Jews

Jews are practitioners of the religion of Judaism or non-religious members of the Jewish ethnic group. Harry Turtledove has often stated that he is of the latter category.

Nazis (and certain other anti-Semitic groups) regard - and persecute - ethnic Jews as Jewish, even though these people may not regard themselves as Jewish, and may even actively believe in and practice Christianity or another religion.

Literary comment
It can be assumed that Turtledove's own background is a crucial influential element in his frequent literary treatment of Jewish characters and the Jews in general.

Jews in "Before the Beginning"
Nearly all of Earth's population declared themselves Jewish and converted to Judaism after Jacob Dreyfus discovered that the Jews were indeed God's chosen people.

Jews in In High Places
In an alternate where the Great Black Deaths killed 4/5 of the population of Europe, the Jews were treated with suspicion and hatred by Europeans into the late 21st century. Thus, the Klein family disguised themselves as Arabs when they traded in that alternate.

Jacques, a native of that alternate, had to overcome certain of his prejudices (among them the belief that Jews were only good for throwing stones at) when he decided to stay in the home timeline, as well as continue his friendship with Annette Klein.

The history of the alternate where the two were held as slaves had diverged with Rome's defeat in the Samnite Wars. At that time, Jews  have already had several centuries of history in Palestine and neighboring countries. It remained unknown how Jews fared later, with no Roman Empire to conquer them, destroy the Temple in Jerusalem and disperse them throughout its territory. Jacques and Annette did not encounter any Jews in that world's Spain. Whether any Jews remained elsewhere would remain unanswered pending the Home Timeline sending an expedition to this world's Palestine and Middle East - which seemed rather low on its list of priorities.

Jews in "The Last Article"
Having emerged victorious from World War II, Nazi Germany embarked on a programme of mass extermination of the European Jews. By 1947, the refugee Simon Wiesenthal was able to escape from Poland to India and informed Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru of the situation in Europe. Gandhi did not believe Wiesenthal's claims as he was convinced that such actions would lead to a country's ruination. Nehru suspected otherwise and challenged Gandhi to find one Jewish soldier among the German occupation force. Gandhi noted that the British had had little use for Jews either. While Nehru agreed with this assessment, he pointed out that the British would never have banned Jews from serving in their military as the Germans had done.

Jews in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
The destruction of the Jews was a key policy of Führer Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Upon assuming control of Germany, the Nazis very quickly put into place laws that stripped Jews of many of their rights, including their German citizenship. Eventually, the Nazis moved on to out-and-out extermination of the Jews.

With the Axis emerging victorious from Second World War, and with Germany in physical control of most of Europe, the Nazis had a free hand, hunting the Jews virutally to extinction. Moreover, Germany pressured their allies to implement similar policies within their own borders. When Germany and its ally Japan defeated the United States during the Third World War, the Jews of North America were also subject to genocide.

Jews became mythological monsters in German society, and the state made certain that this notion was perpetuated, even after the bulk of the Jews had been killed. The education system routinely delivered history lessons underscoring Jewish "villainy". In casual conversation, people still enjoyed taking pot-shots at the Jews, even in the most extraneous situations. To be denounced as a Jew was a death sentence. There were no vestiges of Jews left beyond ugly stereotypes and caricatures.

Nonetheless, in the year 2010, after 70 years of Nazi global domination, Jews survived, hiding in plain sight. Members of the Jewish community who survived a lifetime of genocide created non-Jewish identities for themselves and their families. Thus, Jews filled many facets of society, including the governmental bureaucracy.

Some Jews continued to practice a restricted form of Judaism in secret, although some of the most definitive aspects of Judiasm had long ago been abandoned out of necessity - such as circumcision, hitherto a central tenet of Judaism but a too obvious means of identifying (male) Jews to be practiced. Other rituals were adopted to insure the continued survival of the Jewish people. For example, children who had always believed themselves to be good Aryans and despised the Jews were informed that they were in fact Jewish upon reaching their tenth birthday.

The hidden Jews of Berlin speculated that there might be other hidden Jews elsewhere in the world; for example, Susanna Weiss thought that a French professor which she met in London might be a hidden Jew. However, there was no way for different groups of hidden Jews to contact each other without risking discovery and death, so these speculations remained such.

In 2010, the Wehrmacht discovered three Jewish families who had been hidden by a Serbian village and who did practice circumcision. The families and their Serbian protectors were put to death. Heinrich Gimpel, hearing this news which was featured prominently on the German TV news, mentally recited the Jewish Prayer for the Dead while pretending to continue his normal work.

The reforms instituted by Führer Heinz Buckliger in 2010 offered many of the secret Jews of Germany cautious hope.

Jews in "In This Season"
The three Jewish families of German-controlled Puck, Poland, were saved by the intervention of a golem during Chanukah, 1939.

Jews in Joe Steele
President Joe Steele distrusted Jews. The revelation that Albert Einstein knew about the atomic bomb in 1946 spelled the death of several Jewish scientists. Still, Steele never took persecution of the Jews in the United States to the same level Germany had.

Jews in "The More it Changes"
Although Sabbatai Tzevi had himself been a Jew, the Jews of Souteastern Europe were subject to violent attacks by Tzevi's followers throughout the 18th Century, as were other religions. In 1773, the Jews of Kolomija joined their Polish-Catholic neighbors in a doomed effort to fight off an attack by Sabbatean haidamacks.

Jews in "Next Year in Jerusalem"
The Jews experienced a Second Diaspora in the twenty-first century when the State of Israel's enemies finally defeated it. While many Jews remained under Muslim rule, most fled for other countries.

The global Jewish community was somewhat split over their future. A substantial number, particularly those who'd grown up in exile, longed for the reconsistution of Israel. To this end, they formed the Second Irgun.

However, many Jews living in Palestine decided that they could never have defeated the Muslims forever, and so decided accepting their domination was in their best interests.

Jews in "Occupation Duty"
The Evraioi were a Semite people in the Middle East along with the Arabs, the Aramaeans, the Phoenicians and the Moabites. They were closely allied with Moab, such that when the Philistines invaded and their champion Lord Goliath sought single combat, Tabitas of the Evraioi came forward. He was defeated by Goliath.

Jews in "Shtetl Days"
After Nazi Germany emerged victorious from the War of Retribution, the German Empire oversaw the extermination of the Jews everywhere. While doing so, the Nazis made meticulous records of the people they exterminated. Thus, in the 21st Century, the German Empire permitted the re-creation of shtetls, populated by Aryan actors playing the parts of Jews. These re-created shtetls became tourist attractions.

In the shtetl of Wawolnice, the actors played various roles common in a late 19th Century Jewish community. They spoke in Yiddish and Hebrew and scrupulously observed the tenets of Judaism. They were even subject to mock "pogroms", wherein certain parts of the town were burned, and German convicts were allowed to be murdered.

However, the actors became so immersed in their re-creations that within time, they came to identify with their characters more than with their German identities. In this way, the Jews were quietly reborn.

European Jews
Jews in Germany were free to live and practice their religion largely unmolested. Indeed, during the Second Great War, many of the key figures of the German superbomb project (such as Albert Einstein) were Jewish.

In Russia, particularly during the Second Great War, Tsar Mikhail II allowed renewed pogroms against the Jews at the hands of the Black Hundreds, because many Jews took part in the Russian Revolution that overthrew his brother Nicholas II and forced Russia to withdraw from the Great War. The Germans supported Jewish guerrillas resisting the Russian government from within its territory as well as several other minority groups, including the Finns and the Chechens.

In Poland, where Poles were divided in their loyalties, Jews overwhelmingly supported the German client Kingdom of Poland against the Russians, whose genocidal policies they feared. Poland did not have its own history of pogroms, though rumors of one spread during Russia's revitalization of anti-Judaism hostilities.

In France, King Charles XI limited the political and civil liberties of Jews along with Protestants and Freemasons.

In Britain, despite the revanchist tendencies of the Silver Shirts, the Jews went largely unmolested. Instead the Irish were usually the target of British wrath.

North American Jews
Jews were largely free from overt discrimination both in the United States and the Confederate States but still looked down upon by the WASPs. Jews rose to political prominence in both countries' governments: Congresswoman and former First Lady Flora Blackford in the US, Freedomite Director of Communications Saul Goldman in the CS.

In the Confederacy, many Jews supported the Freedom Party because the party broke with historical tradition: it did not scapegoat Jews for the Confederacy's defeat in the Great War, but instead targeted blacks. In countries from which Jewish immigrants fled to the CS, they themselves had been scapegoated for the problems that plagued the country and the social and economic levels--as happened in Russia under Tsar Mikhail II. (Saul Goldman himself thanked Jake Featherston early in the latter's career for not demonizing Jews; in 1944, Goldman began to vaguely realize that the tribulations of the blacks in the CS were not that much different from the problems faced by Jews in the past. It did him no good; he was executed for crimes against humanity in 1945.)

As of 1917, New York City's Lower East Side was the only area in the world in which Jews made up a majority of the population.

Jews in "The Barbecue, the Movie, & Other Unfortunately Not So Relevant Material"
T.G. Kahn had a menorah as a decoration on his coffee table in his condo. When he brought Lasoparop Rof home with him, the latter examined it and stated that it was a strange coincidence, that if he had seen it in his own time he would have thought Kahn was Jewish. This indicated that Judaism had survived the 50 or 60 millennia to Lasoparop's own time.

Jews in Thessalonica
The Jews of Thessalonica mostly lived in the southwestern part of the city and dominated the bronze and coppersmithing trades. They were subject to considerable prejudice by many of the city's Christian population, though at time of the Emperor Maurice, when the city was besieged by Slavs and Avars, there was no active persecution. For their part the Jews, though cordial to non-Jewish customers in their shops, avoided closer social contacts with them.

Claudia, the wife of Dactilius the jeweller, was especially outspoken in her hatred of the Jews, and would have liked to "give them to the Slavs and Avars", were that possible. George the shoemaker, who anyway disliked Claudia, was especially annoyed with this. George himself was free of prejudice and always tried to be fair to the Jews. George liked Benjamin the Coppersmith, from whom he was regularly buying buckles for sandals, and would have liked Benjamin to consider him a friend as well as customer.

During the siege, Benjamin contributed to the city's defense by producing, at the order of Bishop Eusebius, high-quality bronze arrowheads, as did others of the Jewish artisans.

The Slav and Avar magicians who launched various supernatural attacks on Thessalonica had some knowledge of the Christian God and Saints protecting Thessalonica, and used magic which had some chance of working against a Christian city. But until coming to Thessalonica they had never encountered Jews and had no knowledge of the Jewish God defending his worshipers in the city. Therefore, the attack by a Slavic water elemental whose avatars burst out from various cisterns in the city was not manifested in the Jewish quarter. Similarly, when an Avar Fire goddess was invoked for a spell putting off fires in the city, this did not affect the Jews. George went to the Jewish Quarter and got a fire from Benjamin, which he used to help light fires in various other parts of the city.

When the Slavs and Avars were routed and the siege removed, Jews were included in the general celebrating in the streets, prejudice against them being for the moment put aside - which the Jews found quite bewildering.

Jews in The Two Georges
There were only a small number of Jews living in the North American Union. With a stable conservative status quo maintained in Europe for centuries, and no large-scale wars or revolutions, there were also no major incidents of antisemitic persecution and thus no strong incentive for Jews to emigrate across the Atlantic. The Jews who lived in North America suffered some harassment from the racist "Sons of Liberty" underground, but most of its attacks were directed at bigger and more prominent non-WASP ethnic groups.

Jews in The War That Came Early
By the time of the outbreak of the European War in September-October 1938, German Jews had been living for more than five years under constant and ever-increasing Nazi harassment, discrimination and exclusion from the rest of German society. With the outbreak of war, Jews were prohibited from using air-raid shelters, leaving them vulnerable to British and French air raids. Jews were excluded from joining the Wehrmacht, despite the fact that many Jews were patriotic Germans and were still willing to fight for a country which treated them so badly, and even if they served with distinction in the First World War and were still physically fit.

The conquest of Czechoslovakia was accompanied by random attacks on Jews which the conquerors encountered. Later on, all Czech Jews were forced to leave their homes and move into the old fortress city of Theresienstadt - the kind of measure not enacted against Jews in Germany itself.

Later on, Germany conquered Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, exposing the Jews of these countries to Nazi persecution. The same seemed true for Jews in much of northern France, but fortunately for them German occupation there proved short-lived.

The three million Jews of Poland - Europe's largest community, by far - had for decades faced endemic manifestations of antisemitism, which in turn often influenced government policies. Their situation had not significantly changed due to the outbreak of war and to Poland becoming Nazi Germany's ally. While the Nazis did often make suggestions to the Polish government about imposing restrictions on Polish Jews similar to those imposed by Germany, the Poles refused and were quite adamant that Germany not interfere with Poland's Jewish population.

When German forces advanced into Soviet territory throughout 1939 and into 1940, there were rumors of their perpetrating large-scale massacres of the Jews they found there, but there was no firm information. While French and British forces were fighting in Russia on Germany's side, they sometimes tried to protect the Jews - but with their changing sides again in 1941, the Jews lost that protection.

With Germany once again fighting a two front war from 1942 on, discontent began to fester. Münich was a center, led in part by Bishop Clemens August von Galen, who was critical of the Nazis' euthanasia programs. Finally, Hitler overplayed his hand when the government arrested von Galen, prompting a round of demonstrations in Münster. In the spring of 1943, another demonstration in the square outside of Münster's cathedral erupted into violence when police officers fired on the crowd. While several protesters were shot, other were able to charge the line of police, inflicting damage in return. In response, the German government sent the SS into Münster, who fortified the cathedral. While the people of Münster publicly accepted martial law, resentment boiled just below the surface. Moreover, German citizens began to regret the anti-Semitism of the Nazis, and quietly made shows of solidarity of Jews.

The Nazis responded by doubling down on their anti-Semitism, blaming a Jewish conspiracy for the Münster uprisings. In the closing days of 1943, Hitler launched a war with the United States. This prompted several military leaders to form the Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation, with General Heinz Guderian as their leader. When Hitler decided to broadcast a speech from Münster in an attempt to regain the country's trust, the group successfully assassinated him with a bomb, despite the heavy security measures the SS put into place.

A civil war broke out almost immediately. Several of Hitler's would-be successors were arrested or killed. Ultimately, Guderian and the Committee triumphed. Their victory saw the end of the country's anti-Semitic policies. News broadcasts included uncomplimentary reports about Germany and emphasized the crimes and cruelty of the SS and SD. It also quietly revoked the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 which effectively restored citizenship to Jews rather than treating them as residents without rights. It also removed the requirement that Jews have the yellow star of David on their clothing in public.

Thus after a decade of fear and persecution, the Jews of Germany began to rebuild their place in their country.

Polish Jews
Poland's Jews were being persecuted by Germany when the Race's Conquest Fleet invaded. They had been forced to live in ghettoes and were being relocated to concentration camps when the Race drove German forces out of Poland. The Race supported a Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, and most Polish Jews supported the Race in the ensuing war with the major human powers, though the Jewish militia under Mordechai Anielewicz briefly opposed the Race. When the war ended with the Peace of Cairo (an agreement in which former Polish Jew Moishe Russie played a role as advisor to Atvar), Jews lived comfortably under the Race in Poland, and Anielewicz promised to use his militia to defend the Race's colonies in Poland against either Germany or the Soviet Union should ever become necessary. In 1965, when Germany invaded Poland, he delivered on his promise and submitted his forces to the Conquest Fleet's chain of command. With the Polish militia, which was also loyal to the Race, they made up the majority of the Race's infantry units in Poland during Germany's brief but costly invasion.

Anieliewicz's militia had taken control of a German explosive-metal bomb which Otto Skorzeny had smuggled into Lodz while the Peace of Cairo was being completed. This was the one weapon in his arsenal which Anielewicz refused to put under the Conquest Fleet's chain of command during the Race-German War of 1965. Anielewicz lost track of the weapon during the war, and it fell into the hands of a group of radical Jewish fundamentalists who smuggled it into Germany and attempted to detonate it as revenge for the mass murder of Jews. They failed to do so because the bomb had ceased to function for lack of proper maintenence.

Britain
Jews in Britain had served their country faithfully both in World War II and the war against the Race. However, as Britain gradually came under the sway of Germany, Jews were slowly disenfranchised, and many emigrated either to Palestine in the Race's territory, the United States, or Canada, where they were able to live and practice their faith largely unmolested. It is unknown whether this antisemitic trend in Britain continued also after Germany's crushing defeat by the Race in 1965.

Germany
In Germany, Jews were subject to genocidal policies by the Nazi government despite political pressures from the Race. As Jews were prominently city dwellers, surviving hidden Jews were also among the victims of the mass nuclear bombing of Germany by the Race in the war of 1965.

Jews who survived both mass murder and nuclear war no longer needed to worry about the apparatus of the Nazi state, which was broken up and discredited - but still had to keep their identity secret. The surviving German population, which had experienced Nazi indoctrination for three decades, was living in terrible sqaulor at a destroyed and radioatively contimanted land - conditions highly conductive to scapegoating and witch hunts.

The Race's Territory
Jews in the Middle East largely supported the Race over the British. They lived comfortably in the Race-controlled Middle East after the Peace of Cairo. They were frequently forced to contend with sectarian tensions with Muslims, who largely opposed the Race's rule in the Middle East. Jews were also treated well by the Race in other areas it had conquered and colonized. However, when the Race began taxing "superstitions" other than emperor-worship in the early 1960s, they were steadfast in their rejection of the alien religion.

The Soviet Union
In the Soviet Union, the Jews were fairly prominent politically. They supported the Communist government.

The United States
In the United States, Jews did well for themselves and practiced their religion freely, a benefit of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. Many Jews from other parts of the world, notably Germany and Britain, attempted to emigrate to the US. Some succeeded, but the US tightly controlled its immigration policies.

Jews in Atlantis
Jews were a part of Atlantis both during its settlement period and after the formation of the United States of Atlantis. While Atlantean settlements were capable of broad tolerance, nonetheless, Jews met with some of the same hostility that they had met in the Old World.

During the Atlantean War of Independence, merchant Benjamin Benveniste, the sole Jewish member of the Atlantean Assembly, loaned the government enough money to keep it going during the war. No less than Victor Radcliff himself expressed his belief that the United States of Atlantis would maintain religious toleration. Nonetheless, by the mid-19th Century, it was still an article of faith that a Jew could only go so far in Atlantis, regardless of his or her talents.

During his visit to Atlantis, Athelstan Helms disclosed that he had investigated the accusations made in Russia that Jews practiced ritual murder, and found all such assertions to be completely baseless. This experience made Helms more skeptical about the accusations of religiously-motivated murder made against the House of Universal Devotion.