Fight Hatred

In Belgium, The Jewish Council completed a comprehensive list of the names and addresses of approximately 56,000 Jews living in the country. The SS ordered the creation of the list which was no available through existing governmental channels since...

Pope Clement IV established The Inquisition. The last victim of the Inquisition was executed in Valencia, Spain in 1826, 559 years later, to the day.

Adoption of the Plakkaat van Verlatinghe (Act of Abjuration), the declaration of independence of the northern Low Countries from the Spanish king, Philip II. For Christians this is part of the battle between Protestants and Catholics; for Jews it is a...

Napoleon formed the Conference of Notables to deal with the relationship between the Jews and the French State. It consisted of 112 deputies from all parts of the French Empire. At the assembly, led by the financier Abraham Furtado and Rabbi Joseph David...

Turkish Parliament passed a law allowing Jewish societies to have the privilege of purchasing land in their own names.

The first Belgian Jews arrived at Mechelen. The ancient fortress in this small town between Brussels and Antwerp was actually the first stop for the Jews being transported to Auschwitz. The Jews thought they were going to work in factories in the East....

Naveed Haq breaks into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle building and begins shooting, citing anger at Jews for the situation in the Middle East. He kills one person and wounds two others before surrendering to police. His actions were immediately...

Australian actor Mel Gibson apologizes for the "despicable" anti-Semitic comments he made during his arrest for suspicion of driving under the influence. Upon discovering that his arresting officer, James Mee, was Jewish, Gibson went on a rant against...

During a funeral procession for Rabbi Jacob Joseph in New York, an anti-Semitic factory worker provokes an argument with the 50,000 Jews in attendance. Police arrive on the scene and begin attacking the Jewish mourners with clubs; about 300 people are...

Birth date of the Italian-Jewish writer and chemist Primo Levi. Levi spent time fighting with Partisans during the war and survived Auschwitz. These experiences provided much of the material for his writings. He passed away in 1987

The Nazis officially undertook The Final Solution. Hermann Goring instructs SS Reich Security Service chief Reinhardt Heydrich by letter "to carry out all the necessary preparations with regard to organizational and financial matters for bringing about a...

Martin Van Buren, 8th President of the United States passed away. He was the first President to order an American consul to intervene on behalf of Jews abroad. In 1840 he instructed the U.S. consul in Alexandria, Egypt to protect the Jews of Damascus who...

The Jews of Wurzburg, Germany were massacred.

Prussian Jews were granted equality.

The Nazis opened the Treblinka Extermination Camp.

King James II of France – in reaction to the excesses in southern France, proscribed support for the Jewish survivors, including an exemption on taxes. At the same time he refused to allow forcibly baptized children to be returned to their parents

The Merchant of Venice is licensed for printing. However, it would be two years before the play featuring Shylock would be printed for the first time.

The House of Commons passed a bill for the emancipation of the Jews of England. The House of Lords would reject the bill until 1845

Because the U.S. State Department continues to delay any action on the Riegner Plan to save 70,000 Jews, American Rabbi Stephen Wise pleads with President Franklin Roosevelt to support the plan. Roosevelt allows the plan to be killed because of "strenuous...

Mendel Beilis, a Russian-Jewish ex-soldier, is arrested and charged with the murder of a 13-year old Christian boy. During the two years he awaits trial, Russia is awash with anti-Semitic blood libel propaganda and violence. Police investigator Nikolay...

The Jews of Nieswiez organized a resistance movement and a planned an escape using kerosene and old guns as their weapons. A desperate battle ensued. Jews set fire to their own homes as a diversionary tactic. Some of those who made it to the woods found...

In London, 500,000 march against anti-Semitism, following the outbreak of anti-Jewish violence that accompanied the Nazi party's election victory in Germany

In Brandenburg, Prussia, Joachim the Elector burned 38 Jews at the stake on a charge of desecrating the host. Another two accepted Christianity and were mercifully beheaded.

Angelo Roncalli, the future Pope John XXIII, appeals to Admiral Miklós Horthy on behalf of 5000 Hungarian Jews with Palestinian visas. Roncalli provides baptismal certificates for Jews in hiding

Edward I (England), pressured by his barons, the Church and possibly by his mother, announced the expulsion of all the Jews. The expulsion came on Tisha B’Av, adding to that days list of Jewish sorrows. By November approximately 4000 had fled. The Jews...

Jews of Brussels were ordered expelled.

In Buenos Aires a car bomb exploded outside the building housing the AMIA, the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, or AMIA) building killing 85 people and wounding more than 200 others in what remains the most...

A number of Jewish-owned stores in Italy had their doors sealed with glue and the shutters nailed down overnight as a response to Israel’s policies in Lebanon.

A brouhaha is raised over an advertorial campaign in the Japanese newspaper Nihon Keizai Shimbun-sha, which promoted two books that supported the canard of Jewish control over the global economy. At one point, Japan was the number one producer of...

98 U.S. senators express concern about popular anti-Semitism in Russia by sending a letter to then-President Vladimir Putin. The letter asks Putin to take a stronger stance in publicly condemning anti-Semitism, which gained traction from “ideological...

While on a boating trip, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini discusses Adolf Hitler’s new anti-Semitic laws with his mistress, saying “We must give Italians a feeling of race so that they don’t create half-castes, so that they don’t spoil what is beautiful...

Muslim mobs went on an anti-Semitic rampage in Constantine, Algeria, ransacking stores and killing a hundred people—mostly by slitting their throats.

Bernard Lewis publishes his seminal work Semites and Anti-Semites, which explores modern anti-Semitism in the Arab world.

Left-handed baseball star Sandy Koufax is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Koufax experienced aggressive anti-Semitism as one of the only Jewish players in the sport, especially for his controversial decision to not attend games on Jewish holidays.