Jewish People Dbq Analysis

When speaking on anti-Semitism the great despair.com describes the treatment perfectly when they say “the secret to success is knowing who to blame for your failures”. Throughout history, Jewish people have been the scapegoats for unexplainable social acts, like the disappearance of children, and the entire Jewish population is scapegoated, instead of the group, or person thought to cause it. However, in some documents the Jews are scapegoated for unexplained social issues, while others depict Jews blamed deliberately for political reasons. These documents illustrate how the entire Jewish population has been blamed for unexplainable social problems, as well as the scapegoats for political issues, this scapegoating has stemmed to blaming for …show more content…
In document one created by Wolgermut, depicts members of the Jewish culture in formal religious wear torturing a boy. A Christian boy, St. Simon of Trent disappeared and was never found again during the Jewish holiday, Passover. The Christians of the town believed that the Jews took, and killed St. Simon to celebrate Passover. They did this to explain how a boy could disappear, without having the proof to explain what actually happened. In the 16th Century there was a myth that the Jews were taking Christian boys and using their blood to spawn the devil. Again, the Jews are scapegoated for the disappearance of children and shown as committing evil acts (Holy War). Document 4 depicts the Jewish man, Leon Trotsky, as a devil. This piece of propaganda was created by the White Army to attack The Red Army and the Jews. The White Army opposed Trotsky and the Red army in the Russian civil war. They created this piece to condemn the Red army by showing them as the cause to the brutal Russian Civil War. They blamed the Jewish people and Trotsky of causing the civil war by showing that the Jews and the Red army sided with the Chinese. Trotsky and the Jews were not the sole cause of the Russian Civil War, but the White army used them as scapegoats to explain why it occurred. These images show how Jewish people were scapegoated for unexplainable …show more content…
Anti-Semitism changed when Jews were not only blamed for unexplainable social acts, like the disappearance of Simon of Trent, they were now scapegoated for political acts for the sole reason that they are Jewish. Scapegoating the Jews for political reasons stems from the early examples of Jews being blamed. For example, in document one the Jews are blamed for the disappearance of a Christian boy. Document two also shows the Jews being scapegoated as Satanists and killing Christians. In the 19th century, the France government accused Dreyfus as guilty, just because he is Jewish. The man who accused Dreyfus knew he was innocent, but used Dreyfus as a cover up. It was believable because of the terrible acts that Jews have been blamed for in the past. Document four shows Leon Trotsky as the cause of the Russian Civil War. The White Army needs someone to blame to rally their supporters, so they blamed the Jews as the problem. The White Army knew that the Jews were not the sole cause of the Russian Civil War, but blamed the Jews anyways. Because the Jews were blamed for horrible social acts in the past, future leaders believed that the Jews could be the scapegoats for any problem. This is where the cases of Dreyfus and Leon Trotsky are shown. Past the 17th century, Jews were deliberately blamed for political acts, because society