The Jewish Star

The world has just had the annual Holocaust Remembrance Day and so it is a good time to reissue this newsletter, in English. International Holocaust Remembrance Day falls on a different date than the Israel Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day selected by the UN, is the day of the liberation of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp on 27th January 1945.

Everyone who is not a Holocaust denier knows about the genocide of six million Jews as well as many other nations. Everyone remembers names like Auschwitz and everyone has heard about the Warsaw Ghetto and how Jews were pushed into a very small area where Corona would have a great time, a mask would not help and there would certainly be no place to practice social distancing. There is no need to remind everyone of Europe’s dark past in the last century.

In 1933 the Nazis rose to power and immediately issued a series of laws against the Jews and there were many. The first laws were intended to remove Jews from public office. Albert Einstein was not in Germany at the time, and decided he had nowhere to return to. One of the first events of 1933 was the burning of the books of Jewish writers, including the Bible. Jews were not allowed to be doctors, lawyers, bankers etc.

The Jews were an integral part of the German community, seeing themselves as secular Germans and their being Jewish was secondary. All of a sudden a plethora of laws come out against them, one of them being that a Jew must be identified by his name and therefore were forced to add a middle name, Sarah for a woman and Israel for a man (there was a list of names). So, Hans now becomes Hans Israel.

But now there is a problem. An executive order was issued saying that a German could not buy from a Jew, so how can one know that someone is a Jew, the yellow badge! By the way, in Germany today, there are many that accuse Israel of the Corona virus and attach a yellow badge to the image of the corona.

Continuing with our story, about two thousand years ago, a Jew named Joshua, (Jesus), began to claim that he was the Son of God, and began to persuade people to walk another path. In those days, the area of Judea was controlled by a chief rabbi and a Roman governor. The chief Rabbi, Caiaphas, claimed it was blasphemy, and transferred judgment to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilatus, for trial. Pilatus condemned Jesus to death in the cruelest Roman method, crucifixion. Of course I shortened the story, but Jesus became what is today called a martyr. However that was when Christian anti-Semitism began. To this day, Jews are accused of murdering their God (savior). No, Jesus was not a Palestinian, this name was given to the Judean area only after the Bar Kochba revolt or the Second Judean War of Rome and that was about a century after Jesus was executed.

Christianity grew and even Roman emperors converted and we all know the history, but around the year 1100, about the time of the First Crusade, due to demands from the Vatican, European kings from France, England and others, began to enact laws against Jews. The laws were quite reminiscent of Nazi laws, such as a ban on buying from Jews and a ban on mixed marriages, and so on. During the Crusades, the kings even confiscated land belonging to Jews (maybe we should ask for our land back or at least retroactive rent) and even at some point expelled them from those countries. In France, Jews were deported, allowed to return several times, until the final deportation at the end of the 13th century.

So now the question arises again, how do you identify that he is a Jew?

Very simple, an addition to the garment, in other word, a yellow badge! But it was not a badge as we know it. The Pope instructed that Jews be required to wear a unique clothing item that will identify them as Jews. Each country could choose its own form. Even a piece of material as large as that of Miss Universe band, would have been acceptable, if it had been in the color required by the king.

But what was the easiest way to identify a Jew, even from behind? A comical hat! Usually the hat was in the shape of a cone but also had a spike of some kind. This method was known for use in Central Europe, in countries such as Denmark, Czechoslovakia, Austria, and others. In a city called Judenburg, the Jewish hat is in the city emblem! According to the municipality, the name of the city has nothing to do with the Jews, yeah right.