The Rise of Antisemitism in Europe: Could De Facto Again Become De Jure?

I.   INTRODUCTION

A.  Motivation for the Study

B.  Methodology

II.   THE GROWTH OF ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE

A.  Antisemitic Legislation and Initiatives

B.  A Brief History of Antisemitic Laws

1.  Early Middle Ages to the French Revolution

2.  Congress of Vienna to World War I

3.  The Post-World War I Era of Antisemitic Laws

4.  Antisemitic Laws Leading up to World War II

5.  Antisemitic Laws Enacted Following the Outbreak of World War II

6.  Antisemitic Policies After World War II – USSR/Russia

III.  MONITORING ANTISEMITISM IN THE 2000s

IV.   THE RESURGENCE OF ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE

A.  The Features of Antisemitic Legislation

B.  Legislation Aimed at the Historical Record

1.  Hungary – Preamble of the 2011 Constitution

2.  Latvia – “Goodwill Compensation” – Denial of Holocaust Complicity

3.  Lithuania – Consumer Protection Law

4.  Lithuania – Historical Memory Law

5.  Poland – Law on the Institute of National Remembrance

6.  Russia – Laws Prohibiting the Distortion of History

7.  Poland – Legislation Limiting the Recovery of Stolen Property

C.  Restrictions on Religious Rights

1.  Belgium – Flanders and Wallonia Regions – Ban on Religious Slaughter; Poland – Bill to ban the Export of Kosher Meat

2.  Denmark – Proposed Ban on Male Circumcision

3.  Germany – Judicial Decision Finding Circumcision Illegal

4.  Iceland – Proposed Ban on Male Circumcision

D.  Antisemitic Statements by a Head of State

V.    EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTS RESPOND

VI.   ANALYSIS

VII.  CONCLUSION

APPENDIX.. 34

THE RISE IN ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE
COULD DE FACTO AGAIN BECOME DE JURE?

The European Affairs Committee (“the Committee”) of the New York City Bar Association has undertaken a study of laws, proposed legislation and regulations, legal proceedings and political events in Europe that suggest a revival of attempts at state-sponsored or state-sanctioned antisemitism in Europe. The Chair designated a subcommittee to conduct the study.

I.   INTRODUCTION

During a time when antisemitic acts and crimes throughout Europe are increasing, laws and regulations that can be considered antisemitic in their intent or impact have been proposed in European parliaments and agencies, and in some cases enacted and promulgated. Proponents of the laws and regulations offer benign explanations for these new laws and rules. However, it is worth remembering that, historically, the persecution of Jews in Europe was accompanied by antisemitic laws frequently couched in other motives.

State policies of official antisemitism in Europe dating back centuries – and especially leading up to World War II and the Holocaust – were not discrete or isolated chapters of history. To the contrary, official antisemitism existed continuously from the formation of European country borders to the end of World War II. The ensuing 75 years have not erased this history of persecution, and the recent rise in legislative and regulatory proposals with apparent or deliberate antisemitic purpose or effect are of grave concern, both for Europe’s Jewish population and for other religious, racial, ethnic, and national groups.

A.    Motivation for the Study

The Committee was prompted to conduct the study based on the resurgence of violent and other widespread and large-scale acts of antisemitism worldwide, and specifically in Europe, which is the focus of the Committee’s work. In particular, the Committee’s attention was drawn to the initiation and in some cases enactment of legislation and regulations which could be considered antisemitic, based on either their intent or their disparate impact on Jews, and with regard to certain proposed laws, Muslims.

According to the 2019 Kantor Center Annual Report on Antisemitism Worldwide, antisemitic incidents of all kinds, including violence, increased 18% worldwide compared to 2018, continuing a recent and steady rise of antisemitism.[1]

In 2021, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) published a report on the rise of antisemitism over the period 2009-2020, with country-by-country statistics.[2] Individual governments and organizations in European countries that monitor and record incidents of antisemitic acts also reported increases. Austria[3], the Czech Republic[4], Denmark[5], France[6], Germany[7], Italy[8], Luxembourg[9], the Netherlands[10] and the United Kingdom are several countries that published reports for the years 2019-2022.[11] (Antisemitic acts have increased in the United States as well.)[12]

The acts of antisemitism, which have been widely reported and documented, include murders in synagogues, public places, and homes, and desecration and other acts of destruction at Jewish community centers, schools, cemeteries, and businesses.

In April 2021, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, a federal government agency,[13] published a report[14] on antisemitism in eleven European countries.[15] The findings of the report were based on surveys and interviews of Jewish citizens and the reports of organizations that monitor antisemitic acts. Almost every country reported that their Jewish citizens expressed high levels of concern about their safety, based on having been subjected to harassment and other misconduct, and their perception of how Jews are treated in their own countries.

This report focuses on European national legislation and regulations — both proposed and enacted.  The Committee notes, however, that this report has undertaken its review of resurgent antisemitic legislative actions in the context of accompanying rising antisemitic violence across Europe.

B.     Methodology

A subcommittee of the European Affairs Committee undertook the research for this report. The subcommittee initially contacted an array of organizations in Europe, the United States, and Israel to identify source material and legislation and regulations that drew the most attention. The report also relied, in part, on news media, books, studies, periodicals, and reports on the topic.

II.   THE GROWTH OF ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE

Jews have lived on the European continent for two thousand years, their population reaching 9.4 million in 1933.[16] During their entire existence in Europe, while not alone among religious, national and ethnic groups, they have been the subject of discrimination and persecution. Their treatment was at various times and degrees abetted by official policies, regulations and laws of the governments under which they lived. The recent emergence in some European countries of new legal initiatives that are antisemitic in intent or effect, occurring against a spike in anti-Jewish violence, raises heightened concerns that a new era of official antisemitism is on the rise.

A.    Antisemitic Legislation and Initiatives

According to U.S. and international news reports and analyses by government agencies, academic institutions, and civil society groups, antisemitism in Europe has drastically increased in the last two decades.[17] Several reasons have been offered, including:

• the reemergence of nationalistic political parties and organizations in Europe, some with explicit antisemitic platforms, which historically have targeted Jews and often assert the rights of majority ethnic and religious groups to the disadvantage of minorities;[18] and
• the equation of Judaism with Zionism,[19] and the equation of Judaism with support of the policies of the government of Israel, particularly by certain public officeholders, organizations and other opponents of Israel.[20]

As discussed further below, such factors have contributed to a rise in proposed legislation and other initiatives across Europe that can be understood as having antisemitic purposes or effects.

To be certain, there have been encouraging developments. More common than the recent wave of antisemitic legislation has been the nearly uniform enactment of laws throughout Europe after World War II to renounce and combat antisemitism. Twenty European countries and the European Union have laws that can be classified variously as “hate crimes” committed against a group, or speech or acts that promote such conduct.[21] Seventeen of the twenty countries make speech and conduct denying the Holocaust unlawful.

Examples of crimes cited in this report include physical assaults motivated by bias against a person for their actual or perceived association with a certain race, religion, or other such classification, and acts inciting hatred through speech that denies or minimizes the Holocaust or other acts committed by the “German National Socialist” regime or Nazi Party (or in the former Soviet bloc, crimes against humanity by the Nazis or the Communist governments).[22]

Some laws specifically cite the Holocaust and punish its denial. Other laws address the desecration of graves and religious sites, membership in extremist and prohibited organizations, incitement to hatred, discrimination and violence, elevate the level of an offense associated with a hate crime, and other measures.[23]

The penalties for violations of the laws vary widely from country to country, and there have been several prosecutions over the years.

B.     A Brief History of Antisemitic Laws

Antisemitic laws were not exclusively a facet of Nazism accompanying the German occupation of European countries during the World War II era. Antisemitic laws had been enacted in Europe for a millennium before the Nazis came to power. They were varyingly imposed, modified, annulled, reintroduced, broadened and narrowed over hundreds of years up to and during the Nazi invasions. More broadly, policies, laws and persecutions targeting Jewish populations date back to well before the Common Era (“BCE”, also referenced as “BC”).[24]

Antisemitism per se had several origins. Jews were denounced for their refusal to accept Christianity[25] and were deemed responsible for Christ’s crucifixion.[26] Their outcast status later led to accusations of responsibility for the Black Death,[27] ritual murders of Christians[28] and other sacrilegious acts, as well as predatory moneylending and other charges. In Europe, antisemitic laws are well documented, dating at least to the 13th century.

Over the following 600 years, laws and decrees imposed restrictions on where Jews could live; denied them citizenship and other civil rights; barred them from public office; prohibited or restricted their ownership of real property; excluded them from, or imposed quotas on their membership in certain trades and trade practices; taxed them solely for being Jewish[29]; and compelled them to wear clothing and badges identifying them as Jews.

Antisemitic laws in Europe were reliable harbingers of, or were accompanied by, mass murder, mob violence, official pogroms, forced conversions, ghettoization, relocations, expulsion and finally, under the Third Reich and its collaborators, extermination.

1.      Early Middle Ages to the French Revolution 

The impermanence of the boundaries of European countries that extended over centuries both hindered and, at times, aided Jews. “Countries” and governments existed within empires, nation-states, duchies and principalities in Europe. A law could impact Jews whether resulting from a parliamentary-type vote or by the decree of a monarch, a ruling prince or a religious official.

Over centuries, Jews were subjected to alternating cycles of persecution and protection, which varied from country to country, ruler to ruler, religious order to religious order, and pope to pope. The Franciscans led pogroms[30] against the Jews in the 13th century. King James I of Aragon issued a decree in 1242 compelling Jews to listen to Dominican and Franciscan sermons.[31] Pope Gregory IX ordered the seizure of books of the Talmud, the Jewish books of law and tradition. However, Pope Clement VI issued a papal bull denying Jewish responsibility for the Black Death, as did Emperor Charles IV and King Peter IV of Aragon.[32] Although the Reformation amounted to a repudiation of the Roman church, “reform” did not carry with it a refutation of antisemitism, as reflected in the hatred of Jews that Martin Luther expressed.[33]

From the 8th to the 11th centuries, Jews enjoyed some measure of freedom and tolerance in Spain during the period of Muslim rule.[34] Their conditions later deteriorated steadily under Christian rule, devolving into two separate periods of Inquisition. First, in 1451, Jews were barred from public office in Toledo, Spain (over the objection of Pope Nicholas V).[35]  Spanish rulers forbade the practice of Judaism, and tried and executed Jews and “conversos,” Jews who converted to Christianity. Ultimately, the Jews of Spain, numbering 200,000, were expelled from the country in 1492.[36]

In England, during the reign of William the Conqueror, Jews lived under the monarchy’s direct rule, although not as citizens. Jews were afforded certain civil rights and on occasion the monarchy and the business community borrowed money from Jews to support wars and commerce. But the loans Jews made were taxed by the monarchy, and they were subjected to other taxes solely because of their status as Jews.[37]

Magna Carta explicitly addressed debts owed to Jews, providing, among other restrictions, that if a debt owed to a Jew was acquired by the king, only principal need be repaid without interest.[38]

Imposing burdensome taxation became increasingly common under successive monarchs. Following trials and executions for claims of ritual murder, King Edward I imposed confiscatory taxes on Jews and restrictions on land ownership and trade. Ultimately, he expelled the Jews from England by decree in 1290.[39]

The Jews in France were treated similarly. They were taxed and treated as serfs of the king. Jews were expelled and readmitted to the country several times in the Middle Ages, depending on the needs or whims of the monarch, the state of the economy, and the leadership of the church.[40]

At times antisemitic laws arose as a result of boundary disputes and irredentism.[41] At other times, as a result of their mere presence, Jews could be thrust into political battle like pawns on a chessboard, supported or sacrificed in order to advance a monarch’s power. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V fought the Reformation in part by issuing what could be deemed a Bill of Rights for Jews in 1544.[42] But in 1553, all was reversed. In 1555 Pope Paul IV issued the bull Cum Nimis Absurdum, forbidding Jews in Christendom to own real estate, raising their taxes, requiring them to wear identifying clothing and confining them to segregated ghettoes.[43] In 1569, Pope Pius V expelled the Jews from most of the regions of the Papal States.[44] They were not permitted to return until 1586 under Pope Sixtus V, but were expelled again in 1593 by Pope Clement VIII.[45] From 1556 to1602, Jews were at different times forced into ghettoes, or expelled from, Bologna, Mantua, Padua, Rome, Tuscany, and Verona.[46]

After a period of relative tolerance dating to the 13th century, from the 14th through the 17th centuries, Jews in Bohemia and Moravia (now part of the Czech Republic) were expelled from royal towns. As with other European domains, the bans were variously repealed, reinstated, modified and at times not enforced.[47] In the greater Habsburg empire, a reign of oppression under Empress Maria Theresa was followed by a rule of enlightenment. Her son and successor Joseph II issued Edicts of Toleration for Jews, liberalizing laws on residency, taxation, dress and commerce.[48]

The history of Jewish presence in Freiburg Im Breisgau, Germany is particularly representative of the treatment of Jews in Europe. During the period from 1230 to the early 1600s, Jews were imprisoned; released and granted civil rights; massacred during the Black Death; granted resettlement; ordered to wear identifying clothing; expelled, readmitted, re-expelled, prohibited from doing business in the city and later readmitted if accompanied by a constable.[49]

2.      Congress of Vienna to World War I

The period of 1789-1918 in Europe has been characterized as a period of “emancipation” for Jews, dating from the French Revolution, when they achieved equal rights of citizenship in France, owing mainly to the Napoleonic conquests. Over time Jews were accorded, but also denied, civil rights in different regions and countries by European governments, monarchs, rulers and officials.[50] The Congress of Vienna in 1815 impliedly accorded civil rights to Jews, although the provision was highly conditional and, at best, irregularly enforced.[51] And in Norway, the Constitution of 1814 prohibited Jews (as well as Jesuits and monastic orders) from entering the country.[52]

As late as 1814, the Jews of Modena were forced by ducal decree to live in a ghetto, although many of the restrictions on travel and business were relaxed.[53] Through most of the 19th century, regions in Italy, including Bologna and Rome, were under the jurisdiction of the Papal States, which were ruled by the pope under the protection of France. Under papal rule, a Jewish child baptized in secret could be removed from the child’s home, placed in the custody of the church and raised as a Catholic. Such kidnappings in fact occurred.[54]

Following the wave of liberalism in Europe in 1848, Jews obtained rights of citizenship[55] and other civil rights in several Prussian states. Similarly, in Hungary, and in Italy in 1870 under unification, Jews attained most of the legal rights of citizenship.[56] Equality in England, at least under the law, finally came about in 1858, with the repeal of mandatory Christian oaths for parliamentary service.[57]

Antisemitism in the second half of the 19th century took the form of violence and pogroms inflicted on Jews, resulting in thousands of deaths.[58] Numerous political organizations and political parties were formed and campaigned against Jewish emancipation and advocated the revocation of emancipatory laws,[59] such as in the espousals of the German Christian Social Workers Party.[60]

In Germany, the beginnings of “Aryanism” stirred in the latter part of the 19th century, and evolved to become a central theme of the Nazi Party.  However, Napoleon granted citizenship to the Jews of France, and Jews obtained civil rights in the lands he occupied, including those in Germanic Europe. Following Napoleon’s defeat, however, their rights mostly were rescinded in German lands.[61]

In Russia, the establishment of the “Pale of Settlement” in laws enacted in 1804 and 1835, and later in the “May Laws” of 1882, among other discriminatory measures,[62] designated the specific provinces where Jews were permitted to live. However, the laws still prohibited Jews from residing in major cities within those provinces, restricted the rights of Jews to freely settle and own land, and banned them from designated regions in the empire.

Following the assassination of Russian Czar Alexander II in 1882, and continuing through the first two decades of the 20th century, Russian Jews were rendered victims of state-sponsored pogroms in the Russian empire, which included the areas of what are now Ukraine and Belarus.[63]

3.      The Post-World War I Era of Antisemitic Laws

Throughout the history of antisemitism, violence against Jews frequently followed, or was accompanied or influenced by, government-sanctioned policy and/or legislation. These policies and laws variously revoked the citizenship of Jews, expelled them from their countries, assessed taxes on Jews as a group, applied quotas and prohibitions to school enrollments and professional occupations in which they were high in number, and otherwise restricted property ownership, worship, and freedom of movement. The defeat of Germany, Austria-Hungary and their allies in World War I, the eruption of internal civil conflicts and territorial wars, and the punishing impoverishment of Europe that followed, contributed to a revival of antisemitic attitudes, policies and laws, as well as pogroms and mass killings, by civilians, police and military and reverting to centuries-old accusations blaming the Jews for privation and loss, as well as accusations that the Jews were aiding or serving in the leadership of domestic political or foreign enemies.[64]

Key to the alarm today over any proposed law that might affect Jews or their religion and customs is that virulent antisemitism was thriving well before the advent of Naziism. When the Nazis occupied European countries, beginning with the Austrian Anschluss in 1938, they did not generally upend a culture of tolerance, or the protection of Jews under the law. To the contrary, the Nazis provided the force and the authority that finally empowered antisemitic leaders, political parties and organizations that, since the end of World War I, in varying degrees, had been harassing their Jewish citizens and stripping Jews of their civil rights through practice, policy and law.[65]

In some countries, antisemitic laws were enacted soon after the 1918 armistice. The laws came about in part as a result of the formation of newly independent countries that had been detached or emerged from the Ottoman Empire, the former Czarist Russia, and the defeated German and Austrian states. The rise of dominant national groups in these countries stoked animus directed particularly against Jews as well as other minority peoples.

Later, after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, nationalist and antisemitic organizations and political parties were strengthened and emboldened. Some sought to adopt the German concept of “volk,”[66] the belief in national superiority and antagonism against non-nationals, especially Jews, by essentially copying the German Nuremberg Laws. The number of discriminatory laws escalated as World War II approached. France, Poland and Slovakia were examples of countries enacting such laws. The laws can be attributed varyingly to appeasement, fear of invasion by the Nazis and the growth in strength and influence of right-wing parties. After the time the war began, however, antisemitic laws were not restricted to the countries that Germany invaded and occupied at the outset. Some, like Hungary and Romania, enacted antisemitic laws as German allies. (See Section II(B)(5) below, “Antisemitic Laws Enacted Following the Outbreak of World War II”.)

4.      Antisemitic Laws Leading up to World War II 

After World War I, laws that penalized Jews were enacted in several European countries and varied in their severity and impact.[67]

In Romania, Jews endured some of the worst violence and legal discrimination in post-war Europe. In the 1920s, the government “denationalized” Jewish citizens in provinces that were made part of Romania after World War I.[68] In 1934, Romania enacted a law requiring that “economic, industrial, commercial and civil enterprises of all types” must be comprised of 80% “Romanian” employees, reducing the numbers of Jews.[69]

These actions were followed in the mid-1930s by, among others, mass antisemitic public demonstrations and, from 1937 to 1940, further laws disbarring Jewish lawyers, closing Jewish newspapers, and dismissing Jews from government service..[70] In 1940, as Romania solidified its alliance with the Nazis, the government imposed many antisemitic sanctions, including nationalizing Jewish-owned properties and businesses and expelling Jews from teaching positions and Jewish students from public schools[71]

In the 1920s in Poland, the government nationalized industries in which Jews were prominent, fired Jewish employees, limited employment of Jews in business, and barred Jews from the civil service and eligibility for government contracts.[72] In 1938, the Polish government revoked the citizenship of Jews who had lived outside Poland for more than five years.[73]

In 1920, Hungary enacted the Numerus Clausus law, establishing proportional race quotas for the numbers of students allowed to attend universities and faculty allowed to teach, effectively reducing Jewish matriculation and faculty.[74] In 1938, quotas went into effect restricting Jewish entry into certain businesses and professions. In 1939, further quotas were enacted, and naturalized Jewish Hungarians were stripped of their citizenship.[75]

In Lithuania in 1934, the government banned Jews from selected trades and businesses and from participation in public contracts.[76]

In Bulgaria, in 1940 the government introduced a law, enacted in 1941, removing all rights Jews held as citizens – eliminating the right to vote and own property, restricting employment and change of residence, and requiring the registration of assets.[77]

In France, long before the 1940 occupation by the Nazis, anti-immigration and anti-refugee hostility led to laws discriminating against Jews and other immigrants, particularly in the schools and professions.[78] For example, the Laval law of 1935 restricted entry in the needle and garment trades, which affected thousands of Jews.[79]

In Italy, beginning in July 1938, the Mussolini regime initiated an antisemitic campaign against its Jewish population. The “Manifesto della razza” (manifesto of the race) declared that Italians were an Aryan race of which Jews were not members.

Among the other provisions that followed the publication of the Manfesto della razza, Italian Jews were expelled from positions with the state and local administrations, were banned from the army, could not own or manage companies that employed more than one hundred people, and were allowed to marry other Jews only. Jewish professionals could practice only for their fellow ethnics.[80]

In September, the government revoked the citizenship of foreign-born Jews, fired Jewish schoolteachers and barred Jewish children from public schools.[81]

In Slovakia, which had declared its independence from the Czechoslovakian state, the government enacted antisemitic laws beginning in 1939. Over the next two years, it seized land from Jewish owners, required dismissal of Jewish employees, and expropriated Jewish-owned businesses, among other measures.[82]

Of course, the most systematic use of law to discriminate against and persecute Jews occurred when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.[83] The infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935 stripped Jews of German citizenship, but were both preceded and succeeded by other laws isolating and punishing Germany’s Jewish population.[84]

From 1933 until the war’s end in 1945, more than 900 local and national laws and regulations were enacted and promulgated in Germany that discriminated against or penalized its Jewish citizens.[85] More than 150 such laws and regulations were recorded in 1933 alone, Following Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, the breadth of many of these laws and regulations were expanded to include the countries Germany occupied or with which it was allied. In the years culminating in the “Final Solution,” Jews were disqualified from civil service, excluded from the professions, expelled from public schools and universities, required to register their assets, forced to divest of private enterprises, and surrender their passports for re-identification. They were barred from attendance at public venues, and were required to identify themselves with designated Jewish names, among other restrictions and prohibitions in hundreds of laws and regulations.[86]

5.      Antisemitic Laws Enacted Following the Outbreak of World War II

The report distinguishes the period during which antisemitic laws were enacted in Europe following the end of World War I, from the period following the formal outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939. Antisemitic laws and regulations in European countries continued to be enacted and promulgated after the war began, but the laws that were enacted before were not the product of invading or occupying foreign powers.  Rather, pre-World War II antisemitic laws were initiated, enacted and enforced by the governments in power of each country. By contrast, antisemitic laws enacted after the start of the war could be attributed to several factors – invasion, occupation or annexation by Germany or a German ally, such as in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Poland, or the rise to power of governments with ties to Germany, such as in Bulgaria, Norway, Romania, Slovakia and Yugoslavia.

The laws that followed the outbreak of war were similar to those imposed before September 1939: Bulgaria – Jews lost the right to vote or own property and were required to register assets; Estonia – confiscation of Jewish-owned properties; Jews were required to wear yellow badges; France – Jews were dismissed from civil service and the military; Greece, Latvia, Lithuania – Jews were uprooted and moved and then confined to ghettoes; Luxembourg – adoption of the German Nuremberg Race Laws, which defined Jews as a separate race, deprived them of citizenship and prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jews; Jews were subjected to forced labor, required to wear the yellow star; Netherlands – Jews were banned from civil service and required to register assets; Norway – Jewish properties were confiscated; Poland – Jewish bank accounts were blocked; Jews were required to wear armbands with the Star of David; Jewish properties were confiscated; Jews were confined to ghettoes; Romania – Jewish-owned businesses and properties were nationalized; Jews were banned from teaching at or attending public schools and universities; Jews were required to perform compulsory labor; Slovakia – Jews were dismissed from civil service and the army; Jewish businesses were “Aryanized.”

The promulgation of the wartime antisemitic laws were precursors first to deportation and then horrendous and massive acts of genocide. In countries such as Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, the killings of Jews by their countrymen and by the Germans began soon after they were invaded.[87]

6.      Antisemitic Policies After World War II – USSR/Russia

Although Word War II effectively ended the practice in European countries of specifically denominating Jews in discriminatory laws and regulations, official antisemitism continued in the USSR.

Beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, Jews in large number requested exit visas to emigrate to Israel and the west, but were denied permission. In many cases, their applications to leave or their activism in seeking emigration rights resulted in their being arrested, committed to mental hospitals, exiled internally, and fired from or demoted in their jobs. While non-Jews in Russia also were refused emigration, Russia’s Jews applied in such large numbers that as a group they became known as “Refuseniks.” The USSR began to relent in its policy in the 1970s, and under Mikhail Gorbachev, restrictions were all but rescinded.[88]

In addition, the USSR continued the Czarist and later Stalinist policy of classifying internal passports by nationality. Russian Jews were considered to be a separate nationality, and their identity as Jews was imprinted in their passports. This enabled widespread and, in effect, official discrimination against Russian Jews in housing, employment, education and travel. The policy ended under Russian president Boris Yeltsin. The national identity policy also was applied to other national and ethnic groups that similarly experienced discrimination.[89]

III.   MONITORING ANTISEMITISM IN THE 2000s

Many international and national organizations monitor acts of, and political trends in, antisemitism.  The most active and vigilant is The European Jewish Congress (EJC),[90] which was established in 1986 and is based in Brussels. The EJC is affiliated with the Jewish World Congress and maintains a webpage dedicated to its work monitoring antisemitism.[91]

The EJC publishes an annual report on antisemitism as well as reports of other organizations that combat antisemitism, such as the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights,[92] the Kantor Center of Tel Aviv University, the Community Security Trust (CST) of the United Kingdom, and the Anti-Defamation League in the United States. In addition, the EJC website reports and analyzes noteworthy antisemitic incidents in a biweekly newsletter on a country-by-country basis.

The European Parliament has a standing committee known as The Working Group on Antisemitism.[93] It has adopted a Resolution to combat antisemitism, as defined in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,[94] and published a declaration defining antisemitism in each of the 24 official languages of the EU.[95]

Individual European countries also have made efforts to combat antisemitism either through funding private organizations, such as the CST in the UK, or through direct campaigns. France has created the “National Plan Against Racism and Anti-Semitism” through the DILRAH, the Delegation Interministerielle A La Lutte Contre Le Racisme, L’Antisemtisme, Et La Haine Anti-LGBT.[96] France requires public schools to educate students about the Holocaust.[97] The Romanian parliament enacted similar legislation in 2021 requiring instruction in high schools on Jewish history and the Holocaust.[98]

In 2019, the United States enacted the Combating European Anti-Semitism Act of 2017, “[t]o require continued and enhanced annual reporting to Congress in the Annual Report on International Religious Freedom on anti-Semitic incidents in Europe, the safety and security of European Jewish communities, and the efforts of the United States to partner with European governments, the European Union, and civil society groups, to combat anti-Semitism.”[99] The law built upon the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004,[100] which established an annual reporting requirement for the State Department on antisemitism around the world.

The Act requires the Secretary of State to enhance the Department’s monitoring of antisemitic acts in Europe and partner with European governments in documenting incidents of antisemitism, adopt the (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, and work to educate European citizens on the importance of pluralism and the contributions of Jews to society.

In May 2020, Congress enacted the Never Again Education Act.[101] The legislation supports Holocaust education in the United States through the educational resources at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is in part federally funded. The law expands the museum’s education programming to teachers across the country, and funds a centralized website maintained by the museum for curriculum materials.[102]

IV.   THE RESURGENCE OF ANTISEMITISM IN EUROPE

As noted, the EJC, the Kantor Center, the Anti-Defamation League, and several countries reporting independently have expressed heightened concern regarding the substantial rise in antisemitic acts across Europe. In the last few years, the conduct of an increasing number of public officials and organizations reflects the resurgence of explicit antisemitism more commonly associated with fringe politicians and extremist organizations.[103]

A.    The Features of Antisemitic Legislation[104]

The themes of what civil society organizations and other entities monitoring and assessing antisemitic activities in Europe have identified as new antisemitic legislation fall into two categories:

• Legislation that prohibits speech[105] alleging that a country collaborated with the Nazis[106] or was responsible in any part for the Holocaust, notwithstanding the irrefutable historical record of their then ruling governments’ complicity with the Nazi occupation and the persecution, deportation and murder of their Jewish citizens; and
• Legislation that restricts or prohibits religious practices, such as the ritual slaughter of animals (kashrut/kosher and halal) and circumcision.

B.     Legislation Aimed at the Historical Record

1.      Hungary – Preamble of the 2011 Constitution

The preamble of the Hungarian Basic Law of 2011 states: “We date the restoration of our country’s self-determination, lost on the nineteenth day of March 1944 [the day of the Nazi occupation of Hungary], from the second day of May 1990, when the first freely-elected body of popular representation was formed.”[107]

As with the Lithuanian resolution discussed below, the Hungarian Constitution does not directly deny the Holocaust. (Hungarian law prohibits Holocaust denial.) However, the law implicitly denies Hungary’s active involvement by disregarding the culpability of the Hungarian state in the murder of 450,000–490,000 Hungarian Jews. Hungary’s Jews were among the last of Europe’s Jewish populations to be rounded up and deported to death camps. The complicity of the Hungarian government with the Nazis and its role in the deportations late in the war are a proven matter of historical record.[108] 

2.      Latvia – “Goodwill Compensation” – Denial of Holocaust Complicity

In February 2022, the Latvian Seim, its parliament, voted to pay approximately $45 million in compensation to the country’s Jewish community for property stolen from Latvian Jews with no legal heirs. The appropriation will provide aid to Holocaust survivors, Jewish schools and cultural projects. However, the law also stated that Latvia bore no culpability for its involvement in the Holocaust for the theft of the property, laying blame on the Nazis and the successor communist government.[109]

3.       Lithuania – Consumer Protection Law

A 2016 book about the Holocaust titled “Our People”[110] described the collaboration of Lithuanians in the murder of its country’s Jews. The book was viewed by some nationalists as an insult to the Lithuanian nation.  As a result, a draft amendment to the Law on Consumer Protection was introduced, which would have banned the sale of retail goods that “distort Lithuania’s historical facts (and) belittle Lithuania’s history, independence, territorial integrity or constitutional order.” The amendment initially passed first reading in the Seim in March 2018. Ultimately, the government withdrew the amendment, which would have prohibited, among other things, the sale of books on the role of Lithuanian collaborators in the Holocaust.  

4.      Lithuania – Historical Memory Law

More than 90 percent of the 200,000 Lithuanian Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.  An estimated 70,000-100,000 Jews were killed in the Ponary Forest in 1941 by German SS and Lithuanian collaborators.[111]

In 2020, a committee of the Seim, the Lithuanian parliament, drafted a bill falsely asserting that neither Lithuania nor its leaders participated in the Holocaust. The resolution was titled, “The Lithuanian state, which was occupied in 1940-1990, did not participate in the Holocaust,” according to Arunas Gumuliauskas, the legislation’s sponsor.[112] At the time the bill was drafted he was a member of then Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis’ Lithuanian Farmers and Greens Union (LVLS) party. It was not clear whether the Lithuanian government or the LVLS supported this bill. Gumuliauskas is no longer in office and his party no longer leads the government.

The bill was revised as a resolution to call attention to the crimes against humanity committed by the communist regimes throughout Europe and the crimes of the Nazi regime in the Holocaust.[113] As reframed, the bill was adopted. 

5.      Poland – Law on the Institute of National Remembrance

In January 2018, the Poland Sejm and Senate of Poland (Lower and Upper Houses) amended the Act on the Institute of National Remembrances (IPN). The amended law states: “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.” [114]

After widespread national and international objection, the law was subsequently amended in June 2018, but only to the extent of withdrawing the criminal penalty. Violation of the law is still punishable by a fine.[115]

Notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence of complicity, the legislation ignited revisionist debate about the collaboration of the Poles and the Polish government with the Nazis and their responsibility regarding the Holocaust.[116] One argument in support of the law was that Poland could not be capable of bearing responsibility for war crimes because there had been no legitimate Polish government under Nazi rule.[117] The subsequent amendment to the law, which eliminated the criminal sanction, arose after strong opposition from Israel.[118]             

6.      Russia – Laws Prohibiting the Distortion of History

In 2014, Russia became one of the first countries to enact a revisionist law, which prohibited the “distortion” of the former USSR’s role in World War II.[119] In 1939, the Molotov-von Ribbentrop non-aggression pact with Germany aligned the Soviet Union with the then indisputably antisemitic Nazi regime. The treaty then was followed by the invasions of Poland from the west by Germany and from the east by Russia, and by Russia’s invasions of Finland, Romania and the Baltic states.[120]

Russia has since hardened its position on historical revisionism, enacting a law in April 2022 making unlawful “publicly identifying the USSR with Nazi Germany and denying the ‘decisive role’ and ‘humanitarian mission’ of the USSR in World War II.”[121]

7.      Poland – Legislation Limiting the Recovery of Stolen Property 

In June 2021, the ruling Law & Justice Party introduced a bill in the Sejm that establishes a 30-year limit for restitution claims for the return of property stolen by the Nazis during World War II and then confiscated by the communist government that came to power after the war.[122] The bill was approved without a dissenting vote. “Asked about Israel’s response to the restitution law, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in Brussels on Friday, ‘As long as I’m prime minister, Poland won’t pay a dollar, zloty or euro for German war crimes.’”[123] The purported basis for the law was a ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal requiring that a deadline be established barring challenges to administrative decisions on the return of confiscated properties.[124]

C.    Restrictions on Religious Rights

1.      Belgium – Flanders and Wallonia Regions – Ban on Religious Slaughter;[125] Poland – Bill to ban the Export of Kosher Meat

In 2017, the Belgian regions of Flanders and Wallonia enacted legislation, effective in 2019, requiring that all animals, including those slaughtered under ritual laws, be stunned by electrical current when slaughtered.[126] Consequently, two out of three Belgian regions banned the slaughter of animals carried out in observance of Kashrut (Kosher) and Halal (Muslim) law.[127]

In December 2020, the European Court of Justice upheld the Flemish and Wallonian laws.[128] The court stated that an EU Protocol requires that religious rites observed in member states must be respected in formulating EU policies, and that “derogation from stunning” in the case of religious slaughter was granted by the Council establishing the European Food Safety Authority.[129]

However, the court noted that a regulation of the Authority provided that:

Article 26 of Regulation No 1099/2009, entitled ‘Stricter national rules’, states:

‘1.   This Regulation shall not prevent Member States from maintaining any national rules aimed at ensuring more extensive protection of animals at the time of killing in force at the time of entry into force of this Regulation.

…

 2. Member States may adopt national rules aimed at ensuring more extensive protection of animals at the time of killing than those contained in this Regulation in relation to the following fields:

…

(c) the slaughtering and related operations of animals in accordance with Article 4(4).

The court accepted the argument of the laws’ advocates that the form of stunning as required and practiced did not result in the death of the animal and was “reversible,” thus conforming to the requirement that the animal still be alive at the time of kosher slaughter. It found that the Flemish legislature “… sought to promote animal welfare and to strike a balance between the objective of promoting animal welfare and the objective of guaranteeing freedom of religion,” and that “…where reversible stunning is applied, the religious precepts requiring that the animal not be dead at the time of slaughter and that its blood be completely drained are respected.”

Consequently, it must be found that the measures contained in the decree at issue in the main proceedings allow a fair balance to be struck between the importance attached to animal welfare and the freedom of Jewish and Muslim believers to manifest their religion and are, therefore, proportionate.

The court cited “scientific studies … that prior stunning is the technique that compromises animal welfare the least at the time of killing.”

The position of the laws’ opponents was that stunning, reversible or not, did not comply with kosher or halal law and that other studies supported the view that ritual slaughter does not cause more suffering to animals than stunning.[130]

They also asserted that since stunning was not required of sport hunting, the imposition of the law was discriminatory of religious practice. In reply, the court cited exceptions to the rules on slaughter in EU law for hunting and cultural activities.

The opponents also cited the potential scarcity of kosher meat, owing to a bill passed in September 2020 in the Polish Sejm which, while permitting slaughter without stunning on religious grounds, would prohibit the export of such slaughtered meat. Poland, according to the laws’ opponents, as cited in the court’s opinion, was the largest source of kosher meat for the Belgian Jewish community.[131]

2.      Denmark – Proposed Ban on Male Circumcision[132]

In Denmark, a petition to “stop genital mutilation of all children worldwide regardless of cultural affiliation or religion of their parents” gathered 50,000 signatures in June 2018, meeting the required threshold number to force the Danish parliament to debate the issue.[133] The proposal was rejected by most Danish political parties. The petition, organized by the lobby group “Intact” was criticized by mainstream parties for equating male circumcision with female genital mutilation. No action in the parliament regarding the petition has been noted since media reported the lack of political support.[134]

3.      Germany – Judicial Decision Finding Circumcision Illegal

In 2012, the regional court in Cologne ruled that child circumcision constituted “illegal bodily harm.”[135] The Bundestag then enacted a law explicitly permitting non-therapeutic circumcision, effectively overturning the regional court.[136]

4.      Iceland – Proposed Ban on Male Circumcision

In February 2018, an amendment to Iceland’s criminal code seeking to “prohibit male circumcision unless such action is considered necessary for health reasons” was introduced in the Althing, Iceland’s Parliament.[137] After international objection, the proposal was rejected in committee months later. The Icelandic bill would have constituted the first blanket ban on male circumcision in Europe.

D.    Antisemitic Statements by a Head of State 

Not falling within either the category of historical memory laws or of religious practice, but no less concerning, were bluntly antisemitic comments made in July 2021 by Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus.

In an Independence Day speech to the armed forces, he proclaimed that Jews “ruled the world” and had “managed to force the world to remember the Holocaust.” He said further that “The entire world grovels before them and gives in to them. They are afraid to say a single word out of place.”[138] The Belarussian government rejected criticism of Lukashenko’s comments, contending that his remarks were distorted and that the president intended to speak favorably of Israel’s efforts to memorialize the Holocaust.[139]  

V.   EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTS RESPOND

Without question, antisemitic initiatives have been confronted by vigorous opposition in every country where they have arisen, as was the case in several countries during the post-World War I era of antisemitic legislation.[140] Responding to the increase of antisemitism in Europe more recently, several governments and legislative bodies have taken affirmative steps to combat antisemitism and publicly recognize their Jewish communities as full constituent members.

Several examples of these “philosemitic” measures:

In October 2019, the Czech Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution condemning antisemitism and anti-Israel boycotts.[141]

In January 2020, 639 of the 643 members of the UK House of Commons signed the IHRA definition of antisemitism.[142]

In March 2020, the Portuguese Parliament enacted a law marking March 31 as the annual observance of a Day of Remembrance for the Inquisition of Jews and their expulsion in 1497.[143]

In June 2020, the legislature of the Balearic Islands in Spain adopted a resolution in committee condemning antisemitism in all its forms, including boycotts of the state of Israel.[144]

In 2020 the Austrian National Council, the lower house of the Austrian Parliament, passed a resolution condemning antisemitism, and urging the government to adopt plans to combat antisemitism.[145]

In October 2020, the UK Equalities and Human Rights Commission, an independent group, issued a report finding that “[its] investigation has identified serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism and an inadequate process for handling antisemitism complaints.”[146] Following the issuance of the report, the Labour Party suspended the membership of its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for criticizing the report. During Corbyn’s leadership the Labour Party was riven by accusations that Corbyn’s leadership of the party had been tolerant of antisemitism and had both tolerated and fomented antisemitism in the party and the country.

Although independent of parliamentary action, in October 2020, a court in Athens, Greece sentenced 18 individuals associated with Golden Dawn, a neo-fascist and antisemitic party, to prison terms, ruling that the party was a criminal organization. The defendants were charged with years-long assaults against immigrants and political opponents and the murder of a popular musician. The party had held seats in the Greek Parliament from 2012 until 2019.[147]

In September 2021, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law making the commission of antisemitic acts a civil offense. In February 2022, the law, “On Preventing and Countering Antisemitism in Ukraine,” was amended to add criminal sanctions.[148]

In October 2021, 22 European countries were signatories to a 43-nation resolution of the United Nations Human Rights Council, pledging to combat antisemitism.[149]

VI.   ANALYSIS

The legislation and other official actions described above, on their face, may not appear to directly threaten Jews or the practice of Judaism, and it might be considered alarmist to take a view that actions that do not specifically denominate Jews are the new manifestation of Holocaust-era laws, centuries-old royal decrees, and papal bulls. However, as history has demonstrably made clear, official actions that on their face were not specifically directed at Jews, or for that matter a specific religious or national group, have nonetheless served as a reliable harbinger of, and conduit for, far more pernicious consequences.

Once the Germans occupied France in June 1940, antisemitic laws under the Vichy government quickly followed – repealing an executive order outlawing press attacks on racial and religious groups, reviewing the naturalizations of French citizens, restricting entry into the French civil service, and limiting admission to the medical and legal professions.[150] None of these laws expressly mentioned Jews. Then, in October 1940, Vichy enacted the Statut des juifs, or “Statute on the Jews.” The law excluded Jews from positions in public service, the officer corps and specific professions, and also imposed a quota system. The official stricture was followed by the Law of 4 October 1940, which directly targeted Jews and authorized prefects to intern foreign Jews in “special camps.”[151] Similarly, the pre-World War II laws enacted in Romania, Hungary, and Poland targeted Jews not in name but through the professions in which they were employed in large numbers.

Therefore, it seems fair to question whether, amidst the current wave of antisemitic acts across Europe, the initiatives to introduce or enact the kinds of laws and regulations described above are antisemitic in their motivation and intent, at least on the part of some of their proponents, and because the line of such legislation and regulations from the 13th century to the 21st is essentially an unbroken one.[152] Moreover, it seems reasonable to be concerned by, and take appropriate measures to counter, laws that purport to embrace national pride or humanitarian (animal slaughter) or public health (circumcision) purposes but which have antisemitic effects or impacts, and which potentially act as “dog whistles” to summon yet another campaign of government-sanctioned antisemitism.

It may seem all but inconceivable that, today, laws or regulations would be introduced or promulgated that expressly discriminate against Jews. Not that the absence of such enabling legislation stands in the way of antisemitic acts. Nor, on the other hand, do anti-discriminatory laws, while indispensable for investigation and prosecution, prevent acts of racism. Tribalism, sectarian religious doctrines, nationalistic creeds and political dogma still wreak violence against and disruption to the lives of national, ethnic and religious groups in countries throughout the world, notwithstanding the objectives of protective laws.

The rise in recent years of proposed laws and regulations understood to be antisemitic in purpose or effect are cause for alarm. Historically, as described above, the dire results of official, government-sponsored and sanctioned antisemitism – expulsion and extermination – had their origins in, and were abetted by, discriminatory laws that comprised restrictions on worship, special taxation, segregation, occupational quotas and prohibitions, and confiscation of property. In light of this history, European Jews may rightly view legislation that is impliedly or “coincidentally” antagonistic to Jewish custom and practice as a veiled but well-established testing ground or launching pad for, or a precursor to, much worse. An Appendix to this report sets forth the chronology of post-World War I antisemitic laws against the chronology of the current laws and measures here cited, as indicative of a pattern with a disturbingly familiar historical precedent.

The Holocaust was a long time in coming. The destruction and elimination of the Jewish population of Europe may have been the wish of those who committed the episodic campaigns of terror against the Jews over time in Europe, but the means to do so across the continent did not exist until the 20th century. What ultimately enabled and facilitated the Holocaust was the evolution and progress of technology and transportation, and it fell into the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators at just the right time for them. There was nothing new about an aggressor country arming itself for war, but when the Nazis began their rise to power in Germany, there existed for the first time in history the means to communicate and broadcast an ideology to mass audiences across a continent through radio, sound on film, newsreels, the microphone and the telephone. The availability of various forms of mass media enabled the Nazis to spread antisemitism, abet fifth columns and to undermine governments. And modern roadways and railways enabled them to conquer nations and to transport the victims they exterminated.

The potential means of persecution today are more varied, more available and more widespread. Telecommunications across borders, through social media and official channels, are immediately transmittable and literally at hand. The propagation of lies and hatred, and incitement to violence, can gain support and viability through unrestrained and unfiltered Internet channels, and can be communicated instantly to and from anyone with a cell phone, tablet or computer.

There are indeed notable efforts by governments and non-governmental organizations to combat antisemitism, as there were in prior eras. The question is whether those efforts can be sustained, or whether the winds will shift again, as they have for centuries, and empower leaders, governments and political parties that will scale back or repeal the laws, policies and programs aimed at antisemitism and other racial, ethnic and national hatred, or worse, enact such measures that promote it. The current progress of nativist organizations and political parties in Europe bears witness to such concern.

Nor should the failure by advocates to enact some of the cited legislative bills and initiatives be deemed as conclusive. Most, if not all of the antisemitic laws of the post-World War I period in Europe, with the possible exception of Germany, met strong opposition. Some failed initially to pass, or were modified, repealed and reinstated, just as they were historically; but eventually they became law.

VII.  CONCLUSION

The French philosopher Claude Levi-Strauss, wrote:

We know, in fact, that the concept of humanity as covering all forms of the human species, irrespective of race or civilization, came into being very late in history and is by no means widespread. Even where it seems strongest, there is no certainty – as recent history proves – that it is safe from the dangers of misunderstanding or retrogression. So far as great sections of the human species have been concerned, however, and for tens of thousands of years, there seem to have been no hint of any such idea. Humanity is confined to the borders of the tribe, the linguistic group, or even, in some instances, to the village….[153]

While not the only people to have been persecuted in Europe, or globally, for that matter, no other people in the Common Era were murdered in millions in state-authorized programs of discrimination and extermination carried out across a continent of sovereign, bordered nations over a period of twelve years.

At least two political trends in Europe have contributed to the introduction of legislation in recent years that raise serious concerns about a resurgence of antisemitism in Europe. One is the reemergence of nationalistic movements in some countries which disavow the irrefutable and conclusively documented evidence of the complicity of their wartime governments and large segments of their citizenries with the Nazis and the Holocaust. Another component comprises initiatives that target long-maintained customs of the Jewish and Muslim faiths, even if their advocates and motives cannot be considered entirely unified.

The ongoing shock and revelations of the Holocaust alone may not be enough to assure that current measures will not be used to discriminate against, isolate or exterminate a people. Even – or especially – in the current age of omnipresent media and cellphone cameras, national, ethnic and religious groups are being persecuted in many parts of the world.  Indeed, many of the laws that adversely affected Jews in Europe during the post-World War I era also were aimed at peoples considered aliens in their own countries. Examples included the Romani people of Hungary and Romania[154], as well as national groups who, through border realignments drawn by the Nazis and Soviets, suddenly found they were living under the flag of a government that was hostile to them.[155]

Because history and experience so clearly demonstrate that laws have been used to abet, exploit and legitimize religious, racial and ethnic discrimination and persecution, the European Affairs Committee seeks to raise awareness in, and action by, international government and non-government institutions and human rights organizations. Moreover, the Committee wholly endorses the work of organizations and individuals worldwide who monitor and publicly speak out against antisemitism and provide counsel and other aid to oppose official initiatives that are antisemitic or similarly discriminatory of other religious, racial and ethnic groups.

European Affairs Committee
Jonathan N. Halpern, Chair

Subcommittee on Antisemitism
Daniel E. Karson – Chair
Elizabeth Defeis
Michel Perez
Nick Sawicki

Research was conducted and principal drafting of the report was undertaken by subcommittee chair Daniel E. Karson

October 2022

 

APPENDIX

Chronology of Antisemitic Laws from the End of World War I to the Outbreak of World War II

1920 – Hungary enacts the Numerus Clausus (closed number) law, establishing proportional race quotas for attendance at universities and teaching positions, effectively reducing the numbers of Jews.[156]

1920s – Poland nationalizes industries in which Jews are prominent, fires Jewish employees, limits employment of Jews in business, bars Jews from civil service and eligibility for government contracts.[157]

1933 – Germany excludes Jews from civil service (with limited exceptions) and restricts the number of Jewish students at German schools and universities. Other local restrictions follow that are applied to lawyers, doctors and actors. Saxony prohibits kosher slaughter.[158]

1934 – Romanian law requires that “economic, industrial, commercial and civil enterprises of all types” must be comprised of 80% “Romanian” employees, reducing the numbers of Jewish employees.[159]

1934 – Germany – Jews are excluded from examinations in professions and from military service.[160]

1934 – Lithuania bans Jews from selected trades and professions and from participation in government contracts.

1935 – France – The Laval law restricts entry into the needle and garment trades, in which Jews are employed in large number.

1935 – Germany – Jews are prohibited from marrying persons of “German” or “German-related blood.”

1935-1936 Germany – the Nuremberg Laws. Jews are stripped of German citizenship. Jews are banned from parks, restaurants and swimming pools.

1936 – Germany – Jewish teachers are banned from public schools.

1937-1938 – Germany – Jewish doctors are prohibited from treating non-Jews. Jewish lawyers are disbarred.

1937-1940 – Romania disbars Jewish lawyers, closes Jewish newspapers, dismisses Jews from government service, nationalizes Jewish-owned properties, expels Jews from teaching positions and Jewish students from public schools. Jewish citizens who settled in Romania after WW I (estimated to be 395,000) lose their citizenship.  (Some of the law’s provisions were later reversed, but then reinstated in 1940.)

1938 – Poland revokes the citizenship of Jews who have lived outside Poland for more than five years. Legislation is introduced in the Sejm banning kosher slaughter.

1938 – October – Germany – Jews must register property in excess of 5,000 Reichsmarks. Jews bearing names of “non-Jewish” origin must add “Israel” and “Sara” to their given names. Jewish passports are stamped with the letter “J”. Jewish-owned businesses are closed. State contracts with Jewish-owned firms are cancelled.

1938 – September – Italy issues the “Manifesto della razza” (manifesto of race) declaring that Italians are an Aryan race and that Jews are not members. Jews are expelled from government employment, banned from the army and public schools, and Jewish business and employment in the private sector are restricted.

1938 – November 9-10 – Kristallnacht occurs, destroying more than 250 synagogues and more than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses. Jews are expelled from public schools and universities and prohibited from attending cinemas, theaters and sports facilities. Freedom of movement is restricted.

1938-1941 – Hungary restricts Jewish entry into business and professions, barring employment in the civil service and prohibiting marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

1939 – Hungary strips naturalized Jewish Hungarians of their citizenship.

1939-1941 – Slovakia seizes land from Jewish owners, requires dismissal of Jewish employees, and expropriates Jewish-owned businesses.

Chronology of Recent Laws and Initiatives Affecting Jews

2011 – Hungary promulgates a Constitution disassociating the existence of the Hungarian state from the date of the Nazi occupation in March 1944, implying non-culpability with the Holocaust.

2014 – Russia enacts a revisionist law, which prohibits the “distortion” of the former USSR’s role in World War II.

2016 – Lithuania – a draft amendment to the Law on Consumer Products is introduced, which would ban the sale of retail goods that “distort Lithuania’s historical facts (and) belittle Lithuania’s history, independence, territorial integrity or constitutional order.” The amendment would have prohibited the sale of books on the role of Lithuanian collaborators in the Holocaust. It passes first reading in the Seim in March 2018, but the government withdraws the amendment.

2017 – Belgium – the regions of Flanders and Wallonia enact legislation, effective in 2019, that have the effect of banning kosher and halal slaughter under ritual laws. In 2020, the European Court of Justice upholds the law.

2018 – Poland – in January 2018, the Poland Sejm and Senate of Poland amend the Act on the Institute of National Remembrances (IPN). The law states: “Whoever accuses, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich… shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of imprisonment of up to three years.” The law is amended in June 2018, but only to eliminate the criminal penalty.

2018 – Iceland – in February 2018, an amendment to Iceland’s criminal code seeking to “prohibit male circumcision unless such action is considered necessary for health reasons” was introduced in the Althing, Iceland’s Parliament. The amendment is rejected in parliamentary committee.

2018 – Denmark – in Denmark, a petition to “stop genital mutilation of all children worldwide regardless of cultural affiliation or religion of their parents” gathered 50,000 signatures in June 2018, meeting the required threshold number to force the Danish parliament to debate the issue. No action is taken in parliament.

2020 – Lithuania – a committee of the Lithuanian parliament drafts a bill asserting that neither Lithuania nor its leaders participated in the Holocaust. The resolution was titled, “The Lithuanian state, which was occupied in 1940-1990, did not participate in the Holocaust.” The bill was revised and passed as a resolution calling attention to the crimes against humanity committed by the communists and the Nazis, without the language repudiating Lithuanian complicity.  

2021 – Poland – in June 2021, the Sejm passes a law that establishes a thirty-year limit for restitution claims for the return of property stolen by the Nazis during World War II, and then confiscated by the communist government that came to power after the war.

2022 – Latvia – the Latvian parliament passes a law stating that Latvia bore no responsibility for involvement in the Holocaust for the theft of Jewish-owned property.

2022 – Russia makes unlawful “publicly identifying the USSR with Nazi Germany and denying the ‘decisive role’ and ‘humanitarian mission’ of the USSR in World War II.”