Why is Eastern Europe more antisemitic than Western Europe?

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Yup, worrying so much about Jews when there aren't any Jews around is quite funny.



But that raises a question: why were Jews living in Poland more sympathetic to communists than their Polish neighbors? I guess what distinguishes them from Polish neighbors is that they were the only ones that had to flee from the Nazis into Russia. So are you saying they "learned" communism "while" in Russia? But the way you phrased it, you said they were already connected to communists even before they had to flee. So why did it happen this way?

I'm not really a historian to know it so precisely... but I believe, the Jews had good reason to fly to Russia and they may have reinforced their connection with communism there.
From what I know, not all Stalin time aparatchiks were Jews but all accused their rivals of antisemitism when the other faction attempted to remove them.

So, the ones that weren't Jewish, how were they accusing the other side of antisemitism? Was it that

a) They lied they were Jews when they weren't

OR

b) They admitted they weren't Jews but they claimed that the motive behind opposing communism as a whole is antisemitic?

I understand it was a mix of the two, depending on a person... and it wasn't opposing the communism, it was a faction fight within the communist party. Opposing their faction, as there were relatively many Jews and in the other faction there were none, was claimed antisemitic.

So are you saying there weren't any parties in Poland opposed to communists? I mean, I know that a lot of Polish "people" are opposed to it, but are you saying that any such opposition was suppressed?

And, as far as two factions of communist party, are you saying that one of the two factions was more favorable to the Jews politically? As, for example, one of them supported Israel and the other Palestine?

At the time we're talking about, yes. The first elections with partially allowed opposition were in 1989.

I think it's rather about social connections. The Jews were present in the progressive, internationalist, more intellectual wing and absent in more conservative, working class-backed wing with nationalist tendencies.

I think, despite everything has changed from back then, this part is still true.

Huh?
WTF are you two talking about?

Three million Jews lived in Poland Prior to WWII.

The Poles were at least as anti-Semitic as the Russians for centuries before WWII.

Prior to the First World War Poland was part of Czarist Russia. The Jews in Poland often were intermediators between the Polish population and its Russian oppressors. Which was part of why Jews were Hated in Poland.

There were pograms all over Czarist Russia, and pretty sure they had them in Russian ruled Poland as well.

Poland became independent again after the first world war. But after only 20 years of renewed independence Hitler and Stalin got together, and agreed to divide Poland between like a pizza, and Germany invaded Poland from the west (prompting Britain and France to declare war- officially starting World War Two), and Russia invaded from the east.

In the eastern part of Poland that became part of the USSR, Jews were sent to prison camps in Siberia. They turned out to be the lucky ones because Jews in the German part got sent to death camps like Auschwitz. It was after the war that the Jews who had been taken out of the Russian part got repatriatred to Poland (though the USSR never returned the land Stalin took from Poland, and that land is now part of the former Soviet Republic, now separate nation, of Belarus).

I doubt that any significant numbers of Jews fled from Hitler TO Poland. That wouldn't make any sense.

Most of the three million Jews in pre war Germany were either murdered, or fled after the war (to Israel or to North America), so only a few thousand remain today.

Last edited by naturalplastic on 29 Jun 2019, 2:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The Jews did not fly to Poland. I never stated this and it's probably a misunderstanding. They flew from Poland to USSR. Some of them, especially those politically connected or at least leaning towards communism.

The USSR sent people to Siberia mostly by a class key, not ethnicity. The land owners (Polish in that region) were the first to be sent or executed, for economic and class reasons. The Jews had more chance to get along with the Soviets than with the Nazis.

You were right that anti-Jewish riots did happen in late 19th century in Polish-inhabited part of the Russian empire. I checked it.

Still, I state that antisemitism now (if any) is a very different phenomenon from pre-WWI antisemitism.

In America that is true as well: 80% of Jews vote democrat and only 20% vote Republican. Now, I vote Republican -- but I am Messianic Jew (meaning I came to believe in Jesus) -- and, among Messianic Jews, most vote Republican. So I guess I am not an exception in this case. But, even before I became Messianic, I was sympathizing more with Republicans back then too, so I guess, due to my Asperger, I simply don't tend to fall into the social patterns that most people fall into.

In any case, I don't know about Poland, but within American context, I find it weird that Jews vote Democrat for three reasons:

1. Jews are rich and Republicans support rich (well I am not rich, but I am talking about statistics here)

2. Republicans support Israel more than Democrats

3. Some moral values that Republicans support (such as opposition to homosexuality) comes from Old Testament

So yeah, its quite a mystery to me as to why -- despite all those considerations -- Jews vote overwhelmingly democrat. It almost feels like there is some deeper psychological issues that Jews are having that has nothing to do with actual politics -- and the fact that they happen to be democrate "both" in US "and" in Poland tends to support this.

As far as "more liberal party accusing more conservative one of antisemitism" you won't see this in the US probably because of what I just mentioned about Republican being the ones supporting Israel. What IS weird though is that Republicans claim that they are helping the Jews while completely ignore the fact that Jews oppose them.

I guess in Poland its less weird since at least in Poland the conservatives aren't pro-Israel the way they are in the US. But still I am wondering why didn't Jews split 50/50, why did they join liberals? And the fact that it is EXACTLY what they did in the US -- despite totally different political climate and all -- seem to suggest that there "is" something about Jews that makes them do that.

Do you have any theory as to why Jews are so liberal?

Maybe it's the Christian Orthodoxy influence?

Eastern eastern Europe is mostly Eastern Orthodox. Western eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia) are mostly Roman Catholic.

Poland is historically probably the most anti-Semitic country in modern Europe (worse than Germany before Hitler), and Poland is majority Roman Catholic, and not Eastern Orthodox. Poland was ruled by czarist Russia for more than a century, and Catholicism was a rallying point of Polish nationalism against Russification. So both Russian Orthodoxy, and Judaism, were despised in Poland.

And within the German speaking world antisemitism was worse in the southern Roman Catholic part (Bavaria, and Hitler's homeland of Austria) then in the Protestant northern parts of Germany.

The real reason for the difference is probably because there were simply more Jews in eastern Europe, and that the Jews in Eastern Europe stood out more as a distinct group, and were less assimilated than were Jews in Western Europe.

^^ But I've heard even Russia, Ukraine and Romania have long history of antisemitism, which are mostly Orthodoxe
(which its definition makes no sense to me, it should be called anti-Judaism, it feels as if the Zionites deny the Semitic origins of other Semitic peoples ).
The Catholics had a bloody history with the Jews as well, I think why there's less antisemitism now in Western Europe because it's simply more secular now.

The Catholic/Orthodox church were originally one (Roman church), their split happened due to cultural and political differences (Byzantines were Greek, while Romans were....Romans). And both are more New Testament inclined schools of Christianity, they read the OT just for historicity but none of the Catholics nor the Orthodoxs live by OT principles.
Protestantism is the most OT inclined christian group, which why they're the closest to the Jews faith-wise. Islam is even more similar to Judaism than any Christian denomination, ever heard of Albania's help to the Jews? the modern hatred between them is due to political reasons.

I didn't say that there wasn't a lot of hatred of Jews in Eastern Orthodox countries. Just that Eastern Orthodoxy isn't more to blame than Catholicism.

But the west European countries vented their antisemitism back in the Renaissance and Reformation era (Spain and England expelled Jews, and they beat up on Jews all over western Europe in Luther'ss time. And in the one country that was a tolerant haven for Jews, the Dutch Netherlands, Jews began to persecute each other. The men in Spinoza's synagogue got medeaval on him and beat him with chains because of his heretical ideas. This was while western Europe was bathed in the blood of wars between Protestant Christians and Catholic Christians similarly beating the crap out of each other during the Reformation).

The above was part of why Jews fled eastward into Eastern Europe.

But in modern times the west had become secularized, and had a much smaller population of Jews then did Eastern Europe. So religious hatreds diminished since the Enlightenment in the west. But the east was less effected by the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. And the east had a bigger and more conspicuous Jewish population.

"Anti Semitism" was originally known as "Jew hatred". But a 19th century German thinker coined the term "antisemtism" because hatred of Jews can be a matter of religion, or it can be a matter of blood (or both). So that term got favored for both kinds of hatred.

The trouble is that Europe now has many Arab immigrants (the US has more than it used to have as well), and Arabs are also ethnolinguistically "Semitic". So today the term "antisemitism" can be confusing. Some Christian background White folks in the west hate both Jews and Arabs pretty much equally. So there is no problem there calling them "anti-Semitic". But what if you're a White European who hates one group (Arab, or Jew), but not the other? Or if you are yourself an Arab who not only views Israel as an adversary, but actually hates Jews as a group. Can a Semite be an "anti-Semite"?