Eastern Europe
The Jews population in Eastern Europe was the largest. For example, it counted approximately 3,000,000 Jews in Poland, 2,500,000 in Russia, and 1,000,000 in Romania. The unique feature of Eastern Jewish communities was their desire for autonomy inside their countries. At the dawn of the 20th century, Jews mostly stayed in their towns or villages called shtetls and spoke Yiddish, a mix of Hebrew and German. Moreover, they read Yiddish books, attended Yiddish theatres and movies, and wore traditional clothes – hats or caps for men, wigs or kerchiefs for women. Despite the younger Jews eventually moving to the bigger cities and in some way adopting the different cultural features, overall, Jews lived a separate life of a minority within the culture of the majority.
In comparison to other minorities in the country, which were either ambivalent or neutral, the Jewish community in Poland actively participated in the fight for Poland’s independence between 1914 and 1918. Although some Jews left the country following the Polish-Russian conflicts, their population in Poland remained the most numerous. They built schools, printed newspapers, formed political parties, and even achieved representation in the Polish Sejm – the Polish Parliament.
The Jews in Russia also showed deep concerns for their host-country future. When the Russian Civil War began, they mostly supported the Bolshevik Red Army since the non-communist forces often displayed anti-Semitic behavior. Following the civil war, the Bolshevik government outlawed all expressions of Anti-Semitism and supported the secular Jewish culture. It invested in the infrastructure that provided Jews with workplaces on farms and fabrics. In 1934, the Soviet Union established the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in the far East. Similar to Poland, Jews were well-represented in the state administration and the army.
Western Europe
In comparison to their Eastern representatives, Western Jewish communities were few. Slightly over 500,000 lived in Germany and roughly 100,000 in France. They also chose to live another way, trying to adopt the culture of their host countries. They dressed and talked like the people around them, tended to be better educated than Jews of Eastern Europe, and lived in towns and cities. By proving to be competitive to the natives, they invoked the feeling of envy, which served as a foothold for the later anti-Semitic moods.
The Jews in pre-nazi Germany played a significant role in politics, and diplomacy had a solid ground in the financial, economic, and cultural ways. In the year 1933 thought, the persecution of the Jews became a new national policy. It began by taking away the ability to be employed in privileged upper-level positions, such as doctors and lawyers, also banning the Jews from shops, stores, and eventually the government. In 1935, following the appearance of anti-Semitic propaganda and the further tightening of the employment situation. The Jews in Germany faced a choice – either leave Germany or go into hiding.
In France, a relatively small community of Jews was based in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. They were well-represented in the city’s business, financial, and intellectual elite. In addition, the Jews considered themselves fully a part of French culture. France had to face several waves of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the following decades. The newcomers showed no desire for integration and collaboration, which provoked anti-Semitic moods in the country at first and facilitated extremism during the german occupation after 1940.
Summary
Despite their differences, the Eastern and Western Jewish communities eventually shared the same fate – with the rise of Nazis in Germany, they all became gravely endangered. Nazis launched the Holocaust company, killing countless Jews on the occupied territories and building the death camps, where they brought survivors from all parts of Europe. This act of brutality changed the lives of Jews forever, no matter where they lived before or how they chose to live.