Birth of German-Jewish opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, who gained fame and adoration while remaining quite openly Jewish. At his height he was regarded as the most important composer in Europe, but a posthumous smear campaign against Meyerbeer by...

In Damascus, the Damascus Affair is brought to an end when the Jews arrested under a blood libel accusation and tortured over the past six months are released by the authorities. The ongoing miscarriage of justice prompted international condemnation, and...

Tsar Nicholas I of Russia issues the "Statute on Conscription Duty" on this day (August 26 on the then Russian calendar). Jewish boys aged 12 and up are conscripted, being sent to distant military schools for 6 years, followed by 25 years of military...

Barely a week from the start of World War II, German forces in the captured Polish town of Będzin burn down the synagogue and the surrounding homes, and kill dozens of the town’s Jews. Będzin would later become a ghetto for the survivors and for Jews from...

Upon the declaration of war by the U.K., Jewish Agency head David Ben Gurion pledges full support for Britain, despite the British government “White Paper” which had just announced strict anti-Jewish measures in Palestine, including a prohibition on...

Dutch Jews are emancipated when the National Convention decrees that: "No Jew shall be excluded from rights or advantages which are associated with citizenship in the Batavian Republic, and which he may desire to enjoy." In the following years successive...

Germany invades Poland, starting World War II. By its end in 1945, the war will claim the lives of 60 million soldiers and civilians. Among these are six million Jews deliberately mass-murdered by the Germans and their allies, a slaughter that is as...

Protestors at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa turn the conference into an anti-Semitic event. In a prevalent theme, they equated their views on Israel with the general Jewish Diaspora and disrupted a panel on anti-Semitism.

In an orchestrated attack, vandals in cities across the Ukraine painted swastikas and anti-Semitic phrases on Jewish community buildings, including at the Chesed Velvele Jewish charity in Melitopol.

Geoffrey Chaucer found inspiration for “The Prioress’ Tale” when he heard that Jews had allegedly captured Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln, England in hopes of making him a sacrifice in their ritual murder. The boy had disappeared a month earlier and his...

Giovanni Palatucci, head of police in the German-occupied Italian city of Fiume, is arrested by the Gestapo. Ever since the enactment of Italy’s anti-Jewish race laws in 1938, Palatucci had saved thousands of Jews by enabling emigration or arranging...