Postwar Reactions
Immediately after 1945, many people framed the Holocaust mainly as this broad kind of tragedy rather than a specifically Jewish one.
What is a universal human tragedy / man’s inhumanity to man?
This U.N. convention, adopted in 1948, directly answered the horrors revealed by the Holocaust.
What is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide?
The late-Stalin show trial (1951–52) in Czechoslovakia where 10 of 13 defendants were of Jewish origin.
What is the Slánský trial?
This American movement’s postwar victories helped discredit racial thinking in general.
What is the civil rights movement?
This notorious forgery about a “Jewish world conspiracy” resurfaced in multiple languages and even TV serializations.
What are the Protocols of the Elders of Zion?
This 1946 Polish city became infamous for a postwar pogrom against returning Jews.
What is Kielce?
Alongside Genocide, this 1948 U.N. document declared protections for all people.
What is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
This 1953 alleged conspiracy of “corrupt Jewish bourgeois nationalists” nearly sparked major persecution in the USSR.
What is the Doctors’ Plot?
Many prominent white allies in that movement came from this minority.
Who are Jews?
Court defeats for Holocaust deniers like this British writer show denialism on the defensive.
Who is David Irving?
In 1947, several towns in this country saw anti-Jewish riots linked to tensions over Palestine.
What is Britain?
Both the U.S. and USSR backed recognition of this new state in 1948.
What is Israel?
Post-1967, the USSR paired anti-Zionism abroad with this kind of discriminatory policy against Jews at home.
What is persecution/discrimination of Jews who retained Jewish identity and religion?
The Catholic declaration (1965) that transformed Christian-Jewish relations, especially by rejecting the “Christ-killer” charge.
What is Nostra aetate?
In parts of Eastern Europe after 1989, political appeals mixed integral nationalism with this religious element.
What is conservative religious bigotry?
Britain’s foreign secretary who preferred Polish Jews be “reintegrated” at home rather than immigrate to Britain.
Who is Ernest Bevin?
The superpower that granted Israel de jure recognition first.
What is the Soviet Union?
in Soviet internal documents, “Jewish” appeared as this immutable category that one could not change.
What is nationality?
The postwar European project that interwove economies and identities, helping marginalize antisemitism.
What is European integration / the process leading to the European Union?
A post-civil-rights rift featured rhetoric from figures like Louis Farrakhan and tensions over issues such as affirmative action.
What is African-American antisemitism / the Black–Jewish split?
Name the U.S. policy change in 1948 that began dismantling racial segregation in the armed forces—evidence that racial thinking still persisted in 1945.
What is Truman’s order to desegregate the military? (Executive Order 9981)
The date in 1949 when Israel was admitted to the United Nations.
What is May 11, 1949?
This communist leader sacrificed Rudolf Slánský to prove loyalty to Stalin.
Who is Klement Gottwald?
West Germany’s first postwar chancellor, who coupled compensation with re-education about antisemitism.
Who is Konrad Adenauer?
in Japan, a curious “antisemitism without Jews” blends suspicion with this surprising attitude toward Jewish success.
What is admiration / emulation?