For hundreds of years Christian Europe had regarded the Jews as the ‘Christ-killers. At one time or another Jews had been driven out of almost every European country. The way they were treated in England in the thirteenth century is a typical example. Jews were subjected to heavy taxes and had property confiscated. In 1275 they were made to wear a yellow badge and 269 of them were hanged in the Tower of London in 1287 . They were finally expelled from the country in 1290. This anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) behaviour was mostly the result of jealousy of Jewish wealth and a misunderstanding of their religious practices.
During the 1920s a new, organised group in Germany began preaching hatred towards Jews. This was Hitler’s Nazi Party. The party’s private army, the Stormtroopers, beat up Jews in the streets. Julius Streicher, a Nazi, started a newspaper called Der Sturmer, which stirred up hatred towards the Jews.
Hitler was obsessed with the Jews. In his writings and speeches there was a mixture of racist hate and fear. He saw the Jews as a threat to the so-called superior ‘Aryan race’, which was white and mainly German. He said there were many inferior races, such as Slavs (many of whom lived in the USSR) and Negroes, but the lowest of them all were the Jews.