ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of the Great Depression on Jews in Hungary, with a specific focus on university students and lawyers—two fields in which the presence of Jews was highly contested. Instead of focusing on the Jewish economic elite, we discuss two groups that were targets of the most vehement attacks of the antisemitic middle class. Our aim is to present the direct and indirect consequences of the Great Depression on Jews, as well as its impact on the rise of political antisemitism. We also explore how far it can be understood as a catalyst of radicalization, as the Hungarian economy’s deterioration led to the swift rise of the radical right-wing into power.
Tag: Antisemitism
ABSTRACT The chapter explores the Jewish experience of the economic crisis in Latvia. Due to local socio-economic structures, Latvian Jews were overtly represented within economic sectors hit most severely by the crisis and therefore suffered differently than non-Jewish Latvians. Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods and sources in Latvian, Russian, German and Yiddish, the chapter presents examples for Jewish reactions to the crisis on a collective and individual level: the Jewish credit cooperative, the Jewish soup kitchen, and the activities of Mordehai Dubin, leader Latvia’s Agudas Israel party. These show that although Jews in Latvia were a heterogeneous group, they often confronted the crisis with united efforts which were rooted in civil society and sometimes organized beyond ethnic borders. Nevertheless, Latvian nationalists and fascists used the crisis to stir hatred against Jews. Particularly the politics of Kārlis Ulmanis’ authoritarian regime after 1934 hit the Jews often more severely than had the economic crisis.
ABSTRACT
This paper focuses on descriptions of Jews and Muslims in writings by officials and journalists in nineteenth century colonial Algeria and their recycling by antisemites at the end of that century. These writers assumed that Muslim Arabs shared their beliefs and would acquiesce to French rule and serve its military imperial expansion.