[MUSIC] Hello, my name is Guy Miron. I teach Jewish history and Holocaust studies at the Open University of Israel. And also serve the Head of the Center of the History of the Holocaust in Germany at the International Research Center in Jerusalem. We are now in a course of the history of the Holocaust made by Vad Yashem. And this will be the first lecture which we'll concentrate on the period before the Holocaust, the interwar period and later on the first years of the Nazi regime in Germany. Where do you have to start when you speak about the history of the Holocaust? This all depends on the perspective you want to choose. We can start dealing with the history of anti-Semitism from the mid-19th century, even before. We can start speaking about the problems of Germany or the Nazi party. But from our perspective, I think it makes sense to begin speaking about the history of the Jewish people and the situation of the Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. Who were the victims of the Holocaust? Who are those Jews who were under the Nazi regime later on subject to mass murder. Following World War I and its consequences the Jews in Europe came to live under very different consequences. These new consequences had threats and problems, but also a lot of hopes and promises to a possible future. The consequence of World War I had to do with the dismantling of three major empires in Europe, the Tsarist Empire, the Habsburg Empire, and the Ottoman Imperial. Most of European Jews lived before in these empires. And now many of them lived in nation state. We'll start to look over European Jewry from east to west, understanding the basic features of this population. I believe it's very important to understand the background of European Jewry. Not only to know who are the victims of the Nazi massacre, but also to understand the way Jews in different places understood, conceptualize, and came to terms and coped with the challenges of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. The collapse of the Tsarist Empire in Russia and the the 1917 revolutions created a situation in which the Eastern European Jewish community living under Tsarist Russia was now divided between the Soviet Union, the new nation state of Poland, and the Baltic states. The Jews living under the Soviet Union were, after a while, in a situation in which they had no possibilities for cultural and political self-determination. On the other hand, under the Soviet regime, very different from the Tsarist regime before, they had the freedom of movement, or at least relative freedom of movement. As a result of which, many Jews immigrated from what was before this of settlement eastwards to the center of the Soviet state mostly to Moscow and Leningrad. And because of this, it had major impacts on the victims of the Holocaust since the Nazis did not get to this faraway areas. Poland, I would say that the problems of the Jews in the new situation of Europe between the world wars. Living from now on not under multi-ethnic Emperor's like Tsarist Russia, but in a new nation state. Can the Jews be really Polish? Can they be really integrated in the new European nation state? Or will they have to live only on its margins? Jews in Poland and had much more civil and political rights if you compare it to the situation previously in Tsarist Russia. They could vote for the Polish Parliament to the CM they could have their own parties. They could have their own communication methods. They even had the educational system. On the other hand, they were never accept to be fully members of the Polish country, the Polish nation state, and lived in on its margins. Jews in Poland, like Jews in other nation state in Europe had to live in this tension between being accepted to the society which was at least officially organized in Democratic terms. On the other side being excluded by the fact that there were Jewish. Jews were not the only minority in Poland. But there was only minority living not in one specific territory like the Belarusians, or the Lithuanians, or Ukrainians. But spread all over, mostly in the more modernized parts of Poland. This is why they represented more competition to the Polish local population. And this is why there was more anti-Jewish movement relatively compared to the other minorities. Politically, the Jews organized in Poland sometimes in their on political movements. Even the Zionists were powerful enough to come into the Polish parliament in the early 1920s. If we get further to the 1930s, we can see that the anti-Jewish and, more generally, anti-democratic sentiment in the Polish society is becoming more and more dominant. And the discrimination against the Jews, because of the Polish national and radical national sentiment is becoming much more harsh and powerful in the last years of the 1930s. This, of course, has to do with the consequences of the changes in Germany in the international situation, in general. But speaking about the fate of the Jews in Poland, and in other countries as well, we have to take in account that the option of Jews to emigrate overseas, mostly, but not only to the United States. Which was very dominant in the last decades before World War I, is not open to the vast majority of Polish and European Jews. In general, in the 1920s and the 1930s, because of the new immigration policy of the United States and other Western countries. In other European nation state like Hungary, for example, which was converted from being part of the Habsburg Empire into small and very homogeneous nation state Jews had to face quite similar problems. Hungarians, who were quite tolerant of the Jews in the liberal policy before World War I became now in much more center for society, much more center for regime. And this is probably not a coincidence that Hungary was the first European state to have its own Numerus Clausus Law ordered in 1920 excluding Jewish students from Hungarian Universities. If we choose another example, the example of Czechoslovakia, this was an interesting example in which it seem to be for quite a long time in the interwar period that the combination between nation state, and in this context, state of various nations. The Czechs, the Slovaks, and partly also the in the East, functioned also as a comfortable environment for minorities. And the Jews had their own national minority rights until the 1930s, until the the Nazi occupation. But unfortunately, Czechoslovakia is the exception version versus the rule. Which was much more dominant in abolishing the minority rights of the Jews. But the Jews in Germany will speak soon. I will just say now very briefly that the life in 1920s and early 1930s can be measured in a contradiction between from the one hand, new opportunities open to them in the most democratic and open society environment of Germany. On the other hand, much more radical and violent anti-Semitic movement than they knew before World War I. France, maybe the last station in our European tour around the Jewish communities in the interwar period is an interesting case in which a dual community of local Jews and immigrants developed. Because of the French tolerant policy towards immigration in the 1920s, it was open to quite an extensive Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe starting already before World War I and continuing in the 1920s. So in the 1930s, we can speak about two quite equal segments of French Jewry, one of them local Jewish community of French citizens, Jews living in France already from the 19th century. Mostly recognized by the French even by major elements in a French right, conservative right, as entitled to be French citizens. And on the other side, Jews from Eastern European descent most Yiddish-speaking quite politically active, Zionist or socialists who are another Jewish community. And the tension of the 1930s and under the Nazi occupation, this has major impact on their fate. To sum up, Jews had a very dynamic and interesting history in the interwar period with a lot of turning points. We cannot speak about one Jewish fate to one Jewish situation. But a very dynamic development, which had to do a lot with the tension between democracy and radical nationalism. The different ways in which Jewish societies organized in these different areas and countries are a major impact on the policy of the anti-Jewish regimes later on during the Nazi regime. And even more on the Jewish reaction, understanding, and come to terms with the new situation under the Nazis. [MUSIC]
