Unit 3
The Evolution of Antisemitism
The Holocaust had a beginning. The hatred behind it took shape over many centuries.
Banner, Ecclesia and Synagoga, the medieval Church-and-Synagogue motif; the public degradation of Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish French officer falsely convicted of treason, 1895; the Venetian Ghetto, established in 1516.
About this Unit
Antisemitism did not begin in 1933. It grew over many centuries, through religious, political, legal, economic, and racial ideas. Each era gave it a different form. The earliest surviving anti-Jewish polemics, written attacks, were composed in Egypt three centuries before Christianity. Then came the Church’s centuries of teaching against the Jews, the machinery of medieval exclusion, and the nineteenth-century turn to race. The conspiracy theories and political movements that prepared the ground for the Holocaust followed, and antisemitism still takes new forms today.
The institutions that produced this history are not the institutions of today. Several churches, the Catholic Church and the Lutheran churches among them, have formally repudiated the anti-Jewish teaching of their own past.
Before the Holocaust
The Holocaust was the largest. It was not the first. Each line links to the Chapter that tells it.
Ancient and medieval
586 BCEJerusalem: Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon destroys the Temple, burns the city, and deports much of the population to Babylonia. The First and Second Temples →
410 BCEElephantine, Egypt: Egyptian priests and a local governor destroy the temple of the Jewish garrison community. Adversus Judaeos →
167 BCEJerusalem: the Seleucid king Antiochus IV outlaws Jewish practice, and his officers set up “the abomination of desolation upon the altar” of the Temple. The First and Second Temples →
19 CERome: the emperor Tiberius punishes the city’s whole Jewish community, and four thousand are sent to Sardinia. The emperor Claudius later expels Jews from Rome as well. Adversus Judaeos →
38 CEAlexandria: a mob desecrates synagogues, loots Jewish homes, and crams the Jews into a small part of the city. Whole families are burned alive, and community elders are flogged in the public theater. Adversus Judaeos →
70 CEJerusalem: after a four-year revolt against Rome, Titus’s legions break through the walls and destroy the Second Temple. The First and Second Temples →
115–117 CECyrene, Egypt, and Cyprus: Jews rise against their Greek and Roman neighbors, and the revolt leaves Cyrene in ruins. Rome crushes it. The church historian Eusebius records that the Roman commander “slew many thousands of Jews.” In Alexandria the great synagogue goes up in flames. The Diaspora →
135 CEJerusalem: Rome crushes the Bar Kokhba revolt, and the emperor Hadrian bars Jews from the city, now the Roman colony Aelia Capitolina. The Continuous Jewish Presence →
620sMedina, Arabia: two of the city’s three Jewish tribes are expelled. In 627 the men of the third, the Banu Qurayza, are executed and the women and children enslaved. Ibn Ishaq, the earliest biographer of Muhammad, puts the men killed at six or seven hundred, and adds that some said eight or nine hundred. The Dhimma →
630Jerusalem: the emperor Heraclius expels the Jews from the city and orders the Jews of his empire baptized by force. In Carthage, in 632, the order is carried out. The Dhimma →
c. 642The Hejaz, Arabia: the caliph Umar expels most of the remaining Jews from the region around Mecca and Medina. The Dhimma →
1030sFez, Morocco: the Jews of the city have sided with the Maghrawa against their rivals, the Banu Ifran. When a Banu Ifran ruler captures Fez, some 6,000 Jews are massacred. The Jews of North Africa →
1066Granada, Spain: on December 30 a mob storms the Jewish quarter, kills the vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela, and destroys the community in a single day. Medieval accounts put the dead in the thousands. The Dhimma →
1096The Rhineland, Germany: First Crusade bands all but destroy the Jewish communities of Worms, Mainz, and Cologne. Estimates of the Jewish dead run from the thousands upward. Rashi →
1099Jerusalem: the First Crusade takes the city and kills its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants indiscriminately, all but emptying Jerusalem of its Jews. The Continuous Jewish Presence →
1100Hebron: the Crusaders expel the city’s Jews. The Continuous Jewish Presence →
Second CrusadeThe Rhine valley: preaching for the Second Crusade sets off massacres of Jews. Adversus Judaeos →
c. 1146Morocco and Muslim Spain: the Almohads offer Jews conversion, flight, or death, and synagogues close across the Maghreb, northwest Africa. The Dhimma →
1171Blois, France: after a ritual-murder charge, more than thirty members of the Jewish community, men, women, and children, are burned at the stake on the orders of Count Theobald. The Blood Libel →
By 1172Yemen: the ruler ‘Abd al-Nabi ibn Mahdi, in Maimonides’ words, “decreed compulsory apostasy for the Jews,” and many convert to Islam. Maimonides →
1182France: King Philip II Augustus expels the Jews of the royal domain, the territory around Paris, and readmits them in 1198. The Expulsions →
1189–1190London and York, England: at the coronation of Richard I, rioters set London’s Jewish quarter on fire and kill thirty people. In York in March 1190, about 150 Jews take refuge in the royal castle from a mob. Heads of households kill their families and themselves rather than surrender, and those who come out under a promise of safety are murdered. The Expulsions →
1255Lincoln, England: after a ritual-murder charge, roughly nineteen Jewish men are executed on the orders of King Henry III. The Blood Libel →
1287Gascony: King Edward I of England expels the Jews of his own lands there. The Expulsions →
1290England becomes the first European kingdom to expel all its Jews. The Edict of Expulsion of July 18 orders every Jew out by November 1. The Expulsions →
1298Franconia and beyond, Germany: after a charge of host desecration at Röttingen, a knight named Rindfleisch leads a mob from town to town. Thousands of Jews are massacred in 146 places, 728 of them in Nuremberg. The Blood Libel →
1306France: King Philip IV has the Jews arrested on a single day, seizes their property, and expels a community estimated at fifty to a hundred thousand people. The Expulsions →
1320Southwestern France: the Pastoureaux, the “Shepherds,” sweep through the region. Jewish chroniclers count 120 communities attacked by them. At Verdun-sur-Garonne and Castelsarrasin several hundred Jews are killed or take their own lives. The Expulsions →
1347–1351The Black Death: Jews are falsely accused of poisoning the wells. Massacres strike Basel, Mainz, Erfurt, and Cologne. In all, the killings and expulsions reach about 300 Jewish communities. In Strasbourg, by a chronicler’s count, some two thousand Jews are burned on February 14, 1349. The Blood Libel →
1391Spain: from June 4, mobs attack the Jewish quarters of Castile and Aragon. Thousands are killed, thousands flee, and thousands are baptized by force. The Expulsions →
1394France: King Charles VI expels the Jews for good, on September 17. The Expulsions →
1420–1421Vienna: in the Vienna Gesera, the city’s Jews are imprisoned, forcibly converted, killed, and expelled. The Expulsions →
1424–1519German cities: Cologne (1424), Augsburg (1440), Nuremberg and Ulm (1490s), and Regensburg (1519) expel their Jews. The Expulsions →
1449Toledo, Spain: the city rebels against King John II, and its conversos, baptized Jews and their descendants, are attacked. The Expulsions →
1465Fez, Morocco: the town rises in revolt. The sultan and his Jewish chief minister, Harun, are assassinated, and most of the Jews are massacred. The Jews of North Africa →
1473Castile, Spain: mobs attack conversos across the kingdom. The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World →
1475Trent, in the Alps: after a ritual-murder charge, some fifteen members of the Jewish community are tortured and executed. The Blood Libel →
1492Spain: Ferdinand and Isabella expel the Jews. In practice, those who accept baptism can stay. The Expulsions →
1497Portugal: King Manuel I turns his 1496 expulsion order into forced conversion. Children are seized for baptism, the ports are closed, and the adult community is driven into mass forced conversion. The Expulsions →
Early modern
1506Lisbon, Portugal: a New Christian who scoffs at a reported miracle is dragged out of a church and killed. In the massacre of New Christians that follows, the dead are reckoned at between two and four thousand. The Expulsions →
1510–1541Naples: after the Spanish conquest, the Kingdom of Naples expels its Jews, by decrees of 1510 and finally 1541. The Expulsions →
1524Cranganore, India: Muslim forces fighting the Portuguese attack the Jews, kill many, and destroy their synagogues. A Connected People →
1569The Papal States: Pope Pius V expels Jews from most of his lands outside Rome and Ancona. The Ghetto System →
1614–1616Frankfurt: a mob led by Vincent Fettmilch storms the Judengasse, plunders the houses, and drives every Jew out of the city. In 1616 the rebels’ leaders are put to death and the Jews are brought back. The Ghetto System →
1648–1649Ukraine, then part of Poland: in the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky, whole Jewish communities, among them Nemyriv and Tulchyn, are destroyed. The historian Shaul Stampfer puts the Jewish dead at up to 20,000. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania →
1656–1662Iran: under the Safavid dynasty, Jews are forced to convert to Islam, as Babai ben Lotf, a Jewish poet of Kashan who lived through it, records. The Jews of Iran →
1662Cochin, India: the Portuguese kill many of the Cochin Jews. A Connected People →
1679Yemen: the Imam al-Mahdi Ahmad expels the country’s Jews, and only the Jews, to Mawza, a barren strip near the Red Sea coast. By some scholarly estimates as many as two-thirds die of hunger and disease. The Departure from MENA →
1691Majorca: many Chuetas, descendants of the island’s forced converts, are burned at the Inquisition’s autos-da-fé. The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World →
1744–1748Prague: as the Prussian army withdraws, the Jewish Quarter is looted and Jews are killed. Empress Maria Theresa, accusing the Jews of collaborating with the Prussians, orders every Jew out of the city. They are allowed back only in 1748. The Ghetto System →
1768Uman, in Ukraine, then part of Poland: the Haidamaks, armed bands of runaway serfs, kill the Jews who had taken refuge in the town, most of them in the synagogue, along with many Poles. The Jewish dead run into the thousands. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania →
1790–1792Morocco: Sultan Moulay Yazid orders two years of attacks on the Jewish quarters of Tetouan, Meknes, Fez, and Marrakesh. The Departure from MENA →
Modern, before 1945
1819Germany: the Hep-Hep riots begin in Würzburg and spread across Bavaria, to Frankfurt and Hamburg, and as far as Copenhagen, as crowds smash windows and loot Jewish homes. The Racial Turn →
1821–1871Odessa: anti-Jewish riots break out in 1821, 1859, and 1871, with Greek merchants of the grain export trade prominent among the attackers. The Russian Pogroms →
1827–1856Russian Empire: Jewish boys of eight to thirteen are drafted as cantonists and often pressed into Russian Orthodox baptism. Some 40,000 pass through the system. The Russian Pogroms →
1839Mashhad, Iran: a mob attacks the Jewish quarter, kills some 35 Jews, and offers the rest Islam or death. The Jews convert outwardly and keep Judaism in secret for generations. The Jews of Iran →
1840Damascus and Rhodes: under a blood-libel charge, several leading Jews of Damascus are tortured, and some of the accused die under interrogation. On Rhodes, Jews are arrested and tortured. The Blood Libel →
1862United States: General Ulysses S. Grant’s General Orders No. 11 expels “Jews, as a class” from his military district across parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky, with twenty-four hours to leave. Lincoln has the order revoked. American Jewry →
1881–1882Russian Empire: more than 250 anti-Jewish riots sweep the southwestern provinces. Mobs loot and destroy Jewish homes, shops, and synagogues. The Russian Pogroms →
1892–1910Shiraz, Iran: pogroms strike the Jewish quarter in 1892, 1897, and 1910, and many Jews are killed and injured. The Jews of Iran →
1903Kishinev (today Chișinău, Moldova): at Easter rioters kill 49 Jews and injure 586 over two days. They loot and destroy some 700 Jewish homes and loot some 600 shops and businesses. The Russian Pogroms →
1903Gomel: a pogrom strikes later that year, and armed Jewish self-defense units appear for the first time. The Russian Pogroms →
1905Russian Empire: in the weeks after the October Manifesto, hundreds of pogroms break out across the south and southwest. In Odessa, estimates of the dead run from several hundred to more than a thousand. The Russian Pogroms →
1906Białystok, today in Poland: three days of attacks kill 70 Jews and leave 90 gravely injured. A commission named by the Duma, the Russian parliament, blames both the local police and the central authorities. The Russian Pogroms →
1912Fez, Morocco: weeks after the treaty that puts Morocco under French control, Moroccan soldiers in revolt, joined by crowds, sack the Jewish quarter for three days. More than forty Jews are killed, and some 12,000 take shelter on the grounds of the sultan’s palace. The Jews of North Africa →
1915The eastern front: Russian commanders accuse Jews of helping the enemy and drive more than half a million from towns and villages near the front. In Kovno, all 40,000 Jews are removed within 48 hours. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania →
1918Lwów (today Lviv, Ukraine): a Polish mob with soldiers in uniform among it pillages the Jewish quarter and kills at least 73 Jews. The historian Rachel Manekin puts the dead at almost 100. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania →
1918–1921Ukraine and Belarus: in the Russian Civil War, all the contending armies carry out pogroms. At least 50,000 Jews are killed, and the historian Jeffrey Veidlinger counts more than 100,000. The Russian Pogroms →
1919Pinsk: the Polish army executes 35 young Jews without trial as suspected Communists. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania →
1920Jerusalem: during the Nebi Musa festival, rioters attack the Jewish quarter of the Old City. Five Jews are killed and more than two hundred wounded. The Terror Record →
1921Jaffa: Arab rioters kill 47 Jews, among them the writer Yosef Haim Brenner. The Terror Record →
1929Mandate Palestine: in one week of August, Arab mobs kill 133 Jews, by the count of the British commission of inquiry. In Hebron, rioters murder 67 Jews. The Terror Record →
1934Constantine, Algeria: a rumor of an insult to a mosque becomes days of rioting in which twenty-five Jews are killed, whole families among them, while the French authorities fail to intervene. The Departure from MENA →
1936Przytyk, Poland: a pogrom in the market town kills a Jewish couple and wrecks several dozen Jewish homes and shops. A Polish man is also killed, shot by a Jewish self-defender as the mob attacks. The Jews of Poland and Lithuania →
1936–1939Mandate Palestine: the Arab Revolt against British rule and the Zionist movement kills about 415 Jews. The Terror Record →
1941Baghdad: in the Farhud, on June 1–2, rioters kill between 150 and 180 Jews, injure between 600 and 800, by different counts, and loot some 1,500 Jewish stores and homes. The Jews of Iraq →
Chapters in this Unit
Twelve Chapters follow the arc in order, from antiquity to the present. Full Table of Contents → The arc at a glance →
Chapter 01 · 410 BCE onward
Adversus Judaeos
The first anti-Jewish polemics, in the ancient world and then in the Church, and the theological claims, collective blame for the crucifixion among them, that would have a long afterlife in European law and art.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 02 · 1144 onward
The Blood Libel
The false accusation that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual use, which took shape at Norwich in 1144, repudiated by popes, and recurring across centuries despite it.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 03 · 1516 onward
The Ghetto System
Legal segregation as an institution, conventionally dated to Venice in 1516, where the word “ghetto” was born. The enclosed quarter, locked at night, and the long process by which the system was built and finally dismantled.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 04 · 1182–1541
The Expulsions
Banishment as a recurring instrument of state, from England in 1290 to Spain in 1492 and Naples in 1541. The lending trade kings first protected and taxed, the Inquisition behind Spain’s edict, and how the expulsions moved the center of Jewish life east and south.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 05 · 1879–1935
The Racial Turn of 1879
The moment hostility shifted from religion to race. Under the older form, conversion was generally an exit. Under the new one, built on blood rather than belief, there was no exit. Nazi Germany would later target Jews as members of a racial category.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 06 · 1881 onward
The Russian Pogroms
The Pale of Settlement, the western zone where the Russian Empire confined its Jews. The waves of anti-Jewish violence from 1881, Kishinev in 1903, and the mass emigration that reshaped the Jewish world in their wake.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 07 · 1903
The Protocols Forgery
A forgery with a long afterlife, made in Russia and long attributed to the tsarist secret police, an account historians now dispute. Plagiarized from a French satire and exposed in 1921, it became one of the most widely circulated antisemitic texts in the world.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 08 · 1919–1935
The Nazi Synthesis
How racial theory, the conspiracy myth, and centuries of religious and economic hostility converged into a single worldview and became the official project of a modern state. It is the hinge into the Holocaust Era.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 09 · 600s–1856
The Dhimma
Much of the story happened outside Europe. Jewish life under Islamic rule, read from the system’s own documents: a contract of protection and subordination, twelve centuries of flourishing and violence, and the Ottoman reforms that ended it in law.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 10 · 1920s to today
The Eastward Turn
A forgery exposed in 1921 was translated in the 1920s, its ideas broadcast on Nazi radio in the 1940s, translated again in 1951, written into a founding charter in 1988, and taught to children since. How European antisemitism moved into the Arabic-speaking world, and the documents that record each stage.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 11 · 1920 to today
The Terror Record
Passengers singled out at Entebbe in 1976, synagogues attacked on the Sabbath, a community center an ocean from any front line. The record of violence against Jews as Jews since 1920, in courts, archives, and memorials.
Read the Chapter →Chapter 12 · The present
Contemporary Antisemitism
The frameworks scholars use to define antisemitism, the monitoring data, and the record of the present day.
Read the Chapter →The arc of antisemitism, at a glance
From the ancient world to today.
The rows below follow hostility toward Jews in order, from the anti-Jewish writing of the ancient world to antisemitism today. Each row links to the Chapter that covers it.
Hostility, but no doctrine about the Jews · civic and local
410 BCEElephantine, Egypt: the town’s own Jewish temple destroyed in a local feud, recorded in the community’s papyri Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
c. 270 BCEEgypt: a history attributed to the priest Manetho retells the Exodus in reverse, the earliest anti-Jewish writing to survive Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
38 CEAlexandria: mob violence against the city’s Jews, recorded by an eyewitness Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
The engine · a theological charge
2nd centuryThe deicide charge enters Christian teaching: the Jewish people blamed, collectively, for the crucifixion Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
386In Antioch, the preacher John Chrysostom’s sermons against the Jews set the tone for centuries Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
1096The First Crusade: massacres of Jewish communities across the Rhineland, in western Germany Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
The machinery · myth, law, enclosure, expulsion
1144Norwich, England: the first known ritual-murder charge, the false claim that Jews murdered a Christian child, which grew into the blood libel Unit 3 · Ch. 02 · The Blood Libel →
1215The Fourth Lateran Council orders Jews and Muslims marked out by their dress Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
1240–1242The Talmud, the vast written record of Jewish law and debate, put on trial in Paris and then burned: twenty-four cartloads of manuscripts Unit 3 · Ch. 01 · Adversus Judaeos →
1290–1492The expulsions, England to Spain Unit 3 · Ch. 04 · The Expulsions →
1347–1351The Black Death: Jews falsely accused of poisoning wells. Massacres from Strasbourg to Cologne Unit 3 · Ch. 02 · The Blood Libel →
1391Massacres across Spain drive mass conversions Unit 3 · Ch. 04 · The Expulsions →
1449Toledo, Spain: the first “purity of blood” statute shuts converts “of Jewish lineage” out of office, even though they are Christians Unit 3 · Ch. 04 · The Expulsions →
1478A papal bull authorizes the Spanish Inquisition, charged with finding secret Jewish practice among converts Unit 3 · Ch. 04 · The Expulsions →
1516Venice establishes the Ghetto, the enclosure that gave the institution its name Unit 3 · Ch. 03 · The Ghetto System →
1648–1649A Cossack uprising under Khmelnytsky destroys many Jewish communities in Ukraine, then part of Poland Unit 3 · Ch. 06 · The Russian Pogroms →
The mutation · from faith to race
1879The racial turn: Jewishness redefined as heredity, and the word “antisemitism” popularized Unit 3 · Ch. 05 · The Racial Turn →
1881Pogroms, organized mob attacks on Jewish communities, begin in waves across the Russian Empire Unit 3 · Ch. 06 · The Russian Pogroms →
1903Kishinev: the pogrom the world press made visible Unit 3 · Ch. 06 · The Russian Pogroms →
1903The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a forged “Jewish plot” text, published in Russia Unit 3 · Ch. 07 · The Protocols →
The catastrophe, and after
1920s onThe conspiracy myth is translated into Arabic and moves into the Middle East Unit 3 · Ch. 10 · The Eastward Turn →
1920 to todayViolence against Jews as Jews: the documented record, attack by attack Unit 3 · Ch. 11 · The Terror Record →
1933–1935Nazi Germany fuses the older threads into the policy of a modern state Unit 3 · Ch. 08 · The Nazi Synthesis →
1933–1945The Holocaust Unit 4 · The Holocaust Era →
TodayThe old patterns in new forms, documented as they occur Unit 3 · Ch. 12 · Contemporary Antisemitism →
Jewish life and law under Islamic rule, a record with its own shape, are treated in The Dhimma (Unit 3 · Ch. 09). The patterns that recur across the whole arc are traced on the Recurring Cycle page.
Last updated: November 2026.