This morning, I chaperoned a field trip of my older son's Grade 6 Class to New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage (often incorrectly called the "Holocaust Museum"). Because of the age of the children, we did not visit the Holocaust section. That did not preserve me from breaking down and sobbing in the museum's displays.
We were in the display of Jewish folkways of Germany and Eastern Europe. The display consisted largely of sepia photos of Jewish weddings, tailor shops, and other mundane items from Europe during the period from 1880 through 1920. The pictures had names of people, invariably very Yiddish or Jewish names, straight out of "Fiddler on the Roof".
Most of them were evidently decent, simple, solid citizens who valued schooling and literacy, and were trying to preserve a precarious life. While the spread of democracy, and/or the softening of the monarchies of Germany and Austria-Hungary resulted in the loosening of official restrictions against Jews' participation in occupations, and voting, the results were horrific. Basically, the other common folk, seeing the advantages that the Jews' social cohesiveness and universal literacy created, ratcheted up the long-latent hatred of Jews. Basically, all h*** quickly broke loose, resulting in:
[a]Incidents of rioting and spontaneous attacks on Jews;
[b]Massive emigration to the "New Worlds" of the US, Canada and Australia, in approximate numbers of 6-10 million; and
[c]Ultimately, the Holocaust
When I viewed those pictures, and read the names of the ordinary Jews, I unaccountably and suddenly broke down sobbing. I know that some of those communities (3 million in Poland as of 1939) were essentially liquidated. The lucky ones made it to the blessed countries of the "New World". G-d Bless the USA, Canada and Australia.