Historically, Judaism has been a religion closely associated with migration. However this was not by choice. Jews were forced out of their native land of Israel thousands of years ago and would not return to a fully formed Israel until 1948. Because of this, the constant migrations, expulsions, and pogroms created a Jewish diaspora. As Jews moved, they spread out and settled wherever they could do so safely. This was especially prevalent in Eastern Europe, with Ashkenazi Jews settling in the Kingdom of Poland, Austria, and Germany. Ashkenazi Jews developed their own language, Yiddish, took up their own style of dress, and became largely self-sufficient. They owned and ran taverns and inns where Christians frequented. Many took up peddling and traveled from village to village to sell crops, chickens, pots, and more. The starkness in the differences between Jews and non-Jews created a hesitancy towards Jews which inevitably led to a general distrust and hatred of Jews. With the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, antisemitism found a new figurehead in Martin Luther.  

Martin Luther, while not the first person to speak out against the Catholic Church, he was certainly one of the loudest. Luther was a law student turned Catholic monk that ferociously wrote against the financial corruptions of the Catholic Church. Initially, Luther was fairly empathetic towards Jews. He rejected their mistreatment writing “If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian”⁸. However, once he began to form his own theology and form his own system of practices, he grew enraged and bitter towards Jewish people when they still would not convert. His rhetoric took a very fast turn and began vouching for Jewish persecution. He doubled down on the rumors that Jewish communities were poisoning wells and killing children and wrote out a list of his suggestions for the treatment of Jews as seen here:⁹

He would go on to write several more vicious publications and sermons against Jews. Antisemitism was not a new phenomenon in Germany, or even Eastern Europe, but this was a widely published author that explicitly called for Jewish expulsion and their persecution. His treatise On Jews and Their Lives and his other antisemitic writings would act as a lively influence for Nazi antisemitism over four hundred years later. Dr. Richard Steigmann-Gall, author of The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945 refers to Luther as the “first German spiritual Führer” (Luther was also a vehement German nationalist which made him especially popular with the Nazi Party)¹⁰. German nationalism and antisemitism is very much rooted in Lutheran rhetoric and would go on to haunt German politics and society for centuries to come.