Chapter 1. A Time of Crisis: 1929-1932
[1.5. Eastern Europe:
Crop failures, nationalism and economic crisis provoke harsh
anti-Semitism since 1928/1929]
[1928/9: Eastern Europe: Crop
failure - destabilization of Jewry economically and politically -
government actions against Jews]
Masses of Jews were living under the most unsettled circumstances,
economic and political. After the crises of 1924-26, another general
crop failure in 1928/9 all over Eastern Europe affected the economies
of those countries. The Jewish middle class was still largely dependent
on small trading operations involving the village-town relationship,
and as peasants all over Eastern Europe became economically weaker, the
Jewish position became increasingly precarious.
This also affected the political position of the Jews. Since the
peasants formed the majority of the population in all these countries,
the various governments made efforts to assuage them. Their direct
economic relations with the Jews and their inability to pay the Jewish
traders and artisans turned the peasant-Jewish relationship into
political antagonism, expressed in nationalism and anti-Semitism among
large sections of the population. While these tendencies had been
ingrained among the population for centuries, they were virulently
expressed when economic crisis and increased nationalism coincided in
the late 1920s. (p.28)
