The Long Roots of European Antisemitism

Hatred of Jews in Europe did not begin with the rise of Nazism in 1933; it drew on many centuries of accumulated prejudice. From the Middle Ages onward, Christian religious anti-Judaism persisted across the continent, built on charges such as deicide, the accusation that Jews collectively bore responsibility for the death of Christ, and the blood libel, the false claim that Jews murdered Christian children for ritual purposes. This hostility repeatedly took institutional form: Jewish communities were historically confined to ghettos and subjected to a web of legal restrictions, and entire communities were periodically expelled outright, most famously from Spain in 1492, alongside similar expulsions from other European territories across different centuries.