The Scattering

DEFINITION—DIASPORA
Diaspora n. The dispersion of Jews outside of Israel from the sixth century BC when they were exiled to Babylonia, until the present time.

1. VERSES: Deuteronomy, Psalms, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Jeremiah, Hosea and Nehemiah.

And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. Deuteronomy 4:27

You have given us up like sheep intended for food, and have scattered us among the nations. Psalm 44:11

“Yet I will leave a remnant, so that you may have some who
escape the sword among the nations, when you are scattered
through the countries. Ezekiel 6:8

So I scattered them among the nations, and they were dispersed
throughout the countries; I judged them according to their ways
and their deeds. Ezekiel 36:19

“But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations
which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after
them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the
pleasant land desolate.” Zechariah 7:14

“Also I raised My hand in an oath to those in the wilderness (a place of being lost, desolate), that I would scatter them among the Gentiles and disperse them throughout the countries” Ezekiel 20:23

“Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are
unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. Nehemiah 1:8

Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts: “ Behold, I will refine them and try them; For how shall I deal with the daughter of My people? Jeremiah 9:7

My God will cast them away, Because they did not obey Him; And they shall be wanderers
among the nations. Hosea 9:17

“Israel is swallowed up: now shall they be among the Gentiles as a vessel in which is no pleasure.” Hosea 8:8

“I will scatter them also among the Gentiles, whom neither they nor their fathers have known. And I will send a sword after them until I have consumed them.” Jeremiah 9:16

“I dispersed them among the nations, and they were scattered through the countries; I judged them according to their conduct and their actions.” Ezekiel 36:19

“The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and only a few of you will survive among the nations to which the LORD will drive you.” Deuteronomy 4:27

“Then the LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods — gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your fathers have known.” Deuteronomy 28:64

“Reprobate silver shall men call them, because the LORD hath rejected them.”
Jeremiah 6:30 KJV

It is your destruction, O Israel, That you are against Me, against your help. Hosea 13:9 NASB

“Your own wickedness will correct you, And your back slidings will rebuke you. Know
therefore and see that it is an evil and bitter thing That you have forsaken the LORD your
God, And the fear of Me is not in you,” Says the Lord GOD of hosts. Jeremiah 2:19

2. HISTORICAL DOCUMENTATION:

Following is historical documentation of their persecution, the force which drove them throughout the ages. The following documentation serves to cement the truth of God’s word. Only by analyzing their circumstances, date by date and year by year, is the
reader able to see how faithfully God’s word has played out in history:

38 AD: Judaism was viewed with deep suspicion by polytheistic societies in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt where nearly a million Jews lived among polytheistic Egyptians, Greeks and the governing Romans. The ‘first pogrom’ in Alexandria in 38 AD was ordered by Roman governor Flaccus. Thousands of Jews
were beaten, raped, and paraded through the streets to be burned on bonfires.

In 70 AD The Roman Army destroyed Jerusalem, killed over 1 million Jews, took about 100,000 into slavery, and scattered them from Palestine throughout the Roman Empire. Titus’ treatment of the Jews was brutal, Although Titus took a modest position in taking credit for his role. He is quoted as saying “It is no great accomplishment to defeat a people abandoned by their God.”

April 15, 73 AD: After the First Jewish-Roman War, Roman forces batter a hole through the wall of the fortress at Masada after a siege of nearly 2 years where Roman troops have built ramps to gain access. But the 10,000 legionnaires find only two women and five children left alive, these survivors are found hidden in a water
conduit. The group at Masada had been led by Eleazar ben Jair The account of the siege of Masada was related to Josephus by two women who survived the suicide by hiding inside a cistern along with five children. They gave eye witness testimony describing Eleazar ben Ya’ir’s exhortations to his followers: to abstain from committing the sin of suicide, the 950 Zealots (Jewish Sicarii rebels) each drew lots to kill each other until they were down to the last man who would be the only man to take his own life. As the last remnant of Jewish rule in Judaea, Masada will later become a symbol of national heroism.

Circa 115 -117 AD: Jews in Cyprus, Cyrene, Egypt and
parts of Mesopotamia revolted against the Roman Empire in what is
known as the Kitos War. This caused the death of several hundreds
of thousands of Romans and Jews. The Roman Legions eventually
crushed the rebellions.

131 AD: Edict of Hadrian prohibits the practice of
circumcision. Additionally, Hadrian prohibits public reading of the
Torah under penalty of death, as well as observance of festivals and
the Sabbath, the teaching of Judaic Law and the ordination of rabbis.

132-135 AD Bar Kokhba’s revolt: final Jewish revolt, Judea and
Jerusalem erased from maps. The Roman emperor Hadrian, among
other provocations, renames Jerusalem “Aelia Capitolina.” About a
half-million Jews were killed; thousands were sold into slavery or
taken into captivity. The rest were exiled from Palestine and
scattered throughout the known world, adding to what is now called
the “Diaspora.” Judaism was no longer recognized as a legal religion.

135 AD: Emperor Hadrian rebuilds Jerusalem; builds new
walls for the renamed city Aelia Capitolina and country Palestine;
bans Jews from Jerusalem. Serious Roman persecution of the Jews
began. They were forbidden, upon pain of death, from practicing
circumcision, reading the Torah, eating unleavened bread at
Passover, etc. A temple dedicated to the Roman pagan god Jupiter
was erected on temple mountain in Jerusalem. A temple of Venus
was built on Golgotha, just outside the city.

136 AD: The Roman province of Iudaea (plus Galilee)
becomes Syria Palaestina, the first use of the name Palestine as a
designation for Judea. (the term Palestine was originally coined by
Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian who lived 484-425 BC)

155 AD: To restore peace between the Jews and Romans,
Antoninus relegalizes circumcision. Rome states that while it will not
be recognized as an official religion, Judaism must be tolerated.

200 AD: Roman Emperor Severus forbids religious conversions to
Judaism.

306 AD: The church Synod of Elvira banned marriages, sexual
intercourse and community contacts between Christians and Jews.

325 AD: The Council of Nicea decided to separate the celebration of
Easter from the Jewish Passover. They stated: “For it is unbecoming
beyond measure that on this holiest of festivals we should follow the
customs of the Jews. Henceforth let us have nothing in common with
this odious people…We ought not, therefore, to have anything in
common with the Jews…our worship follows a…more convenient
course…we desire dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the
detestable company of the Jews…How, then, could we follow these
Jews, who are almost certainly blinded.”

337 AD: Christian Emperor Constantius created a law which made
the marriage of a Jewish man to a Christian punishable by death.

339 AD: Converting to Judaism is a criminal offense.

343-381 AD: The Laodicean Synod approved Cannon XXXVIII: “It is
not lawful (for Christians) to receive unleavened bread from the
Jews, nor to be partakers of their impiety.”

In 351, the Jewish population in Sepphoris, under the leadership of
Patricius, started a revolt against the rule of Constantius Gallus,
brother-in-law of Emperor Constantius II. The revolt was eventually
subdued by Gallus’ general, Ursicinus.

358 AD: Because of the increasing danger of Roman persecution,
Patriarch Hillel II creates a mathematical calendar for calculating the
Jewish month. After adopting the calendar (with disagreement about
the proper years for intercalation and the initial epoch), the Sanhedrin
in Tiberias is dissolved. Hillel II created the Hebrew calendar based
on the lunar year. Until then, the entire Jewish community outside
the land of Israel depended on the calendar sanctioned by the
Sanhedrin; this was necessary for the proper observance of the
Jewish holy days. However, danger threatened the participants in that
sanction and the messengers who communicated their decisions to
distant communities. As the religious persecutions continued, Hillel
determined to provide an authorized calendar for all time to come.

367 – 376 AD: St. Hilary of Poitiers referred to Jews as a perverse people who God has cursed forever. St. Ephroem refers to synagogues as brothels.

380 AD: The bishop of Milan was responsible for the burning of a synagogue; he referred to it as “an act pleasing to God.”

366 AD: John Chrysostom becomes a presbyter; he also writes eight homilies. entitled “Adversus Iudaeos” (“Against the Jews”).

379-395 AD The Emperor Theodosius , issued a set of decrees which established official prosecution against Jews. Jews were not allowed to own slaves, build new synagogues, hold public office or try cases between a Jew and a non-Jew. Intermarriage between Jew and non Jew was made a capital offense as was a Christian converting to Judaism. Theodosius, furthermore, did away with the Sanhedrin and abolished the post of Nasi (highest ranking member and president of the Sanhedrin or Assembly, including a criminal court.

415 AD: St. Augustine wrote “The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the Scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus.”

415 AD: The Bishop of Alexandria, St. Cyril, expelled the Jews from that Egyptian city.

418 AD: St. Jerome, who created the Vulgate translation of the Bible wrote of a synagogue: “If you call it a brothel, a den of vice, the Devil’s refuge, Satan’s fortress, a place to deprave the soul, an abyss of every conceivable disaster or whatever you will, you are still
saying less than it deserves.”

425 AD: Gamaliel VI was the last Nasi. He was executed in 425 by Emperor Theodosius II, who also suppressed the office of the patriarchate thereafter. The patriarchal tax was diverted to the Roman treasury from 426. The Romans recognized the Nasi as ‘Patriarch of
the Jews’, and required all Jews to pay a tax for the upkeep of that office, which ranked highly in the Roman official hierarchy.

438 AD: Empress Eudocia allows Jews to live in Jerusalem.

489 – 519 AD: Christian mobs destroyed the synagogues in Antioch, Daphne (near Antioch) and Ravenna.

528 AD: Emperor Justinian (527-564) passed the Justinian Code. It prohibited Jews from building synagogues, reading the Bible in Hebrew, assemble in public, celebrate Passover before Easter, and testify against Christians in court.

535 AD: The “Synod of Claremont decreed that Jews could not hold public office or have authority over Christians.”

538 AD: The 3rd and 4th Councils of Orleans prohibited Jews from appearing in public during the Easter season. Canon XXX decreed that “From the Thursday before Easter for four days, Jews may not appear in the company of Christians.” Marriages between Christians and Jews were prohibited. Christians were prohibited from converting to Judaism.

561 AD: The bishop of Uzes expelled Jews from his diocese in France.

612 AD: Jews are not allowed to own land, to be farmers or enter certain trades.

613 AD: Very serious persecution began in Spain. Jews were given the options of either leaving Spain or converting to Christianity. Jewish children over 6 years of age were taken from their parents and given a Christian education.

614 AD: Persians massacre Jews in Jerusalem.

636 AD: Battle of Yamouk. The precarious existence of Jews under Byzantine rule did not long endure, largely for the explosion of the Muslim religion out of the remote Arabian peninsula (where large populations of Jews resided, see History of the Jews under Muslim
Rule for more). The Muslim Caliphate ejected the Byzantines from the Holy Land (or the Levant, defined as modern Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria) within a few years of their victory at the Battle of Yarmouk in 636. A testament of the cruelty of the Byzantines
towards the Jews can be noted in the great number of Jews who fled remaining Byzantine territories in favor of residence in the Caliphate over the subsequent centuries.

657 AD: Al Aksa Mosque construction begins in Jerusalem. “Desolation of abomination” is placed in the Holy Place.

661 AD: The Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 AD)

The practice of wearing special clothing or markings to distinguish Jews and other non-Muslims (dhimmis) in Muslim-dominated countries seems to have been introduced in the Umayyad Caliphate by Caliph Umar II in the early 8th century. A genizah document from 1121 gives the following description of decrees issued in Baghdad:

Two yellow badges (are to be displayed), one on the headgear and one on the neck. Furthermore, each Jew must hang round his neck a piece of lead with the word Dhimmi on it. He also has to wear a belt round his waist. The women have to wear one red and one black shoe and have a small bell on their necks or shoes.

688-691 AD: Dome of the Rock built in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount by caliph.

692 AD: Cannon II of the Quinisext Council stated: “Let no one in the priestly order nor any layman eat the unleavened bread of the Jews, nor have any familiar intercourse with them, nor summon them in illness, nor receive medicines from them, nor bathe with them; but
if anyone shall take in hand to do so, if he is a cleric, let him be deposed, but if a layman, let him be cut off.”

694 AD: The 17th Church Council of Toledo, Spain defined Jews as the serfs of the prince. This was based, in part, on the beliefs by Chrysostom, Origen, Jerome, and other
Church Fathers that God punished the Jews with perpetual slavery because of their alleged responsibility for the execution of Jesus.

701 AD: The Arabs in this century lay waste the farmlands of Palestine, undoing the work of the Maccabees in the 2nd century BC and creating agricultural havoc that will not be repaired for 12 centuries.

722 AD: Leo III outlawed Judaism. Jews were baptized against their will.

807 AD: Caliph Harun al-Rashid ordered all Jews to wear yellow badges. Wooden devils and apes were nailed on the homes of Jews and their places of worship were destroyed under the reign of Caliph al-Mutawakkil.

838 AD: The Khazars convert to Judaism.

847 AD: The practice of wearing yellow badges for the Jews was revived and reinforced by the Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil (847–861), subsequently remaining in force for centuries. A genizah document from 1121 gives the following description of decrees issued in Baghdad:

Two yellow badges (are to be displayed), one on the headgear and one on the neck. Furthermore, each Jew must hang round his neck a piece of lead with the word Dhimmi on it. He also has to wear a belt round his waist. The women have to wear one red and one black shoe and have a small bell on their necks or shoes.

~ 850 AD: Yiddish has its beginnings as groups of Jews settle in some of the German states and develop their own language, mixing German, Hebrew, and other languages.

855 AD: Jews are exiled from Italy.

888 AD Regional persecutions of Jews by Catholics, such as the one in Metz in 888 AD.

992 AD A plot against Jews in Limoges in 992 AD.

925 AD: Shisak of Egypt destroys Jerusalem.

1011 AD: The 11th century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011.

1012 AD: Fatimid Caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of all Jewish and Christian places of worship.

1050 AD: The Synod of Narbonne prohibited Christians from living in the homes of Jews.

1066 AD: The 11th century saw Muslim pogroms against Jews in Spain; those occurred in Cordoba in 1011 and in Granada in 1066.

1066 AD: The threat of expulsion from Trier in 1066

1075 AD: The Seljuk Turks take Jerusalem from the Fatimids.

1078 AD: The Synod of Gerona forced Jews to pay church taxes.

1083 AD: End of the Khazaria (586-1083 AD) Khazaria served as the western anchor of the northern Silk Road for several centuries, specifically 7th through 10th, as well as a major buffer state between the Christian and Islamic worlds. the Khazars evolved from their
closed nomadic society into a pluralistic, urban and agrarian society as they absorbed Jews escaping Byzantine and Arab persecution.

1096 AD: The First Crusade was launched by the Catholic Church. Although the prime goal of the crusades was to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims, Jews were a second target. As the soldiers passed through Europe on the way to the Holy Land, large numbers of Jews
were challenged: “Christ-killers, embrace the Cross or die!” 12,000 Jews in the Rhine Valley alone were killed in the first Crusade.

Sigebert of Gembloux wrote that before “a war in behalf of the Lord” could be fought, it was essential that the Jews convert; those who resisted were “deprived of their goods, massacred, and expelled from the cities.” There first arose the officers, nobles, and common people who were in the land of France [Sarefat] who took counsel together and plotted…to make clear the way to go toward Jerusalem.
At the time the (Jewish) communities in France heard (about these things), trembling… seized them. They wrote letters and sent messengers to all the communities around about the River Rhine, (to the effect) that they should fast…and seek mercy from Him who dwells on high, that He might save them from their hands. When the letter reached the holy ones in the land (of the Rhine), namely the men of renown … in Mainz, they responded (to their brethren in) France as follows: ‘The communities have decreed a fast. We have done that which was ours (to do). May the Lord save us and may He save you from all sorrow and oppression [which might come] upon you. We are in great fear.’

This behavior continued for 8 additional crusades until the 9th in 1272.

1096 AD The Rhineland massacres, also known as the German Crusade of 1096 or Gzerot Tatnó (“Edicts of 4856”), were a series of mass murders of Jews perpetrated by mobs of French and German Christians of the People’s Crusade in the year 1096

Sivan 1096 AD: At the end of a week in which a group of Jews took refuge in a local castle in Worms, Germany, the crusaders massacred them during their morning prayers.

1096 AD Spring, a number of small bands of knights and peasants, inspired by the preaching of the Crusade, set off from various parts of France and Germany (Worms & Cologne). The crusade of the priest Folkmar, beginning in Saxony, persecuted Jews in Magdeburg and later, on May 30, 1096 AD, in Prague in Bohemia.

1096 AD: Eliezer ben Nathan, a Jewish chronicler at the times, paraphrased Habakkuk 1:6 and wrote of cruel foreigners, fierce and swift, Frenchmen and Germans…[who] put crosses on their clothing and were more plentiful than locusts on the face of the earth.

John, Bishop of Speyer gave shelter to the Jewish inhabitants. Still, 12 Jews of Speyer were slain by crusaders on May 3. The Bishop of Worms also attempted to shelter Jews, but the crusaders broke into his episcopal palace and killed the Jews inside on May 18. At least 800 Jews were massacred in Worms when they refused Catholic baptism. News of Emicho’s crusade spread quickly, and he was prevented from entering Mainz on May 25 by Bishop Ruthard. Emicho also took an offering of gold raised by the Jews of Mainz in hope to gain his favor and their safety. Bishop Ruthard tried to protect the Jews by hiding them in his lightly fortified palace. Nevertheless, Emicho did not prevent his followers from entering the city on May 27 and a massacre followed. Many among the Christian business class (the burghers) in Mainz, had working ties with Jews and gave them shelter from the mobs (as the burghers in Prague had done). The Mainz burghers joined with the militia of the bishop and the burgrave (the town’s military governor) in fighting off the first waves of crusaders. This stand had to be abandoned when crusaders continued to arrive in ever greater numbers, and the militia of the bishop together with the bishop himself fled and left the Jews to be slaughtered by the crusaders. Despite the example of the burghers, many ordinary citizens in Mainz and other the towns were caught up in the frenzy and joined in the persecution and pillaging. Mainz was the site of the greatest violence, with at least 1,100 Jews (and possibly more) being killed by troops under Clarambaud and Thomas.

1099 AD: The Crusaders forced all of the Jews of Jerusalem into a central synagogue and set it on fire. Those who tried to escape were forced back into the burning building.

A Concise History of the Crusades, claims the Jewish defenders of Jerusalem retreated to their synagogue to “prepare for death” once the Crusaders had breached the outer walls of the city during the siege of 1099. The chronicle of Ibn al-Qalanisi mentions the building was set fire while the Jews were still inside. The Crusaders were supposedly reported as hoisting up their shields and singing “Christ We Adore Thee!” while they circled the fiery complex.”

1121 AD: Jews are exiled from Flanders. (now part of present-day Belgium)

1130 AD: Some Jews in London allegedly killed a sick man. The Jewish people in the city were required to pay 1 million marks as compensation.

1140 AD: Quote from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: “Now we will relate in part what happened in King Stephen’s time. In his reign the Jews of Norwich bought a Christian child before Easter, and tortured him after the same manner as our Lord was tortured; and on Long Friday (Good Friday) 163 hanged him on a rood, in mockery of our Lord, and afterwards buried him. They supposed that it would be concealed, but our Lord showed that he was a holy martyr. And the monks took him, and buried him with high honour in the minster. And through our Lord he worketh wonderful and manifold miracles,
and is called St. William.” http://www.webmesh.co.uk/a-s-chronicles9.htm

1146 AD: The Second Crusade began. A French Monk, Rudolf, called for the destruction of the Jews.

1146 AD: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preaches the Second Crusade at Vezelay, Burgundy. In a repeat of the events of 1096, Crusaders attack and massacre Jewish communities along the Rhine. Bernard de Clairvaux condemns these pogroms in strong terms, reminding the
Crusaders that those who attacked the Jewish people during the previous Crusade came to a sorry end and were massacred to the last man by the Turks.

1179 AD: Canon 24 of the Third Lateran Council stated: “Jews should be slaves to Christians and at the same time treated kindly due of humanitarian considerations.” Canon 26 stated that “the testimony of Christians against Jews is to be preferred in all causes where they use their own witnesses against Christians.”

1179 AD financial oppression of Jews tended to occur in areas where they were most disliked, and if Jews reacted by concentrating on moneylending to gentiles, the unpopularity – and so, of course, the pressure – would increase. Thus, Jews became an element in a vicious circle. The Christians, on the basis of the Biblical rulings, condemned interest-taking absolutely, and from 1179 those who practised it were excommunicated. But Christians also imposed the harshest financial burdens on Jews. Jews reacted by engaging in the one business where Christian laws actually discriminated in their favour, and so became identified with the hated trade of moneylending.

1180 AD: The French King of France, Philip Augustus, arbitrarily seized all Jewish property and expelled the Jews from the country. There was no legal justification for this action. They were allowed to sell all movable possessions, but their land and houses were stolen by the king.

1187 AD: The king of France expelled all Jews from his own lands.

1187-1192AD: The third Crusade.

1189 AD: Jews persecuted in England. The Crown claimed all Jewish possessions. Most of their houses were burned. Jews massacred in England during coronation of Richard I.

1189 – 1190 AD In England, the departing Crusaders were joined by crowds of debtors in the massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189–1190

1190 AD: Anti-Jewish riots break out in England.

1190 AD: March 16—A massacre and mass-suicide of the Jews of York, England, led by
Richard Malebys, result in the deaths of 150–500 Jews in Clifford’s Tower.

1202-1204 AD: The forth Crusade: Constantinople was sacked. The crusade was to be directed at Egypt, because the Crusaders believed that conquering it would be the key to regaining Jerusalem.

1215 AD: the Fourth Council of the Lateran headed by Pope Innocent III ruled that Jews and Muslims must wear distinguishable dress (Latin habitus). Canon 68 reads, in part:

In some provinces a difference in dress distinguishes the Jews or Saracens from the Christians, but in certain others such a confusion has grown up that they cannot be distinguished by any difference. Thus it happens at times that through error Christians have relations with the women of Jews or Saracens, and Jews and Saracens with Christian women. Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress. Particularly, since it may be read in the writings of Moses (Numbers 15:37–41), that this very law has been enjoined upon them.

1217-1221 AD: The fifth Crusade: conquest of Damietta.

In 1227, the Synod of Narbonne, in canon 3, ruled:

That Jews may be distinguished from others, we decree and emphatically command that in the center of the breast (of their garments) they shall wear an oval badge, the measure of one finger in width and one half a palm in height …

1228 AD: James I of Aragon ordered Jews of Aragon to wear the badge

1228-1229 AD: The sixth Crusade: led by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.

1234 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Arles 1234. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1239 AD: The duke of Brittany drove the Jews out of his duchy.

1240 AD: On the late 1240s Louis IX had expelled the Jews from the royal demesne prior to his first passage to the East.

1242 AD: The Talmud is burned publicly in Paris.

1243 AD: The first recorded accusation of host desecration by Jews was made in 1243 at Beelitz, near Berlin, and in consequence of it all the Jews of Beelitz were burned on the spot, subsequently called Judenberg.

1246 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Béziers 1246. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1248-1254 AD: The seventh Crusade: Led by St. Louis, or Louis IX of France.

1249 AD: Alphonse of Toulouse orders the expulsion of Jews from Poitou, France.

1248 AD: Louis IX of France went on the Seventh Crusade, but after the defeat of the crusaders, he was captured at Cairo in Egypt. A peasant movement arose in northern France to support Louis, led by “the Master of Hungary”, apparently a very old Hungarian monk, who claimed to have been instructed by the Virgin Mary to lead the shepherds of France to the Holy Land to rescue Louis. He led up to 60,000 mostly young peasants to Paris, where he met with Louis IX’s mother, the acting regent. The group split up after leaving the city and created disturbances in places such as Rouen, Tours and Orléans. In Amiens, and then in Bourges, they also began to attack Jews. The authorities rounded up and excommunicated the crusaders. However a group led by the Master resisted the authorities outside Bourges, resulting in the Master being killed in the ensuing skirmish.

1253 AD: The Domus Conversorum, a building and institution in London for Jews who had converted to Christianity, is established by King Henry III of England.

• The Statute of Jewry was a statute issued by Henry III of England in 1253 AD. In response to antisemitic feelings in medieval England, it attempted to segregate the Jews, including imposing the wearing of a Jewish badge. It is uncertain to what extent this legislation was put into effect.
  
  • ^{The statute had thirteen articles. They contained the following provisions:}
  • ^{Article One provided that any Jew could only remain in England only if he or she would “serve Us in some way”.}
  • ^{Article Two deemed that synagogues could not be constructed, and only those that existed in the time of King John could stand.}
  • ^{Article Three demanded that Jews lower their voices in synagogues, so that Christians could not hear them.}
  • ^{Article Four placed a duty on Jews to pay to their local Christian church.}
  • ^{Article Five banned Christian (wet) nurses and servants working for Jews, and banned all Christians from eating with Jews or “abiding” with them in their houses.}
  • ^{Article Six banned Jews from buying and eating meat in Lent.}
  • ^{Article Seven banned Jews from disparaging or publicly disputing the Christian faith.}
  • ^{Article Eight banned “secret familiarity” between Jewish men and Christian women, and Christian men and Jewish women.}
  • ^{Article Nine commanded that “every Jew wear his badge conspicuously on his breast”.}
  • ^{Article Ten banned Jews from churches, except for ‘transit’.}
  • ^{Article Eleven barred Jews from hindering another’s conversion.}
  • ^{Article Twelve required Jews to obtain a license to live in any town other than those with established Jewish communities.}
  • ^{Article Thirteen set out that the “justices of the Jews” were to enforce the articles, and that they were to be “rigorously observed on pain of forfeiture of the chattels of the said Jews”.}

1254 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Albi 1254. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1254 AD: King Louis IX of France expels all Jews from France.

1255 AD: The death of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln prompts persecution of Jews in England on accusations of blood libel.

1260 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Arles 1260. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1265, the Siete Partidas, a legal code enacted in Castile by Alfonso X but not implemented until many years later, included a requirement for Jews to wear distinguishing marks.

1267 AD: The settlement of Nachmanides in the Old City of Jerusalem in 1267 which since then a continuous Jewish presence existed in Jerusalem until modern day occupation of Jordan in 1948. Shortly after Naachmanides’ arrival in Jerusalem he addressed a letter to his son Nahman, in which he described the desolation of the Holy City, where there were at that time only two Jewish inhabitants —two brothers, dyers by trade.

1267 AD: In German-speaking Europe, a requirement for a badge was less common than the Judenhut or Pileum cornutum (a cone-shaped head dress, common in medieval illustrations of Jews). In 1267, in a special session, the Vienna city council required Jews to wear a Judenhut; the badge does not seem to have been worn in Austria.

1269 AD: June 19 – King Louis IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver.

1270 AD: The 8th Crusade led by Louis IX.

1271-1272 AD: The 9th Crusade led by Prince Edward (later Edward I of England)

In 1274, Edward I of England enacted the Statute of Jewry, which also included a requirement:

Each Jew, after he is seven years old, shall wear a distinguishing mark on his outer garment, that is to say, in the form of two Tables joined, of yellow felt of the length of six inches and of the breadth of three inches.

1278 AD: An edict by Pope Nicholas III requires all Jews to attend conversion sermons.

1278 AD: London cracks down on coin-clippers but with unequal punishment: 278 Jews are hanged while Christians convicted of the same crime are merely fined.

1282 AD: The Archbishop of Canterbury orders all synagogues of London to close, and forbids Jewish doctors from practicing on non-Jews.

1283 AD: King Philip III of France causes a mass migration of Jews when he outlaws their residence in the small villages and rural localities of France.

1284 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Nîmes 1284 AD. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1286 AD: King Rudolph I of Germany declares all Jews to be “serfs of the Treasury”, thus negating all their political freedoms.

1287 AD: King Edward I of England arrests the heads of Jewish households, and demands their communities pay hefty ransoms for their release.

1289 AD: Jews are expelled from Gascony and Anjou in France.

1290 AD: Jews are expelled from England. July 18 – King Edward I of England orders all Jews (then numbering around 16,000) to leave England by November 1 (All Saints Day); on the Hebrew calendar this is Tisha B’Av (the 9th of Av), a day that commemorates many calamities.

• The Statute of Jewry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Jewry
• The final attack on the Jews in England came in the form of the Edict of Expulsion in 1290, whereby Edward formally expelled all Jews from England. This not only generated revenues through royal appropriation of Jewish loans and property, but it also gave Edward the political capital to negotiate a substantial lay subsidy in the 1290 Parliament. The expulsion, which was not reversed until 1656, followed a precedent set by other European territorial princes.

1294 AD: There is a reference to a dispensation from the badge in Erfurt on 16 October 1294, the earliest reference to the badge in Germany.

1298 AD: April 20– beginning of the Rintfleisch-Pogrom, the Jews of Röttingen were burned en masse, other Jewish communities destroyed later in the year. One “Lord Rintfleisch”, whom the sources refer to either as an impoverished knight or a butcher (the name “Rintfleisch” means “beef” in German), believed to have received a mandate from heaven to avenge the sacrilege and exterminate the Jews. He gathered a mob around him and burned the Jews of Röttingen on April 20. After this, he and his mob went from town to
town and killed all Jews that fell under their control, destroying the Jewish communities at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Würzburg, Nördlingen and Bamberg. In Nuremberg, the Jews sought refuge in the fortress and were assisted by the Christian citizens, but Rintfleisch overcame the defenders and butchered the Jews on 1 August. The Nürnberger Memorbuch contains the names of numerous murdered Jews, among them Mordecai ben Hillel, a pupil
of Jehiel ben Asher, with his wife and children. The communities at Regensburg and Augsburg alone escaped the mass killing, as they were protected by the cities’ magistrates.

1300 AD: By 1300 in Europe, the friars and local priests were using the Passion Plays at Easter time, which depicted Jews in contemporary dress killing Christ, to teach the general populace to hate and murder Jews. It was at this point that persecution and exile became endemic. By and large, Jews were heavily persecuted in Christian Europe after 1300. Since they were the only people allowed to lend money for interest (forbidden to Catholics by the church), some Jews became prominent money lenders. Christian rulers gradually saw the advantage of having a class of men like the Jews who could supply capital for their
use without being liable to excommunication, and the money trade of western Europe by this means fell into the hands of the Jews. However, in almost every instance where large amounts were acquired by Jews through banking transactions the property thus acquired fell either during their life or upon their death into the hands of the king. Jews thus became imperial “servi cameræ,” the property of the King, who might present them and their possessions to princes or cities.

1306 AD: Jews are expelled from France.

1315–1326 Emir Ismail Abu-I-Walid forces the Jews of Granada to wear the yellow badge.

1320 AD: A separate movement occurred in May 1320 in Normandy, when a teenage shepherd claimed to have been visited by the Holy Spirit, which instructed him to fight the Moors in Spain. At the fortress of Montclus over 300 Jews were killed and James’s son Alfonso was sent out to bring them under control with those responsible for the massacre executed. After this the crusade dispersed. In 1321, King Philip fined those communities in which Jews had been killed.

1321 Henry II of Castile forces the Jews to wear the yellow badge.

1326 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Avignon 1326. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1336 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Rodez 1336. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1337 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Avignon 1337. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1348 AD: The first massacre directly related to the plague took place in April 1348 in Toulon, Provence, where the Jewish quarter was sacked, and forty Jews were murdered in their homes.

1349 AD, massacres and persecutions spread across Europe, including the Erfurt massacre, the Basel massacre, massacres in Aragon, and Flanders. 2,000 Jews were burnt alive on 14 February 1349 in the “Valentine’s Day” Strasbourg massacre, where the plague had not yet affected the city. While the ashes smouldered, Christian residents of Strasbourg sifted through and collected the valuable possessions of Jews not burnt by the fires. Many hundreds of Jewish communities were destroyed in this period. Within the 510 Jewish communities destroyed in this period, some members killed themselves to avoid the persecutions. In the spring of 1349 the Jewish community in Frankfurt am Main was annihilated. This was followed by the destruction of Jewish communities in Mainz and Cologne. The 3,000 strong Jewish population of Mainz initially defended themselves and managed to hold off the Christian attackers. But the Christians managed to overwhelm the Jewish ghetto in the end and killed all of its Jews.

1349 AD: Representation of a massacre of the Jews in 1349 Antiquitates Flandriae (Royal Library of Belgium manuscript 1376/77) Below:

1349 AD: Frankfurt-am-Main reduces its Jews to the status of serfs and by year’s end more than half have died in massacres. Jews have lived in the city for centuries yet may not own land. Most are traders or craftsmen, and the majority of males are literate (the language of
the ghetto is Judendeutsch, a mixture of Hebrew and Frankfurt dialect written in Hebrew letters from right to left), but their status is little better than that of illiterate peasants.

1349 AD: 2,000 Jews burned at the stake in Stasbour France.

1365 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines. at Nîmes 1365. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1368 AD: The enforcement of wearing the badge is repeated by local councils, with varying degrees of fines, at Vanves 1368. The “rota” (badge) looked like a ring of white or yellow. The shape and color of the patch also varied, although the color was usually white or yellow. Married women were often required to wear two bands of blue on their veil or head-scarf.

1391 AD: June 6 – Anti-Jewish riots erupt in Seville, Spain. Many thousands of Jews are massacred and the violence spreads throughout Spain and Portugal.

There were also attempts to enforce the wearing of full-length robes, which in late 14th century Rome were supposed to be red. In Portugal a red star of David was used.

1412 AD: John II of Castile declares the Valladolid laws that restrict the social rights of Jews. Among many other restrictions the laws force Jews to wear distinctive clothes and denies them administrative positions.

1415, May 11 Bull of the Antipope Benedict XIII orders the Jews to wear a yellow and red badge, the men on their breast, the women on their forehead.

1434 Emperor Sigismund reintroduces the badge at Augsburg.

1462 AD: The Jews are expelled from Mainz, Germany.

In 1488 Obadiah ben Abraham, commentator on the Mishnah, arrived in Jerusalem and marked a new epoch for the Jewish community in The Land.

March 31, 1492 AD: The Alhambra Decree (also known as the Edict of Expulsion) (Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon) ordering the expulsion of Jews from the Kingdom of Spain and its territories by July 31 of that year. The Jews were to leave the country or suffer death. History relates that a man by the name of Don Isaac Abravanel, who had previously ransomed 480 Jewish converts of Malaga from the Catholic monarchs by a payment of 20,000 doubloons, now offered them 600,000 ducats for the revocation of the edict. It is said also that Ferdinand hesitated, but was prevented from accepting the offer because Torquemada, the grand inquisitor, dashed into the royal presence and, throwing a crucifix down before the king and queen, asked whether, like Judas, they would betray their Lord for money.

Due to the The Alhambra Decree the confiscation of Jewish wealth was used to finance Christopher Columbus’ search for a new route to India and instead discovered the “New World”, becoming the Americas. Hence the ditty quoted in schools: “In 14 hundred and 92 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”.

1528 The Council of Ten of Venice allows the newly arrived famous physician and professor Jacob Mantino ben Samuel to wear the regular black doctors’ cap instead of Jewish yellow hat for several months (subsequently made permanent), upon the recommendation of the French and English ambassadors, the papal legate, and other dignitaries numbered among his patients.

1543 AD: Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a “base, whoring people, that is, no people of God, and their boast of lineage, circumcision, and law must be accounted as filth.” Luther wrote that they are “full of the devil’s feces … which they wallow in like swine,” and the synagogue is an “incorrigible whore and an evil slut”. He argues that their synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes razed, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or
kindness, afforded no legal protection, and these “poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He also seems to advocate their murder, writing “(w)e are at fault in not slaying them.”

1552 AD: Jews in India faced no persecution from Hindus from the time they migrated to India, but they were subjugated by Christian missionaries during the Goa Inquisition from the year 1552.

1555 AD Pope Paul IV decrees, in his Cum nimis absurdum, that the Jews should wear yellow hats.

1566 AD King Sigismund II passes a law that required Lithuanian Jews to wear yellow hats and head coverings. The law was abolished twenty years later.

1601 to 1700 AD: Portuguese invaders in the South India committed massive atrocities on South Indian Jewry .

1648 AD: In the 17th century, almost no Jews lived in Western Europe. The relatively tolerant Poland had the largest Jewish population in Europe, but the calm situation for the Jews there ended when Polish and Lithuanian Jews were slaughtered in the hundreds
of thousands by the cossacks during Chmielnicki uprising (1648) and by the Swedish wars (1655)

Sivan 13 – (1648) – Chmielnicki Poland Jews Massacred.

1655 AD: Oliver Cromwell readmits Jews into England.

1684 AD: Jewish families are expelled from Bordeaus.

1710 Frederick William I abolished the mandatory Jewish yellow patch in Prussia in return for a payment of 8,000 thaler (about $75,000 worth of silver at 2007 prices) each.

1720 AD: October 08 Edict issued on order of George, King of Great Britain, France, Ireland, etc., Guardian of the Faith and Georg Ludwig, Prince of the Roman Empire, Brownschweig and Luneburg, concerning an epidemic that may be spread by itinerant Jews, therefore forbidding entry in the lands under their sovereignty.

Royal edict forbidding Jews entry because they bring disease.

In 1761 AD in Nancy, several Jews from Alsace were executed on a charge of host desecration.

1764 AD: The Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary) is an encyclopedic dictionary published by Voltaire in 1764. The most significant of Enlightenment hostility against Judaism was found in Voltaire, despite claims to the contrary by some that his
remarks were in fact anti-Biblical and not truly anti-semitism. Thirty of the 118 articles in his Dictionnaire Philosophique dealt with Jews and described them in consistently negative ways. While he often used China, Siam and Japan as examples of brilliant non-European
civilizations and harshly criticized slavery. He often said that the ancient Jews were “an ignorant and barbarous people”, but that most of the ancient peoples were as well.

Aug 17, 1787 Jews are granted permission in Budapest Hungary to pray in groups.

1789 AD: The first country to grant equal rights to the Jews was France, during the French Revolution in 1789. Even so, Jews were expected to integrate, not continue their traditions.

Starting in the 19th century (the 1800s), the notion that Jews were plotting to establish control over the world and dominate it by promoting capitalism and engaging in banking and finance first emerged. In the 20th century, other antisemitic canards alleged that Jews were responsible for the propagation of Communism and trying to dominate the news media. Those antisemitic canards which had political and economic contexts became political myths which were central to the worldview of Adolf Hitler, and they persist to the present day.

1828 AD: Massacre of Jews in Baghdad.

The last recorded accusations were brought up in Barlad, Romania, in 1836 AD and 1867 AD.

In 1839 AD: in the eastern Persian city of Meshed, a mob burst into the Jewish Quarter, burned the synagogue, and destroyed the Torah scrolls. It was only by forcible conversion that a massacre was averted.

In 1840 AD: the Jews of Damascus were falsely accused of having murdered a Christian monk and his Muslim servant and of having used their blood to bake Passover bread or Matza. A Jewish barber was tortured until he “confessed”; two other Jews who were arrested died under torture, while a third converted to Islam to save his life.

1844 AD: The Turkish Empire’s Edict of Toleration allow Jews to live in their original homeland.

Sept 3, 1852 Anti Jewish riots break out in Stockholm.

1860 AD: First Jewish settlement outside the walls of Jerusalem.

1860 AD: “antisemitism” was first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase “anti-Semitic prejudices”. Steinschneider used this phrase to characterize Ernest Renan’s ideas about how “Semitic races” were inferior to “Aryan races.”

1866 AD: M. Reisher, who lived in Jerusalem, writes in 1866: “When a Jew walked among them in the market, one would throw a stone at him in order to kill him, another would pull his beard, and a third his ear-lock, yet another spit on his face, and he became a symbol of
abuse”. http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~dhershkowitz/

1867 AD: In the late 19th century, the rise of religious and racist anti-Semitism led to a resurgence of pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, shattering promises of equality and tolerance. This stimulated Jewish immigration to Palestine from Europe. Simultaneously, a wave of Jews immigrated to Palestine from Yemen, Morocco, Iraq and Turkey. These Jews were unaware of Theodor Herzl’s political Zionism or of European pogroms. They were motivated by the centuries old dream of the “Return to Zion” and a fear of intolerance. Upon hearing that the gates of Palestine were open, they braved the hardships of travel and went to the “Land of Israel.”

The last recorded accusations were brought up in Barlad, Romania, in 1836 AD and 1867 AD.

1867 AD: A wave of Jews pour into Palestine from Russia, Eastern Europe, Yemen, Morocco, Iraq and Turkey.

In 1869 AD, 18 Jews were killed in Tunis

1870 AD: In the Papal States, which existed until 1870, Jews were required to live only in specified neighborhoods called ghettos.

1873 AD: The City of David enjoyed a Jewish renewal when the Meyuhas family established its home in the City of David.

1882 AD: New Jewish immigrants from Yemen joined the Meyuhas family and built their homes in the caves near the village of Silwan, opposite the City of David.

1884 AD: Jerusalem: Following the involvement of philanthropic Jews, a beautiful neighborhood was built for this community called the Shiloach Village. The Jews will be forced to leave due to uprisings in 1938.

In 1891 AD, the leading Muslims in Jerusalem asked the Ottoman authorities in Constantinople to prohibit the entry of Jews arriving from Russia.

1892 AD Beginning of Zionist return to Jerusalem. A railroad connects the city to the coast.

1896 AD Theodor Herzl (1860-1904) becomes the father of political Zionism by publishing Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State), which proposes a Jewish state in Palestine.

In 1897 AD, synagogues were ransacked and Jews were murdered in Tripolitania.

August 29—31, 1897 AD First Zionist Congress meets in Basel, Switzerland led by Theodor Herzl.

1905 AD Members of the Jewish Labour Bund with bodies of their comrades killed in Odessa during the Russian revolution of 1905.

Photo: Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1737373

Nov 2 1917 AD: (British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour) Balfour Declaration: The Balfour Declaration of 1917 (dated 2 November 1917) was a formal statement of policy by the British government stating that: “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” The anniversary of the Declaration, 2 November, is widely commemorated in Israel and among Jews in the Jewish diaspora as Balfour Day.

10th July, 1918 AD, the Bolshevik government in Russia passed a law that abolished all discrimination between Jews and non-Jews.

Nov 8/9, 1923 AD: The Beer Hall Putsch in Germany.

1925 AD: Mead writes to the British High Commission concerning Jerusalem’s transformation under Jewish colonists, “Jewish colonists had produced a marvelous transformation in the Palestinian landscape.” (A sign Israel is once again to become a nation …just before WWII.)

1925 AD: “Thus I believe today that I am acting according to the will of the almighty Creator: when I defend myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.” Mein Kampf. 14th ed., Munich 1932 pg 70 ~Hitler

• (“Those who hate the Lord would pretend obedience to Him. And their punishment would be Forever.” Ps 81:15)

1933 AD: Goering falsified Milch’s birth record and when met with protests about having a Jew in the Nazi high command, Goering replied, “I decide who is a Jew and who is an Aryan.”

March 12, 1933 AD: Beginning of the holocaust. First concentration camp opened at Oranienburg outside Berlin. Approximately 6 million Jews are starved, tortured, beaten, executed, and exterminated.

1936-39 AD: Arab-Jewish disturbances. Arab Uprising in Palestine. For two years the Arab residents conspired against their Jewish neighbors until the Jews were forced to abandon it.

Nov 8, 1937 AD – ‘Eternal Jew’ traveling exhibition opens in Munich. The traveling exhibition promoted stereotypes of Jews and Nazi perceptions of their danger to the world. Later, in 1939-40, Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels commissioned the notorious film of
the same name, “Der Ewige Jude,” which used footage of Jews suffering in the Warsaw Ghetto intercut with scenes of rats to show that Jews “differ from us in body, but especially in soul.” “Usury and the fencing of goods were always their privilege.”

1939 AD: The ship St. Louis, crowded with 930 Jewish refugees is turned away by Cuba, the US and other countries and returns to Europe.

Jan 1940 AD- Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher – “…The time is near when a machine will go into motion which is going to prepare a grave for the world’s criminal – Judah – from which there will be no resurrection.”

July 1940 AD – Eichmann’s Madagascar Plan presented, proposing to deport all European Jews to the island of Madagascar, off the coast of east Africa.

July 17, 1940 AD – The first anti-Jewish measures are taken in Vichy France.Aug 8, 1940 – Romania introduces anti-Jewish measures restricting education and employment, then later begins “Romanianization” of Jewish businesses.

Sept 19, 1940 AD, A man to remember, Witold Pilecki deliberately went out during a Warsaw street roundup (łapanka), and was caught by the Germans along with some 2,000 innocent civilians. After two days of torture in Wehrmacht barracks, he was sent to Auschwitz. Pileckiwas tattooed on his forearm with the number 4859. What the Germans did not know was that, in an act of extraordinary heroism, Witold Pilecki would be the only known person to have volunteered to be imprisoned at Auschwitz concentration camp, spending 945 days there, not only actively gathering evidence of genocide and supplying it to the British in London by Polish resistance movement organization Home Army but also organizing resistance structures at the camp known as ZOW, Związek Organizacji Wojskowej. ^{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp}

Oct 3, 1940 AD – Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws. Oct 22, 1940 – Deportation of 29,000 German Jews from Baden, the Saar, and Alsace-Lorraine into Vichy France. In Nov -The Krakow Ghetto is sealed containing 70,000 Jews.

Nov 15, 1940 AD – The Warsaw Ghetto, containing over 400,000 Jews, is sealed off.

Nov, 1940 AD: Witold Pilecki’s first report was smuggled to the outside world. He eventually
escaped on April 27, 1943, but his personal report of mass killings was dismissed as
exaggeration by the Allies, as were his previous ones. (He was ultimately executed in 1948 by the Stalinist secret police.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Pilecki
Pre-1939 photo of Witold Pilecki►

In Jan 1941 AD: A pogrom in Romania results in over 2,000 Jews killed.

May 14, 1941 AD – 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.

June 29/30 AD – Romanian troops conduct a pogrom against Jews in the
town of Jassy, killing 10,000.

July 31, 1941 AD – Göring instructs Heydrich to prepare for Final Solution.

Sept 3, 1941 AD: First experimental use of gas chambers at Auschwitz.The first test use of Zyklon-B gas at Auschwitz.

Dec 12, 1941 AD – The ship “Struma” leaves Romania for Palestine carrying 769 Jews but is later denied permission by British authorities to allow the passengers to disembark. In Feb. 1942, it sails back into the Black Sea where it is intercepted by a Soviet submarine
and sunk as an “enemy target.”

Dec 16, 1941 AD – During a cabinet meeting, Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, states – “Gentlemen, I must ask you to rid yourselves of all feeling of pity. We must annihilate the Jews wherever we find them and wherever it is possible in order to maintain there the structure of the Reich as a whole…”

1941 AD: the flight of several hundred Eastern European yeshivah students, fleeing the reign of Nazi terror, to the Far East. They were among several thousand desperate Jews whose lives were spared thanks to the heroism of Chiune Sugihara, the righteous Japanese
consul in Kovno who disregarded the orders of his government, and fought the Soviet insistence on the immediate closure of his consulate, so that he might issue as many visas as he physically could before the gates were fatally closed.

May 18, 1942 AD – The New York Times reports on an inside page that Nazis have machine-gunned over 100,000 Jews in the Baltic states, 100,000 in Poland and twice as many in western Russia.

May 1942 AD: Casper Ten-Boom begins to hide Jews from the Nazis.

June 30 and July 2 1942 AD – The New York Times reports via the London Daily Telegraph that over 1,000,000 Jews have already been killed by Nazis.

July 1942 AD, the SS conducts the infamous “selections,” in which incoming Jews were divided into those deemed able to work, who were sent to the right and admitted into the camp, and those who were sent to the left and immediately gassed.

Sept 26, 1942 AD – SS begins cashing in possessions and valuables of Jews from Auschwitz and Majdanek. German banknotes are sent to the Reichs Bank. Foreign currency, gold, jewels and other valuables are sent to SS Headquarters of the Economic Administration.
Watches, clocks and pens are distributed to troops at the front. Clothing is distributed to German families.

By Feb. 1943 AD, over 800 boxcars of confiscated goods will have left Auschwitz.

In Dec 1942 AD – Exterminations at Belzec cease after an estimated 600,000 Jews have been murdered. The camp is then dismantled, plowed over and planted.

April 19-30 1943 AD- The Bermuda Conference occurs as representatives from the U.S. and Britain discuss the problem of refugees from Nazi-occupied countries, but results in inaction concerning the plight of the Jews.

In Aug 1943 AD – Exterminations cease at Treblinka, after an estimated 870,000 deaths.

Nov 4, 1943 AD – Quote from Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, published by Julius Streicher – “It is actually true that the Jews have, so to speak, disappeared from Europe and that the Jewish ‘Reservoir of the East’ from which the Jewish pestilence has for centuries beset the peoples of Europe has ceased to exist. But the Führer of the German people at the beginning of the war prophesied what has now come to pass.”

Jan 25, 1944 AD – Diary entry by Hans Frank, Gauleiter of Poland, concerning the fate of 2.5 million Jews originally under his jurisdiction – “At the present time we still have in the General Government perhaps 100,000 Jews.”

Feb 28, 1944 AD—The Ten Boom family is arrested for hiding Jews.

In May 1944 AD – Himmler’s agents secretly propose to the western Allies to trade Jews for trucks, other commodities or money.

May 16, 1944 AD – Jews from Hungary arrive at Auschwitz. Eichmann arrives to personally oversee and speed up the extermination process.

By May 24, 1944 AD an estimated 100,000 have been gassed. Between May 16 and May 31, the SS report collecting 88 pounds of gold and white metal from the teeth of those gassed. By the end of June, 381,661 persons – half of the Jews in Hungary – arrive at Auschwitz.

In July 1944 AD – Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest, Hungary, and proceeds to save nearly 33,000 Jews by issuing diplomatic papers and establishing ‘safe houses.’

Aug 4, 1944 AD – Anne Frank and family arrested by Gestapo in Amsterdam, then sent to Auschwitz. Anne and her sister Margot are later sent to Bergen-Belsen where Anne dies of typhus on March 15, 1945.

Nov 8, 1944 AD – Nazis force 25,000 Jews to walk over 100 miles in rain and snow from Budapest to the Austrian border, followed by a second forced march of 50,000 persons, ending at Mauthausen.

Late 1944 AD – Oskar Schindler saves 1200 Jews by moving them from Plaszow labor camp to his hometown of Brunnlitz.

In 1945 AD – As the Allies advance, the Nazis conduct death marches of concentration camp inmates away from outlying areas.

1945 AD: “Not every victim was a Jew but every Jew was a victim.” ~Elie Wiesel

Included in the photo below is Elie Wiesel, future Nobel Peace Prize recipient, pictured in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left, next to the vertical beam (Photo credits: U.S. National Archives)

A truckload of bodies from Buchenwald concentration camp (See photo below). The Nazis were about to dispose of them by burning when the camp was captured by troops of the U.S. 3rd Army. The camp was used as a center for slave labor, where as many as 6,000 persons died each day from starvation and brutality.

The most infamous doctor at Auschwitz was Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death”. Particularly interested in research on identical twins, Mengele performed cruel experiments on them, such as inducing diseases in one twin and killing the other when the first died to perform comparative autopsies. He also took a special interest in dwarfs, and he deliberately induced gangrene in twins, dwarfs and other prisoners to “study” the effects. Mengele, at the behest of fellow Nazi physcian Kurt Heissmeyer, was responsible for picking the twenty Jewish children to be used in Heissmeyers’ pseudoscientific medical experiments at the Neuengamme concentration camp. These children, at the conclusion of the experiments, were infamously hanged from wall hooks in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school in Hamburg.

April 29, 1945 AD: US 7th Army liberates Dachau (See photo below) http://www.
historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/dachau.htm
2007-2010 AD: Mark Gould’s Interview with S.S. Dr. Bernhard Frank, 95 yrs old, highest ranking SS officer still alive. Frank served as a librarian at Wewelsberg and was central to the ideology that trained the SS. He signed the order that many leading academics claim to be
the earliest order of the Nazi’s plan to commence genocide against the Jews. It was a Himmler order July 28, 1941. Himmler’s signature did not appear. The only signature was Frank’s. “That the Jews are capable of surpassing us when it comes to making money-we all
know this of course. It was clear that they had caused jealousy at least among the less wealthy German population. And this can easily be transformed into political ammunition.”

The plight of the dispersed Jew has been thus: “In Germany, France, England and Italy, they were circumscribed in their rights by decrees and laws of the ecclesiastical as well as the civil powers, excluded from all honorable occupations, driven from place to place, compelled to subsist almost entirely by mercantile occupations and usury, overtaxed and degraded in the cities, kept in narrow quarters, and marked in their dress with signs
of contempt, plundered by lawless barons and penniless princes, an easy prey to all parties during the civil feuds, again and again robbed of their pecuniary claims, owned and sold as serfs by the emperors, butchered by mobs and revolted peasants, chased by monks, and
finally burned in thousands by the crusaders, who also burned their brethren at Jerusalem in their synagogues, or tormented them by ridicule, abusive sermons, monstrous accusations and trials, threats and experiments of conversion….They could own no land, belong to no guild of mechanics and engage in no form of art; they were shut
up almost exclusively to trading. And, finding all mankind at war with them, their national pride and arrogance were by no means softened, and the breach consequently widened between the Jews and their Gentile neighbors everywhere.”
[John McClintock – 1891 – Cyclopaedia of Biblical, theological, and ecclesiastical literature, Volume 4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_badge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhineland_massacres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Jews_during_the_Black_Death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitic_canard