Page 114 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

betray our fatherland, our strength to the Turks; and we tolerate
them, we feed them! That is to stir up the damage to our hearts, to
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warm the serpent at our breast!"
Already before the outbreak of the Crusades, the Saracens
were on every occasion informed by European Jews ofthe intentions
of Europe and could take measures against them in time. When the
kings of Leon, Castile, and other lands (ca. 1221) stood at war with
the Moors, the latter used Jews close to the Spanish courts as spies
who betrayed the plans and preparations of Christendom; similarly,
when the Duke of Florence was preparing an attack on the island of
Negroponte, the undertaking was soon betrayed to the Turks by Jews
from Livorno, 184 indeed they provided the Turks with arms and
185
ammunition, just as the Venetians in the Kandish War in Istria in
1646 also captured a ship loaded by the Jews with war materials
which was bound for Constantinople. When Cardinal Jimenez began
in 1509 a campaign against Oran, 186 the conquest of the city would
have been difficult for him if some traitors had not been found, at
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whose head stood the Jew Catorra, who thereby demanded many
freedoms for his co-religionists. In 1513, the Portuguese besieged
the city of Azamor. 188 Their attacks were bravely resisted by the
Moors, but their leader fell in one of them, which caused a
disturbance in their camp. The numerous Jews represented in Azamor
held a meeting in which they decided to open the gates of the city to
the Portuguese ifthey would swear to save the Jews. The Portuguese
commander, the Duke of Braganza, was glad to avert a strenuous
siege, agreed, and Azamor was given over to him by the Jewish
treachery. The city was, according to the custom of those times,
plundered and only the houses of the Jews, with notices in front of
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them, protected therefrom.
183
Cited in des Mousseaux, Le Juif, le judaisme et la judaisation des peuples
Chretiens, p. 106.
184
A. Favyn, Histoire de Navarre.
185
[Istria is a peninsula in the Adriatic Sea that is today shared between Italy,
Slovenia and Croatia.]
186
[A city on the northwestern coast of Algeria]
187
Boissi, Dissertations.
188
[A city in Morocco southwest of Casablanca]
l89
Boissi, Dissertations.
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