It was a turning point as it made me ask THE question,why did the Jews not fight back against such horrible crimes.
My answer was to see that generations of allowing 'progroms' allowed the average Jewish family to stay their hand and be abused.
The reason is they were optimistic that it could be resolved. First that they were just going to ghettos temporarily. Then that they were just going to labor camps and it was temporary. That if they went with the program they wouldn't be killed.
It is similar to the crime victim that thinks if they just cooperate they will be okay. Typically that is correct, until it isn't. When it isn't that cooperation that allowed the predator to get into a position of even more advantage means fighting back is even less likely to be successful.
You saw that in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Fighting back by that time was a lot less successful than if those rounding people up had been fought initially, and those behind the roundups had been counter attacked.
Pogroms also don't get proper historical context in modern times with our PC society.
The reason for many pogroms dating back centuries had to do with Jews being in control of a lot of banking dating back to the middle ages in Europe.
The reason for this was that it was a crime in many places for christians to loan money for interest. Merely loaning money for interest was considered the sin of usery (today it is a more defined legal term for excessive interest). At a time when the christian church had both its own courts, and a lot of influence in law.
A christian loaning money for interest could be tried and convicted of a crime.
Jews however were often not held to those standards, winning the freedom to operate outside of the christian courts or being given various exemptions.
This allowed Jews to give loans that the Christian majority legally often couldn't, or in other places where not outright outlawed would be considered a sinner.
This meant Jews got an early start in banking before the merchant class became dominant and consumerism widespread. So they were the dominant force many places even afterwards.
This had many obvious benefits.
However it also had a very big downside.
That downside is when economies got tough, and people had a lot of debt. Those the population was in debt to for amounts they didn't want to or could not pay back become hated and despised. The fact that they are a different culture and religion with different customs and values just allows that to get even stronger as it became clear people were in debt primarily to jews.
This would result in most of the various pogroms at times, as the christian majority would lash out at the jewish minority.
So it was not merely a racial thing, but often a financial thing that could be expressed through racism.
As for Jews and guns. I am glad to see more embracing firearms. Many of the biggest antis in power in our country are jews, so it is certainly good to see strong pro-gun jews as well.
We have some great strong Jewish supporters of our rights.
With a history of trouble with various populations I would think Jews would be one of the segments of the population most desiring to be armed.
I discuss the issue in one of my sig links.
