Szkic prześladowań antyżydowskich od antyku do XX wieku

The article is an attempt of outlining the anti-Jewish persecutions from ancien times to the twentieth century. Negative attitudes towards Jews were caused by various motives – from religious, economical to racial ones. When considering anti-Semitic incidents which took place in the Third Reich, one can find a great similarity with activities against the Jews in the past – anti-Jewish legislation, a yellow Star of David badge bearing, deprivation of property, acts directed against the Jewish culture and heritage, social exclusion and isolation in ghettos. The specificity of Nazi Policy towards Jews made anti-Jewish acts not only a goal in itself but this was just the first step towards total extermination of the Jewish population. On the one hand, Holocaust encompasses xenophobic persecution activities, which through the centuries were solidified in European awareness as recurrent, common, occurring collective repulsion against “strangers”; on the other hand one can find here an element of a nihilistic innovation in murder and radicalism of “the final solution of the question” – this never happened in previous centuries, even in extreme Anti-Semitism or any other racialist or chauvinistic ideas.