Antisemitism

I had the privilege today of talking to a class of Year 13 students about antisemitism, a topic that they are studying at school. I prepared a paper for them on the history, various forms and sources of antisemitism, and talked about the way antisemitism is and was used to confront problems societies face that had nothing to do with Jews. I challenged the students to discuss problems facing Germany in the 1920s and 1930s that the Nazis tried to resolve through the hatred of Jews, even though there were comparatively few Jews in Germany. As they were not familiar with the Merchant of Venice, I explained how the play was not about Jews, there were no Jews in England in Shakespeare's time, they had been expelled three hundred years before; that the play was about usury, lending money at interest, Shakespeare himself was a money lender, and about the validity of contracts, both of these new and contentious issues in Shakespeare's time. Perhaps all this was too academic even for senior students. The teacher asked me to talk about my own personal story. This was what impressed the class that visited last year. I told them a little about myself, something I am always reluctant to do, why should anyone be interested in me, and told them my parents' story and the story of the Hungarian Holocaust. What I did not talk about, and perhaps I should have, was present day antisemitism. I don't know what to say about that. For many years after the Holocaust open antisemitism was frowned upon. It was unfashionable. It has now resurfaced, partly due to the emergency of right wing politics, partly through Moslem influence in Europe, but I believe that antisemitism was always there, nothing changed, it was just given new political voice. There is, however, a huge difference between the antisemitism of the new 'Right' and that of the immigrants from the Middle East and the state backed antisemitism of the 1930s. There will always be people, unfortunately lots of people with an irrational hatred of Jews, but murdering Jews is something else.