Islamic State flag found in room of German train attacker

Germany v Lithuania - Full Game - FIBA U20 European Championship 2016

MUNICH Police found a hand-painted Islamic State flag and a text written partly in Pashto in the room of a young Afghan refugee who attacked passengers on a train in southern Germany with an axe, a state minister said on Tuesday.

Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann said it was too early to say whether the youth was a member of Islamic State or any other militant group. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, according to its Amaq news agency.

"We are aware of the claim of responsibility by Islamic State, but...the investigation has not produced any evidence thus far that would indicate this young man was part of an Islamist network," Herrmann told a news conference.

The 17-year-old severely wounded four Hong Kong residents, one of whom remains in a critical condition, on the train late on Monday, and then injured a local woman after fleeing before police shot him dead.

The attack took place days after a Tunisian delivery man plowed a truck into crowds of Bastille Day revelers in the southern French city of Nice, killing 84. Islamic State has also claimed responsibility for that incident.

The case is likely to deepen worries about so-called "lone wolf" attacks in Europe and could put political pressure on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has welcomed hundreds of thousands of migrants to Germany over the past year.

A leader of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) said Merkel and her supporters were to blame for the dangerous security situation because their "welcoming policies had brought too many young, uneducated and radical Muslim men to Germany".

MOTIVES

Herrmann said people who knew the attacker had described him as a "quiet and balanced person who went to the mosque for important holidays, but wasn"t necessarily there every week."

"He was described as a devout Muslim, but not in any way one who was a radical or fanatic," Herrmann added.

At least one witness reported that the attacker, who had been living with a foster family in the nearby town of Ochsenfurt, had shouted "Allahu Akbar" (G*d is greatest).

Herrmann told Reuters TV that a hand-painted IS flag was found among his belongings when police searched his home, as well as a text that included references to Islam and the "need to resist", according to an initial translation from the Afghan language of Pashto.

He said the text was subject to interpretation, and stressed that the attack was no reason to cast suspicion on other refugees or for Germans to stop living their lives normally.

"Some things clearly point to an Islamist background, but there is no evidence at this point connecting him to any other individuals, or indicating whether he radicalized himself," Herrmann said. "That must all still be investigated."

He started attacking his passengers with an axe and a knife around 9 p.m. local time as the train was approaching its last stop, the Bavarian city of Wuerzburg, Herrmann said.

The attacker, who came to Germany as an unaccompanied minor two years ago, fled into the town of Heidingsfeld after the emergency brake was pulled. He was pursued by a police unit and shot dead after attacking a woman and trying to assault the police officers, Herrmann said.

Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying condemned the attack, which he said injured four of five members of a Hong Kong family that was on holiday in Germany. Herrmann said the family had visited the medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber before the attack.

Leung"s office said Hong Kong and Chinese officials were in touch with the German embassy to follow up on the case, and representatives were en route to visit the family.

Unlike neighbors France and Belgium, Germany has not been the victim of a major attack by Islamic militants in recent years, although security officials say they have thwarted a large number of plots.

Germany welcomed about 1 million migrants in 2015, including thousands of unaccompanied minors. Many were fleeing war in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

(This story corrects paragraph 15 to show name of town is Heidingsfeld, not Heiligenfeld)

(Reporting by Michael Nienaber, Noah Barkin, Andrea Shalal, Caroline Copley, Michelle Martin and Gernot Heller, and Jens Hack in Munich and Reuters TV; Writing by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-attacks-germany-idUSKCN0ZY2LA

Madagascar Finally Has a Jewish Neighborhood

Nadene Goldfoot                                                               

Hitler spoke with Arab leaders before WWII.

Islamic leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini,
Sherif of Jerusalem, wanted Jews out
of Palestine.  

Hitler in the 1930's blamed all the economic depression Germany was suffering from on the Jews.  Everything was their fault.  It was a rehappening of events that had been occurring for the past 2,000 years to Jews.  They had been in Germany after losing Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 CE, and they had even served in WWI two thousand years later in 1914-17.

Germany wanted France to get rid of their 10,000 Jews and be Judenrien, so on December 9, 1938, the French Foreign Minister, Georges Bonnet, informed the German foreign Minister, Joachim Von Ribbentrop, that to do that they would have to ship them out somewhere, and where?  The Final Solution of the Germans had not yet been thought of, but were thinking along the lines of mass emigration somewhere.
                                                                     

Madagascar along the coast

Three months later  on March 5, 1938, Adolf Eichmann was put in charge of researching and creating a plan to give to the chief of the Security Police (SIPO)'s Reinhard Heydrich with a "foreign policy solution as it had been negotiated between Poland and France called the Madagascar Plan.   Then it was forgotten about and not thought of till summer 1940 after the fall of France.

A little earlier, Captain Dryfus of France  was the cause of a political scandal that from its beginning in 1894 divided France until it was finally resolved in 1906. He was accused of treason, acting for the Germans and was innocent, but suffered anyway by being found guilty. Dreyfus was imprisoned on Devil's Island in French Guiana, where he spent nearly five years. The conviction was a miscarriage of justice based upon faulty espionage and blatant antisemitism, as well as a hatred of the German Empire following its annexation of Alsace and part of Lorraine in 1871  .It caused Jews to realize that they needed their own country.  They thought of Africa, but disbanded the idea.  There was no burning desire to live there, but there was for their ancient homeland that had now been called "Palestine."  
                                                                           

Madagascar, a huge island nation off the southeast coast of Africa, is home to thousands of animal species – like lemurs – found nowhere else, plus rainforests, beaches and reefs. Near the busy capital, Antananarivo, is Ambohimanga, a hillside complex of royal palaces and burial grounds, as well as the “Avenue of the Baobabs,” a dirt road lined by massive centuries-old trees.  It is the 4th largest island in the world made up of 587,041 km²(226,658 sq mi)

The island of Madagascar had colonization possibilities he found from the French Colonial Office.  He included his evacuation plan for 4 million Jews to be shipped there over a period of 4 years.  It would be financed by a special bank that would be managing confiscated Jewish property and by contributions exacted from world Jewry, or blackmail.  He had also advocated creating a police reserve as a giant ghetto, much like the Pale of Settlement was only much worse.

The plan included compensating the 25,000 French citizens living on the island already.  The control would be transferred to Germany under a mandate.  The ports were to become German naval bases if the German navy desired.  Suitable areas of the country would be excluded from the Jewish territory and made Judenterritorium for the construction of air bases..  A German Police Governor under the administration of the Reichsfuehrer SS would be in charge of the island. Apart from this, the Jews would administer their part of the land and have their own mayors, police, postal and railroad administration.  The Jews would be jointly liable for the value of the island.  This plan was a Mandate and Jews would not get German citizenship, but those deported there lose their citizenship of European countries from the date of deportation and would be residents of the Mandate of Madagascar.
                                                                       

Tower of David in Jerusalem 

The whole idea was to prevent Jews from creating a Jewish state in Palestine.  They wanted Jerusalem to be out of the hands of the Jews and only be for the Christians and Islamic people.  American Jews would see that Jews on the island were kept alive only by the good behavior of American Jews.

Gossip caused the plan to leak out and it was published in Italy in July 1940.  by August, the 3rd Reich endorsed the plan.  The American Jewish Committee was much alarmed and they published by May 1941 a special report about this that sought to demonstrate that Jews couldn't survive the conditions on the island.

By summer 1940, the Nazis had already come up with their novel idea of a different Final Solution; their extermination program. So, by February 10, 1942, the Madagascar Plan was officially shelved and replaced with the evacuation to the East of Jews.  They expected to get all Jews out of Europe so they could control it all.  Rademacher had signed the agreement in Berlin on July 3, 1940.   Instead, they slaughtered 6 million Jews in the most despicable ways, and the utter horrid thing is that they were helped by many Europeans.

Madagascar Natives went  shopping, perhaps. 

Today, a Jewish community "was officially born in Madagascar last month when 121 men, women and children underwent Orthodox conversions on the remote Indian Ocean island nation better known for lemurs, chameleons, dense rain forests and vanilla." Of course they were not from the European Jews of WWII, as they never got the chance to live there, despite the almost impossible conditions they would have had to face.  They had a worse situation.  

These people who converted to Judaism on the island were  followers of various messianic Christian sects and had  become disillusioned with their churches and began to study Torah.  The conversions, which took place over a 10-day period, were the climax of a process that arose about five to six years ago.

Through self-study and with guidance from Jewish internet sources and correspondence with rabbis in Israel, they now pray in Sephardic-accented Hebrew and strictly observe the Sabbath and holidays.

The conversions were facilitated by Kulanu, a New York-based nonprofit that specializes in supporting isolated and emerging Jewish communities, but were initiated by the residents. 

" Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanuel on Staten Island in New York said that   "“We are in the process of reconstituting the Jewish people, which would have been more numerous had it not been decimated by the Holocaust and had we not lost millions of Jews in Arab lands.”

Resource: http://www.israelandstuff.com/rebirth-madagascar-community-chooses-to-return-to-their-jewish-heritage
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Madagascar.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreyfus_affair

Difficulties with Venezuela and Latin America Taking in Jewish Refugees in 20s and 30s.

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                              

Goldfoot, Robinson and Oster Fathers and children, c1945. 
The man on the right holding a little girl is my uncle, Werner Oster, who left Boppard, Germany
for the USA on May 4th, 1939 on the ship, Washington.They landed in New York on May 13th.
He was only 23, but was one of the last Jews to get out of Germany in 1939.
He had been a great soccer player in Germany.

He came to the USA, which was hard to do.  He had to have a sponsor (my great Uncle Max Turn,

who had to take all economic responsibility for him.)  Werner was single then.  A butcher and sausage maker, Max got him a job with my father, a fledgling in the business and 31 years old at the time. 

The picture shows that he married my father's sister and these children are my cousins.  I'm sitting on the 

grass of our back yard and am the oldest.  My father is behind me holding my brother. 

Nazism was not only threatening all Jews on this planet,  it was already starting to take lives in the 30s in Germany.  Some Jews, seeing the writing on the wall, sought out countries that would take them in.  Werner made it to the USA, but his parents and 16 year old red-headed sister died in the Holocaust.

It had been difficult to get into the USA if you were Jewish.  There was a bill in 1921 and another in 1924 to cut the numbers of Jews entering.  " The 1921 measure capped the number of immigrants allowed in at roughly 350,000 per year. It also established quotas from  individual countries, derived from their percentage of the U.S. population. This was a rigged system, as those percentages included how many Americans were descended from that group’s original settlers. Some nations therefore received unusually large quotas, despite minimal immigration in the few years before the bill’s enactment. If ten people had arrived in 1750 from Great Britain, the number of that original cluster’s descendants would be huge by the 20th century. The base year, moreover, was set back a decade to 1910 to exclude from the figures all those who had recently arrived from war-torn Europe after the sea lanes were safe again in 1918. It was not immigrants in general who were blocked, but certain nationalities and religions (JEWS).   Fiorello LaGuardia branded the 1924 act “the creation of a narrow mind that was nurtured by a hating heart.”  We Jews remain as 2% of the USA population.  

So, South America seemed like a good place to go, but they found that most of the countries there required a person to show their baptismal certificate to make sure that they were Christians.  They were not anxious to take in Jews.  Many of the South American countries had already been populated by Germans, and many of those followed the Nazi persuasion.  Naturally, after the war, the Nazis became the refugees and they populated the South American countries easily.
                                                               

Jacobsthal family with aunt and uncle in Amsterdam
 ready to immigrate to Chile February 1938

"These attitudes were reflected in increasingly tight immigration laws introduced throughout Latin America in the late 1930s (Mexico in 1937; Argentina in 1938; Cuba, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia, Paraguay, and Uruguay in 1939). The results of these laws were striking. Argentina, which had admitted 79,000 Jewish immigrants between 1918 and 1933, officially admitted 24,000 between 1933 and 1943. Another 20,000 Jews entered Argentina illegally, crossing the border from neighboring countries. Brazil admitted 96,000 Jewish immigrants between 1918 and 1933, but only 12,000 between 1933 and 1941."

After Kristallnacht in November 1938, many Jews within Germany decided that it was time to leave. Though many German Jews had emigrated in the preceding years, the Jews who remained had a more difficult time leaving the country because emigration policies had been toughened. By 1939, not only were visas needed to be able to enter another country but money was also needed to leave Germany. Since many countries, especially the United States, had immigration quotas, visas were near impossible to acquire within the short time spans in which they were needed. For many, the visas were acquired after it was too late.
                           

Saturday, May 13, 1939 these Jews had sailed.
Hopeful to land in Cuba,  from Germany on St. Louis escaping
Nazi persecution

                                                 

St. Louis in Havana, Cuba's port

In this climate, Cuban authorities denied entry to most passengers on the ship the St. Louis, when it docked in Havana in May 1939. "With a diminishing supply of food and pressures from Hapag to return to Germany, Captain Schroeder ordered the ship to change heading to return to Europe."  They sailed to their deaths.  Before they had left Cuba, about 2 people had jumped into the ocean committing suicide, knowing what would happen to them.  In November 1941, the German government virtually cut off the flow of Jewish refugees into Latin America when it banned all Jewish emigration from territories under its control.
                                                                   

Coro, Venezuela 

                                                        Venezuela
"The History of the Jews in Venezuela dates to the middle of the 17th century, when records suggest that groups of marranos (Spanish and Portuguese descendants of baptized Jews suspected of secret adherence to Judaism) lived in Tucacas, Caracas and Maracaibo."  Marranos would have originally been Sephardim Jews.  

Jews came to a country that "is predominantly Roman Catholic and speak Spanish. The majority of Venezuelans are the result of a mixture of Europeans, Africans and Amerindians. 51.6% of the population are Mestizos of mixed European, African and Amerindian ancestry and 43.6% of Venezuelans consider themselves White of European ancestry and/or Middle Eastern. Another 3.6% is Black African, while 2% is of full Amerindian ancestry and around 1.2% other races "

Venezuela was one South American country that received Jews back in 1850.  They were West Indian Sephardim.  Like with all places with a Christian population, there were anti-Semitic outbreaks of resentment in this country which is situated on the northern part of the continent on the Caribbean Sea.  Such anti-Semitic outbreaks occurred in Coro in 1855 and again in 1902.  "Coro is the capital of Falcón State and the oldest city in the west of Venezuela. It was founded on July 26, 1527 by Juan de Ampíes as Santa Ana de Coro.  As Neu-Augsburg, it was the first German colony in the Americas under the Welsers.  The temperature in Coro for the whole year continues to range in the high 90s and low 100s.  "The Jewish Cemetery of Coro is the oldest Jewish cemetery in continuous use in the Americas.  Its origin can be located in the 19th century, when Sephardic Jews from the Dutch colony of Curaçao began to migrate to the Venezuelan city of Santa Ana de Coro in 1824."

In the 20th century, eastern Europeans and German Jews (Ashkenazim Jews)  entered the country until barred after World War II  " In 1907, the Israelite Beneficial Society, which became the Israelite Association of Venezuela in 1919, was created as an organization to bring the Jews who were scattered throughout the country together.  Jewish prayer and holiday services took place in small houses in Caracas and towns like Los Teques and La Guaira. By 1917, the number of Jewish citizens rose to 475, and to 882 in 1926." 

.Jews could enter after World War I from 1918 to 1933.   However,  from 1933 to 1945, only 84,000 Jewish refugees were able to come into South America and this was less than half of the number that had come in 15 years before 1933.  Some even managed to enter through illegal channels.
                                                                         

Tiferet Israel Synagogue, Caracas, attacked in 2009

The reason they found such difficulties in entering was of anti-Semitism.  Then, the population feared the economic competition of too many people looking for jobs.  Those that were allowed to come in had to find work in agriculture, but after a while most found there way to cities where they could use some of the business skills.  The populations were made up of a lot of Germans, and they went along with the Nazi's lack of morality.
                                                                       

However, many Jews remained and in Venezuela, they played a leading role in developing the country's trade and in modernizing the capital, Caracas.

By 1990, the Jewish population was about  20,000, and most lived in the capital then.  some 90% of the Jewish youth attended Jewish schools.  "Currently, some 9,000 Jews live in Venezuela, down from about 25,000 in the 1990s. " 

Recently, anti Semitic graffito appeared near a Caracas Metro station: "Be patriotic, kill a Jew." Elsewhere in the city, another reads: "Jewish pigs, another 6 million." this is going on in Venezuela most likely because " Venezuelan President,  Nicolás Maduro,  organized a rally labeled the "March Against Israeli Genocide." There, the Venezuelan president called upon "the Jews that live in our lands" to "stop the massacre, and the murder of those innocent boys and girls."  

He was referring to the Palestinians, which shows he doesn't understand that it's been the Palestinians from Gaza who have been shelling Israel with rockets, mortars and missiles.  These past few weeks the Palestinians in Jerusalem have been stabbing Jews and ramming crowds with their cars.  Just yesterday they stabbed an Uruguayan Jewish  tourist and police.  The Jews in Venezuela are powerless to stop any killings going on in Israel, and this President should knew that.  What he's doing is just instigating more attacks on Jews, both in Israel and in Venezuela.  

Resource: https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007824
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Venezuela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Venezuela
http://jewishcurrents.org/americas-first-illegal-immigrants-39913
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/stlouis.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/uruguayan-jew-stabbed-to-death-in-suspected-anti-semitic-attack/

Behind Leftist Anti-Israel Propaganda

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                                

George Soros, Billionaire

Ari Yashar has found 27 Israeli NGO"s that are responsible for financing anti-Israel groups from 2012 to 2014.  NGO Monitor ( (Non-governmental Organization Monitor) is a non-governmental organization based in the western part of Jerusalem, whose stated aim is to generate and distribute critical analysis and reports on the output of the international NGO community for the benefit of government policy makers, journalists,)  ...dug into what foreign governments are funding Israel's radical left and found 21 governmental and intergovernmental groups that include the EU and the UN.  What bigger groups can you get?  That's pretty inclusive.  Yet there are others.  The Human Rights and the International Humanitarian law Secretariat is doing it, too.  They are funded by Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and Switzerland.  So we see governments involved in this anti-Israel movement.  Right now, 25 shekels equals one dollar.

NGO's are "A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an organization that is neither a part of a government nor a conventional for-profit business. Usually set up by ordinary citizens,NGOs may be funded by governments, foundations, businesses, or private persons.

From this we can see what countries are the most anti-Semitic today and are actively funding anti-Semitism.  Some people have probably been duped into donating to these NGO's, not realizing what they really are doing.  
                                                                     

Running for next UN Secretary 

Chancellor Angel Merkel of Germany

The ones donating the most money are:
1. EU with 28 million shekels or 7 million dollars ($7,000,000 ).  .
2. Norway
3. Germany-remember, the Chancellor  of Germany , Angela Merkel nee Kasner, was an architect  of the EU. She's also the leader of the Christian Democratic Union and has been since 2000.
About $17,000,000 total from this group alone.

PRIVATE FUNDING GROUPS
1. Sigrid Rausing Trust-London based-with 14% of this group's total:

Sigrid Maria Elisabet Rausing is a Swedish philanthropist, anthropologist and publisher. She is the founder of the Sigrid Rausing Trust, one of the United Kingdom's largest philanthropic foundations, and owner of Granta magazine and Granta Books.

2. New Israel Fund-12%  The New Israel Fund is a U.S.-based non-profit organization established in 1979, and describes its objective as social justice and equality for all Israelis.  Not true! 

3. Open Society Institute -7%  The big Macher (Mah kher)  is backing this one:  George Soros:  Open Society Foundations, formerly the Open Society Institute, is an international grantmaking network founded by progressive-liberal business magnate George Soros.  Their ad should say leftist business magnate.  He also helped fund J Street in its beginnings and most likely is still a member.  

CHRISTIAN GROUPS: 19% of total funding in 50 million shekels.(about 12.5 million dollars $12,500,000).
Presbyterians and Methodists have been internationally active in promoting BDS against Israel. This again is motivated from Palestinian Christian groups such as Kairos.
This group receives large governmental funding themselves, then used for anti-Semitism

PRIVATE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS/DONORS-5% of Total

  One problem allowing all this to happen is that Israel had not passed an NGO transparency law like the USA's.  They will be doing this now since this has come about.  It would obligate any NGO that gets 50% or more of their funding from foreign states to open their books to the public and identify themselves as "foreign agents" when lobbying in the Knesset.

RADICAL LEFTIST NGO'S
1. B'Tselem:   The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories
2. Breaking the Silence: Israeli soldiers talk about the occupied territories

An investigative TV report showed how leading activists hand over Palestinian Arabs who want to sell land to Jews to the PA (Palestinian Authority) which then tortures and then executes them.  So the activists supposedly acting in favor of the Arabs are causing  some their horrid deaths.

I notice that Sweden has really become active in anti-Semitism whereas it had been a country that took in many Jews from the Holocaust.  Today these same but much older people are being tormented by young Muslim refugees who have now entered the country.  It's been so bad in Malmo that many younger Jewish families have moved out and to Israel.  I'm afraid this has happened to much of Scandinavia.  If you notice, anti-Semitism has risen in Europe, and that goes along with all the Muslim refugees that have been entering.  They were anti-Israel while in their Middle East country and that hasn't changed.  After all, the Holocaust started in Europe, so they must have rapt listeners to the accusations they are spreading.

Resource:  http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/206826#.VqzY4NIrJkh
http://www.biography.com/people/angela-merkel-9406424#early-years
http://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigrid_Rausing
http://www.firstpost.com/world/after-ban-ki-moon-heres-why-the-next-un-secretary-general-should-be-angela-merkel-2454732.html

Jews From Austria

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

Vienna's Imperial Palace

The first Jewish settlers came most likely with the Roman soldiers as their slave workers, most likely before 70 CE when the Romans were controlling Jerusalem.                                                                                

  It wasn't until the first specific mention of them was in about 906 in a documents placing Jewish and Christian merchants on the same footing.
                                                                       

Travel from Vienna, Austria to Athens, Greece

Jewish persecution in Germany drove many to Austria.  By 1204 there was a synagogue in Vienna.

By 1238, Emperor Frederick II granted a charter to the Jews of Vienna and took them under his protection.  Six years later in 1244, Duke Frederick the Quarrelsome gave the Jews a new charter called Privilegium Fredericianum or the privileges from Frederic,  which served as a model for others to copy.
The period from the 13th to the 15th centuries were bad, however, marked by terrible persecutions being the worst in 1420 when there was a charge against a Jew of ritual murder-usually saying that a Jew had killed someone to use their blood in making matzos.  All of the Jews were either burned, expelled or forcibly baptized-the Wiener Gezerah.                                                                          

1667 Empress Margaret Theresa of Spain, then AustriaMargarete Theresia; 12 July 1651 – 12 March 1673) was Holy Roman Empress, German Queen, Archduchess consort of Austria, Queen consort of Hungary and Bohemia. She was the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain and his second wife Mariana of Austria.

They did not disappear completely and those there were subject to further restrictive laws and local expulsions up to the year 1670 when another major expulsion was decreed through the influence of the Spanish-born empress of Austria, Margaret Theresa.  Notice that the Spanish Inquisition took place in 1492 and the effects and acts of the Spanish was copied by all the other nations.   "On March 1, 1670, Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor and archduke of Austria, ordered the Jews out of Vienna and all of Austria. The deadline was August 1.

By the next century, Jews were living in Austria again but still suffering from the hostility of Maria Theresa.  In 1782, her successor, Joseph II wrote out the Edict of Toleration, which was written so as to enforce emancipation and hasten assimilation of the Jews, but they didn't receive full rights.

Rabbi Samson Wertheimer (1658-1724) He was a rabbi and a financier born in Worms, Germany.  He went to Vienna in 1684 to join the bank of his uncle, Samuel Oppenheimer and soon became what was called a court banker.  He and his son, Wolf,  lent large sums of money to the emperor.

 In 1719 he was appointed by Carl VI the chief rabbi of Hungary with judicial authority.  Leopold prohibited the publication of Eisenmenger's anti-Jewish work.  

                                                                         

 Austria-Hungary consisted of two monarchies (Austria and Hungary), and one autonomous region: Croatia–Slavoniaunder the Hungarian crown, which negotiated its own compromise(Nagodba) with Hungary, in 1868.

It was ruled by the House of Habsburg, and constituted the last phase in the constitutional evolution of the Habsburg Monarchy. Following the 1867 reforms, the Austrian and the Hungarian states were co-equal.

Jewish Quarter in 1860 in Vienna

Found in Vienna were these ancient Jewish tombstones that were hidden from view.  The cemetery dates back to the 16th century and had about 900 tombstones until 1938, when the Nazis came to power and gave vandals free reign to deface and destroy them.

Much later at the start of the Holocaust, the Nazi Germans annexed Austria on March 12, 1938 and with Hitler as their leader, this led to an unprecedented Jewish persecution. Austria existed as a federal state of Germany until the end of World War II,.  About 80,000 Jews were able to emigrate between 1938-1940, but 100,000 were slaughtered in this Holocaust.  Nazism was a German political movement of National Socialism.  In 1921 Adolf Hitler became its leader and until 1923 was a movement restricted to Bavaria but became a mass movement at the end of the 20's.  It achieved power on January 30, 1933, then used subterfuge when necessary to become the country's only party until the end of WWII.  Hitler was born in Austria in 1889 and we hope it was he who died in 1945.  He  became the German chancellor in 1933.  Then he invaded Poland in 1939.

By 1990 there were 12,000 Jews living in Austria of which 11,000 were in Vienna, the capital. The core Jewish population of Austria in 2014 was 9,000.  It was dropping.  Surprisingly, in Germany it was 118,000.  Hungary had 47,900.  Ukraine had 63,000.

Resource: The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ancient-jewish-tombstones-hidden-during-wwii-found-in-vienna-1.1361651
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.644689
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/germany-annexes-austria
http://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2015/07/were-from-court-jews-of-vienna.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country

How Germany's Early Days Made Money Through Anti-Semitism

Nadene Goldfoot                                              

Mainz, Germany today.  In 1012, the Jews were expelled but soon returned.  They received protection then from the arch-bishop when crusaders came in 1096.  Even so, hundreds were murdered.  

The Holy Roman Empire was made up of much territory.  "The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it included the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and numerous other territories. The precise term "Holy Roman Empire" was not used until the 13th century."  So it really had nothing to do with the ancient Romans who burned down the Jewish 2nd Temple and Jerusalem, but consisted of the politics that followed them in the disposition  of Rome and their pagan powers.  

                                                                                   

Kingdom of Germany, Carolingian dynasty, Conradine dynasty, Ottonian dynasty, Arnulf, Louis IV,Conrad I, Henry I, Otto I

Jews were not allowed to own land anyplace.  They were labeled as Christ Killers in the Holy Roman Empire.  Jews were not allowed to follow any profession, and about the only thing they were allowed to do was to loan money.  This was because it was considered a despicable business for the Christians, who were kept from it by their church.  Jews had been traders even when living in their holy land of Judah and many had dealt with trading on the Silk Road, taking them to far corners of the earth.  When Jerusalem fell in 70 CE, Jews were not even allowed to continue trying to live in Jerusalem or its suburbs since it was burnt down by the Romans.  They couldn't come back in and refurbish their own city.  Anyway, most were taken as slaves to Rome.  From there, some lucky ones finally made their way next door to France and then of course, Germany by the 1000's.
                                                                           

Jews of Germany and their forced clothing for identification

RASHI 

Take RASHI.  This is the famous abbreviation for Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki, son of Isaac who was born in 1040 and died in 1105.  He was a French rabbinical scholar and teacher.  He had studied in the Rhineland (Germany) but also lived in Troyes, France where he had established his own school to teach his philosophy and thoughts on Judaism.  His school received a wide reputation.  The center in the Rhineland that he lived in was in the city of Worms.  Many rabbis came to live there and to study.  The Jewish community was well established by the 11th century (1000s), so they must have arrived there in the 10th century.  Emperor Henry IV was loaned money by them.  In return, he gave them privileges most Jews did not get in 1074 and 1090 by granting them freedom in commercial dealings, security of property, and imperial protection.
                                                                           

1st Crusade: 1096-199 Attacked Jews in northern France and especially in the Rhineland in Mainz, Worms, Speyer, cologne, etc.  and then in Prague, later in Salonica causing messianic ferment.  Jerusalem was captured by them in 1099 and Jews and Karaites were massacred.  1147 was the start of the 2nd Crusade happening in France and the Rhineland started by a Monk, Rudolf.  

Along came the 1st Crusade and life changed forever.  Jews were slaughtered in Europe by the knights who were on their way to Palestine to kill the Muslims who had taken the Holy Land.  When they got there, they slaughtered the Jews, too, since they thought them vile along with the Muslims, and they all looked alike to them.  Then both Muslim and Jew fought together against the Crusaders.  Worms was decimated during this First Crusade.                                                                                  

                                                                     

3rd Crusade was in 1189 to 1192 had wide support in England where Jews were attacked.  , especially in York in 1190.  

In Heilbronn, 200 Jews were slaughtered, among them being Johanan ben Eliakim the rabbi and Rabbi Asher, the president of the community.  The city of Ulm used to have a large Jewish community and own cemetery.  The Jews there had once enjoyed certain privileges granted by the municipal law of 1274 which was in force in Ravensburg, too.
                                                                   

In 1320 was the shepherds' Crusade with widespread attacks on the Jews in southern France and northern Spain.  They reestablished it only to see it destroyed again in 1349 during the Black Death outbreaks where they were blamed for it.  

 By the 14th century, Jews were living in Baldern, Geislingen, Goppingen, Schwabisch Hall, Rohrbach, Hohenburg, Horb, Reutlingen, Rottweil, Stuttgart, Sulm, Tubingen, Vaihingen and Wolfegg.  The counts of Wurttemberg owed money to the Jews of Colmar and Schlettstadt.  Louis IV canceled their indebtedness in 1346.  Henry VII in 1311 did the same thing to his Jewish moneylenders and so did Louis the Bavarian in 1316 in the case of the citizens of Esslingen.  In other words, these people stiffed the bank by having the head man cancel all the debts, leaving the Jews without any compensation.
                                                                           

Jewish Moneylenders as depicted in Spain in 1300s. 

Lets look at what Germany was like in those days.  It was made up of separate kingdoms.  Wurttemberg was one of them located in SW Germany.  Jews had come to live there in 6 cities:.  They came to live in Bopfingen in 1241; Ulm in 1243;  Esslingen  and Oehringen in 1253;  Calw in 1284 and Weil in 1289.  Along came the knight, Rindfleisch, a Bavarian noble,  and his followers in 1298 and Jews were not only persecuted but massacred.  Rindfleisch led his men into a series of exterminatory attacks on the Jews throughout Franconia and the surrounding regions in 1298, after a Ritual Murder accusation at Rottingen.  Jews were always accused of such things in the Christian zeal to take revenge for killing Christ, as they kept saying.  Usually they would say that someone who had been murdered had been a Jew who did it needing blood to make matzos.  Knowing nothing of facts, Jews abhor blood and have kashrut laws as to how to eat meat without the blood as blood is forbidden in Judaism.  Because of Rindfleisch, 146 Jewish communities were annihilated.  In Wurttemberg alone, he had killed Jews in Creglingen, Ellwangen, Forchtenberg, Gartach, Goglingen, Ingelfingen, Kunzelsau, Leonberg, Mockmuhl, Mergentheim, Stetten, sindringen, Sontheim, Waldenburg, weinsberg, Widdern and Weikersheim.
                                                                        

How Jews were depicted

Bavaria was another southern German state.  Jews came to live in there during the same period as Wurttemberg. from at least the 10th century.  Major Jewish communities there were in Nuremberg, Augsburg, Regensburg, Furth, Munich, Pasau and Bamberg.  Jews were excluded from Upper Bavaria in 1276 and also suffered severely in the Rindfleisch massacres of 1298..  In the city of Armleder they suffered from persecution from 1336 to 1338 and were almost exterminated at the time of the Black Death in 1348 to 1349.  They were excluded altogether from 1551 to the 18th century.  In the early 19th century under most unfavorable conditions, many Jews left to go to the United States.  After all the horror of the Holocaust from 1939 to 1945, Jews returned and in 1990, 5,600 Jews were living in Bavaria.
                                                             

King Edward I who expelled Jews from England in 1290-1655 for 365 years.  

These kingdoms did not always get along with each other.  On the night of April 19, 1316, the Bavarian party of Ulm brought in their Bavarian troops into the city of Ulm.  Ulm today is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The city, whose population is estimated at almost 120,000 (2015), forms an urban district of its own and is the administrative seat of the Alb-Donau district. Ulm, founded around 850, is rich in history and traditions as a former Free Imperial City.  Free for who?  .Rumor was that a Jew helped them to sneak in.  The Austrian party, the majority, appeared  and drove out the Bavarians.  To remember the event of the Jewish treachery, the church instituted a mass, but this horrible exercise  ended  finally  6 years later.
                                                                       

     

Then the Bavarians gained possession of Ulm.  New persecutions of Jews broke out with the Jews now being charged with being the enemies of the Christians and with stealing and desecrating the host.  The host is the bread and wine used in their mass which is part of their Eucharist, and the bread represents Christ's body.  The knights almost annihilated the community of Esslingen in 1334.  Two years later, more knights persecuted the Jews in Hohenburg, Landenbach, Mergentheim, Weikersheim and Widdern.  The end of 1348 was even worse when the plague and the German ganaticism caused destruction on the Jewish communities of Baldern, bopfingen, ellwangen, Esslingen, Goppingen, Geislingen, Schwabisch Hall, Heilbronn, Hohebach, Horb, Krailsheim, Mengen, Mergentheim, Nagold, Oehringen, Ravensburg, Reutlingen, Rottweil, Stuttgart, Sulgen, Sulm, Ulm Vaihingen, Waldenburg, Weilderstadt, and Widdern.

This is how the kingdoms prospered on the lives of Jews.  The Jews of Ulm, for example, had to pay for protection with large sums to the municipal council, to the citizens, and to the counts of Helfenstein.  The money taken from the Jews became a bone of contention among the German cities, the emperor and the counts.  They all wanted money from Jews.  These inter-Gentile arguments led to renewed plundering of the Jews.

 The Jews by this time had some friends in high places, however, and some counts and rulers united against the plunderers.  Then the big man himself, the emperor, demanded his share in their plunder in 1374 and he was ignored.
                                                                       

Emperor and King of Bohemia Charles IV/Wenceslaus

 That caused the emperor to make war on these cities, and so he confiscated their possessions and compelled them to pay high taxes.  He was Charles IV (Czech: Karel IV., German: Karl IV., Latin: Carolus IV; 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus, who was the second King of Bohemia from the House of Luxembourg, and the first King of Bohemia to also become Holy Roman Emperor.  The city of Ulm couldn't raise the exorbitant sums demanded by the emperor, so the Jews came forward to help them out.  One of the Jews that helped was Sacklin, son in law of Moses of Ehlingen, who was a citizen of Ulm.  The emperor declared the Jews to be under the ban in order to exact money from the few wealthy ones still living in the city.  They had to pay large sums to have the edict  revoked.

By 1385, the federation of cities declared void all promissory notes held by the Jews within its jurisdiction.  In some cases the city released the Christian debtors from paying interest on their loans while in other cases it annulled part of the debt.  In 1387 the federation issued a decree that no German or Italian merchant could have money transactions with Jews.  Emperor Wenceslaus then canceled in 1390 all debts owing to the Jews, and demanded that the citizens owning money  pay him instead!

Their excuse in treating Jews so horribly was that they said that Jews, both their body and souls,  were the property of the emperor so he could do with them as he pleased.  He therefore said that the usury of the Jews had become intolerable.  The counts of Wurttemberg felt differently.  They permitted the Jews to live in Stuttgart in 1434; Kirchheim in 1435; Tubingen in 1459; Cannstadt and Goppingen in 1462, but on definitely stated conditions and of course, upon payment of large large taxes for protection.  They couldn't let the cash cow slip through their fingers, could they.  Count Ulrich  (1433-1480) was commissioned by the emperor to protect the Jews, but at the same time to rigorously suppress their usury.  The fines imposed were to be sent to the imperial treasury, another way of milking the Jews out of the money.  So, money flowed into the coffers of the count AND of the emperor.

Again in 1498 Jews were expulsed from the land.  Count Eberhard im Bart (1459-1496) was pronounced an enemy of the Jews.  He forced Jews out from Tubingen in 1477; and again in 1495-3 years after the Spanish edict of 1492, he decreed they were to be expelled from his lands.  He followed it up with his decree of June 14, 1498 and the Jews of Ulm who happened to be wealthy and educated, had to leave by August 6th of 1498.  The Jews could not take any property with them, and the emperor demanded that the people of Ulm had to mention him in their prayers because he had delivered them  from the Jews.

The Jews living in Ravensburg was a bad one, also.  A blood accusation was brought against them caused Emperor Sigismund to burn some Jews at the stake and to expel others in 1438.  Then years later in 1448 they were again admitted in and then expelled again in 1490.  Jews living in Heilbronn by 1414 were expelled by 1469.  7 years later the city council insisted on a general expulsion even though there was an imperial order to protect the Jews.  Jews were expelled from cities scattered among the villages and then often they would return to the urban communities.

Jews therefore were living in Gmund and Reutlingen in 1433;  in Brackenheim  and Nersheim in 1434;  in in Giengen in 1486;  and in Lauterburg, Pflaumloch and Uzmemmingen in 1491.

Between the late 1400s to 1806, no Jews lived in Ulm again.  Individual Jews were permitted to enter Ulm on a temporary basis, and the citizens were warned against having any business transactions with them.

When Wurttemberg (part of the German Federal Republic today)  became a dukedom, the treatment of the Jews was the same.  All money transactions with them were forbidden.  These ordinances were renewed and enforced.
                                                                 

Yoseph ben Gershom Loanz aka JOSEL OF ROSHEIM 1480-1554,
German communal leader and writer.
elected in 1510 by the Alsatian communities as their rep for the German Jewry
before the secular authorities, had to intercede in time of danger.  In 1532 he tried to
stem the dangerous activities of Solomon Molcho.  In 1543 he defended the Jews against the attacks of LUTHER.  

 Not even Josel of Rosheim, a great Jewish advocate for his people,  could travel through the country.  Strict ordinances were issued regarding the Jewish commercial and religious status.  In 1536 Jews traveling through the country were under great stresses and attacks, and no attention was paid to the repeated imperial edicts for their protection.  Josel was able to regulate the convoy charges of traveling Jews, but Duke Christoph, who gave him the agreement, was so much of an enemy to the Jews that in the Reichstag of Augsburg in 1559, he advocated their expulsion from Germany.

Frederick I (1593-1608) faced the most violent opposition against establishing a Jewish mercantile association under the direction of Abraham Calorno and Maggino Gabrieli but failed miserably.  It never came about.

Eberhard Ludwig reigned (1677-1733) who had a good attitude towards Jews.  He permitted them to go to the fairs in 1706 and to trade in horses in 1707.  The Countess of Wurben got free trade for the Jews of Freudenthal in 1728 and for those of Gochsheim in 1729.
                                                                   

Joseph ben Issachar Susskind or Joseph Suss Oppenheimer

         Under Carl Alexander (1733-1737) Joseph Suss Oppenheimer (1698-1738) was appointed a privy factor, and so a financial councilor to the duke, and through his influence, several Jews were permitted to live in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg.  Oppenheimer tried to consolidate the duchy's finances and free its ruler from dependence on grants from the estates.  His modern financial methods aroused much opposition and when the duke died, he was accused of embezzling state finances.

Oppenheimer's subserviency to the duke caused him the enmity of the people.  When the duke died in 1737, he was in trouble.  He was disgraced and executed in 1738 by hanging in Stuttgart, accused instead of having sexual relations with Christian women, something strictly against the law.    He refused to save his own life by accepting baptism to Christianity.  .   The next year, all Jews were mercilessly expelled but soon permitted to return. Jews had been there since 1521 and then expelled by law and came and resettled again at the end of the 1600s.   However, they were severely restricted in their Judaism as well as in their business.  People were warned against from having any dealings with them concerning money.  Court factors were treated more leniently, and important government contracts were given to them in 1759, 1761, 1764 in spite of objections from the masses.  it took until 1864 that Jews of Wurttemberg received equal rights with gentiles.  In 1933, there were 10,023 Jews living in Wurttemberg and then, the Holocaust starting strongly by 1939.  By 1990 there were only a few hundred Jews there.

Karl Eugen, Ludwig (1793-1795) and Friedricfh (1795-1797) treated Jews considerately.  These rulers were the last of the line of Catholic dukes.  Under the succeeding Protestant regime, a new era dawned for the Jews of Wurttemberg, and all of Germany.

Resource: Jewish Encyclopedia on Wurttemberg by Isidore Singer and Theodor Kroner
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eucharist_in_the_Catholic_Church
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire