Page 41 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

Alfred Rosenberg

have a law and freedom which is to lie and cheat as long as it brings
them profit," goes a deep complaint from the Thirty Years' War.
"The observation", says Liebe, "is inescapable that periods
of confusion in public life which brought forth immediately a
crippling of economic life and guaranteed to the business mentality
the possibility of ruthless activity were not unfavourable to the
Jews". 48
For it is not to be forgotten in the case of all the persecutions
that they were exceptions that were always commented on as such,
whereas the reports about the day to day life, though this is indeed
the characteristic of any age, naturally flow much more sparsely.
The fuss that Jewish historians make of the "Jewish massacres" is
greatly exaggerated; it would be good indeed to investigate how
much popular strength was plundered and slowly drained out, how
much unreported despair of German men lies in between them.
Later, the so periodically vented rage became a general scorn
with regard to the Jewish spirit. The guilds of craftsmen, which up
th lh
to the 13 and 14 centuries stood open to the Jews, though the
latter did not feel they had to take the opportunity to take up a craft,
were now closed to the Jews on principle.
If earlier the Jew could live in the city (he mostly preferred
to live in his own quarter), now there followed an enclosure, the
ghetto, the situation that existed earlier was now considered as the
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norm. The usurious Jew was outwardly typified by a pointed hat,
intercourse with him forbidden, etc.
However, even this exclusion was not so bad, but it indeed
became obligatory at that time. That the Jew did not stand at the
bottom in social position is seen already from the title "modest"
which even the peasant bore and a Frankfurt account reports: "It is
advised that they be questioned as much about their Jewish order as
the Turkish emperor of Constantinople." Abbot Trithemius 50 gave
the following practical verdict in 1 5 1 6: "It is understandable that an
aversion has taken root among the high and the low, among the
learned and the unlearned, against the usurious Jew and I grant all
legal mass measures for the protection of the people against Jewish

iS
Op.cit., p.67.
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