe. It occurred on September 29–30, 1941.On September 29–30, 1941, SS and German police units and their auxiliaries, under the guidance of members of Einsatzgruppe C, murdered a significant number of the Jewish population who remained in Kyiv, Ukraine. The massacre occurred at a ravine called Babyn Yar (sometimes spelled “Babi Yar” in English). At the time, the ravine was located just outside the city.                                          
  
                          Five-year-old Mania Halef(Photo)

  Portrait of five-year-old Mania Halef, a Jewish child, who was later killed during the mass execution at Babi Yar.  The victims were summoned to the site, forced to undress, and then compelled to enter the ravine. Sonderkommando 4a, a special detachment from Einsatzgruppe C under SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, shot them in small groups. According to reports sent to the Einsatzgruppen  headquarters in Berlin, 33,771 Jews were massacred during this two-day period. 

•  
• Nazis marched into Poland in 1939.  Killings may have started in earnest there.  
• The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", the Nazi plan for the systematic mass murder of European Jews, was implemented from 1941 to 1945.
• January 27, 1945: The Soviet Army liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp, freeing the remaining 7,650 prisoners.
• April 15, 1945: British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
• May 8, 1945: Germany surrendered unconditionally, officially ending World War II in Europe.                                                     

2025

Jews have been able to withstand the horrors of massacres throughout the ages by not

 giving into the wishes of people filled with hatred and the need for a scapegoat for their

problems.  With a power higher than anyone can imagine, they have survived.  The amazing fact

is that they themselves insist on surviving, knowing there is a reason beneficial in the finality of

it all.                                                              

 Now we've got a Khan of Pakistan attempting to perform mass slaughter

 of Brooklyn's Jews, just to join his blood-thirsty pals, in ISIS. This is one of the victims.   

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Jerusalem_(70_CE)#:~:text=Josephus%20wrote%20that%201.1%20million,to%20the%20celebration%20of%20Passover.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar