Jews

Jews are practicioners of the religion of Judaism and tend to belong to the same ethnic group.

Jews in In the Presence of Mine Enemies
The destruction of the Jews was key policy of Fuhrer 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 World War II, 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 Judaism in secret, although some of the most definitive aspects of Judiasm had long ago died been abandoned out of necessity. Other rituals were adopted to insure the continued survival of the Jewish people. After their tenth birthday, children who had always believed themselves to be good Aryans and despised the Jews were informed that they were in fact Jewish.

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

European Jews
Jews in Germany have been free to live and practice their religion largely unmolested.

In Russia during the Second Great War, Tsar Mikhail II instituted genocidal measures against the Jews, because many took part in the Russian Revolution that overthrew his brother Nicholas II and forced Russia to withdraw from the Great War. 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.

In France, it is believed that King Charles XI has limited the political and civil liberties of Jews along with Protestants and Freemasons.

American Jews
Jews were largely free from overt discrimination both in the United States and the Confederate States. Jews rose to political prominence in both countries' governments: Congresswoman and former First Lady Flora Hamburger in the US, Freedomite director of propaganda 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 would have been scapegoated for such a disaster--as happened in Russia under Tsar Mikhail II.

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.

Polish Jews
Poland's Jews were being persecuted by Germany when the Race's Conquest Fleet invaded. They had been forced to live in ghettos and were being relocated to concentration camps when the Lizards 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 atomic bomb which Otto Skorzeny had smuggled into Lodz after the Peace of Cairo had been signed. 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. 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 Holocaust. They failed to do so because the bomb had ceased to function for lack of proper maintenence.

Germany
In Germany, Jews were subject to genocidal policies by the Nazi government despite political pressures from the Race.

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.

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

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 the Race's territory, the United States, or Canada, where they were able to live and practice their faith largely unmolested.

The United States
In the United States, Jews did well for themselves and practiced their religion freely, a benefit of the Free Exercise Clause. 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.