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Belgian Jews
The history of the Jews in Belgium goes back to the 1st century CE until today. The Jewish community numbered 66,000 on the eve of the Second World War but after the war and the Holocaust, now is less than half that number. Today, Belgium is home to more than 29,000 Jews, of whom two-thirds History of the Jews in Antwerp, live in Antwerp. History Early history The first Jews to arrive in the present-day territory of Belgium arrived with the Ancient Rome, Romans between the years 50 and 60 AD. Jews were mentioned in the Middle Ages in Duchy of Brabant, Brabant, and in 1261 Henry III, Duke of Brabant, Duke Henry III ordered the expulsion of Jews and usurers from the province. The Jewish community suffered further during the Crusades, as many Jews who refused to be baptised were put to death. This early community mostly disappeared after the Black Death persecutions 1348–1350, and finally the Brussels massacre, 1370. Sephardim In the 16th century, many Sephardic Jews who had ...
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The Holocaust
The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz concentration camp#Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka extermination camp, Treblinka, Belzec extermination camp, Belzec, Sobibor extermination camp, Sobibor, and Chełmno extermination camp, Chełmno in Occupation of Poland (1939–1945), occupied Poland. Separate Nazi persecutions killed a similar or larger number of non-Jewish civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); the term ''Holocaust'' is sometimes used to include the murder and persecution of Victims of Nazi ...
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History Of The Jews In Antwerp
The history of the Jews in Antwerp, a major city in the modern country of Belgium, goes back at least eight hundred years. Jewish life was first recorded in the city in the High Middle Ages. While the Jewish population grew and waned over the centuries, by the beginning of World War II Antwerp had a thriving Jewish community comprising some 35,000, with many Jews connected to the city's diamond industry. The Nazi occupation of Antwerp from 1940 and The Holocaust decimated the city’s Jewish population. By the time of Antwerp's liberation in September 1944, the Jewish population had fallen to around 1,200. Since then, Antwerp’s Jewish community has rebounded to become a major European centre of Haredi (and particularly Hasidic) Orthodox Judaism. Antwerp is now one of only two cities in Europe (together with London) that is home to a considerable Haredi population in the 21st century. In 2018, there were around 20,000 Haredi Jews living in Antwerp (of which around 10,000 are H ...
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History Of The Jews In Portugal
History is the systematic study of the past, focusing primarily on the human past. As an academic discipline, it analyses and interprets evidence to construct narratives about what happened and explain why it happened. Some theorists categorize history as a social science, while others see it as part of the humanities or consider it a hybrid discipline. Similar debates surround the purpose of history—for example, whether its main aim is theoretical, to uncover the truth, or practical, to learn lessons from the past. In a more general sense, the term ''history'' refers not to an academic field but to the past itself, times in the past, or to individual texts about the past. Historical research relies on primary and secondary sources to reconstruct past events and validate interpretations. Source criticism is used to evaluate these sources, assessing their authenticity, content, and reliability. Historians strive to integrate the perspectives of several sources to devel ...
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Expulsion Of Jews From Spain
The Expulsion of Jews from Spain was the expulsion of practicing Jews following the Alhambra Decree in 1492, which was enacted to eliminate their influence on Spain's large ''converso'' population and to ensure its members did not revert to Judaism. Over half of Spain's Jews had converted to Catholicism as a result of the Massacre of 1391. Due to continuing attacks, around 50,000 more had converted by 1415. Many of those who remained decided to convert to avoid expulsion. As a result of the Alhambra decree and the prior persecution, over 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism, and between 40,000 and 100,000 were expelled. An unknown number returned to Spain in the following years. The expulsion led to mass migration of Jews from Spain to France, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Mediterranean Basin. One result of the migration was new Jewish surnames appearing in Italy and Greece. The surnames Faraggi, Farag and Farachi, for example, originated from the Spanish city of Fraga. In 1924 ...
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Persecution Of Jews And Muslims By Manuel I Of Portugal
On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal signed the decree of expulsion of Jews and Muslims to take effect by the end of October of the next year.António José Saraiva: The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisition and Its New Christians 1536-1765, BRILL, 2001, , p. 10-12. Background Until the 15th century, some Jews occupied prominent places in Portuguese political and economic life. For example, Isaac Abrabanel was the treasurer of King Afonso V of Portugal. Many also had an active role in Portuguese culture, and they kept their reputation of diplomats and merchants. By this time, Lisbon and Évora were home to important Jewish communities. The Jewish community, along with the Moors, had control in Spain as well, until around 1478 when Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had started buying the land that anyone who was not Catholic had controlled. Expulsion of Jews On 5 December 1496, King Manuel I of Portugal decreed that all Jews must convert to Catholicism or ...
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Sephardic Jews
Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendants. The term "Sephardic" comes from '' Sepharad'', the Hebrew word for Iberia. These communities flourished for centuries in Iberia until they were expelled in the late 15th century. Over time, "Sephardic" has also come to refer more broadly to Jews, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, who adopted Sephardic religious customs and legal traditions, often due to the influence of exiles. In some cases, Ashkenazi Jews who settled in Sephardic communities and adopted their liturgy are also included under this term. Today, Sephardic Jews form a major component of world Jewry, with the largest population living in Israel. The earliest documented Jewish presence in the Iberian Peninsula dates to the Roman period, beginning in the fir ...
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Brussels Massacre
The Brussels massacre was an anti-Semitism, anti-Semitic episode in Brussels (then within the Duchy of Brabant) in 1370 in connection with an alleged host desecration at the Brussels synagogue. A number of Jews, variously given as six or about twenty, were executed or otherwise killed, while the rest of the small community was banished. The event occurred on May 22. The supposedly recovered hosts became objects of veneration for local Christians as the Sacrament of Miracle. The cult survived until after the Second World War and the The Holocaust, Holocaust, after which its Antisemitism, antisemitic elements pushed the local church to derecognise it. It was claimed that the hosts had been stabbed by Jews and had miraculously shed blood, but been otherwise unharmed. The reliquary (without the hosts) is currently preserved in the cathedral's treasury (the hosts may have been present inside it as late as the year 2000). Background Black Death Jewish persecutions had previously destr ...
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Black Death Persecutions
The persecution of Jews during the Black Death consisted of a series of violent mass attacks and massacres. Jewish communities were often blamed for outbreaks of the Black Death in Europe. From 1348-1351, acts of violence were committed in Toulon, Barcelona, Erfurt, Basel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg and elsewhere. The persecutions led to a large migration of Jews to Jagiellonian Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. There are very few Jewish sources on Jewish massacres during the Plague. Background The official policy of the Church, which was reasoned in part because Jesus was Jewish, was to protect Jews. In practice, however, Jews were frequently the targets of Christian loathing. As the plague swept across Europe in the mid-14th century and annihilated nearly half the population, people had little scientific understanding of disease and were looking for an explanation. Unlike in Western Europe, medieval Russia did not have a Jewish population, and so as the Black Death swept ...
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The Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding territories from Muslim rule. Beginning with the First Crusade, which culminated in the Siege of Jerusalem (1099), capture of Jerusalem in 1099, these expeditions spanned centuries and became a central aspect of European political, religious, and military history. In 1095, after a Byzantine request for aid,Helen J. Nicholson, ''The Crusades'', (Greenwood Publishing, 2004), 6. Pope Urban II proclaimed the first expedition at the Council of Clermont. He encouraged military support for List of Byzantine emperors, Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos, AlexiosI Komnenos and called for an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Across all social strata in Western Europe, there was an enthusiastic response. Participants came from all over Europe and had a ...
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Henry III, Duke Of Brabant
Henry III of Brabant ( 1230 – February 28, 1261, Leuven) was Duke of Brabant between 1248 and his death. He was the son of Henry II of Brabant and Marie of Hohenstaufen. He was also a trouvère. The disputed territory of Lothier, the former Duchy of Lower Lorraine, was assigned to him by the King Alfonso X of Castile, a claimant to the German throne. Alfonso also appointed him imperial vicar to advance his claims on the Holy Roman Empire. In 1251, he married Adelaide of Burgundy ( 1233 – October 23, 1273), daughter of Hugh IV, Duke of Burgundy and Yolande de Dreux, by whom he had four children: # Henry IV, Duke of Brabant ( 1251 – aft. 1272) Mentally disabled, and made to abdicate in favor of his brother John on 24 May 1267. # John I, Duke of Brabant (1253–1294) Married first to Marguerite of France, daughter of King Louis IX of France (Saint Louis) and his wife Margaret of Provence, and later to Margaret of Flanders, daughter of Guy, Count of Fland ...
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Duchy Of Brabant
The Duchy of Brabant, a Imperial State, state of the Holy Roman Empire, was established in 1183. It developed from the Landgraviate of Brabant of 1085–1183, and formed the heart of the historic Low Countries. The Duchy comprised part of the Burgundian Netherlands from 1430 and of the Habsburg Netherlands from 1482, until it was partitioned after the Dutch revolt of 1566–1648. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia ceded present-day North Brabant () to the Generality Lands of the Dutch Republic, while the reduced duchy remained part of the Habsburg Netherlands until French First Republic , French Revolutionary forces conquered it in 1794 — a change recognized by the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797. Today all the duchy's former territories, apart from exclaves, are in Belgium except for the Dutch province of North Brabant. Geography The Duchy of Brabant (adjective: ''wikt:Brabantian, Brabantian'' or ''wikt:Brabantine, Brabantine'') was historically divided into four parts, each with ...
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Ancient Rome
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century AD. It encompasses the Roman Kingdom (753–509 BC), the Roman Republic (50927 BC), and the Roman Empire (27 BC476 AD) until the fall of the western empire. Ancient Rome began as an Italic peoples, Italic settlement, traditionally dated to 753 BC, beside the River Tiber in the Italian peninsula. The settlement grew into the city and polity of Rome, and came to control its neighbours through a combination of treaties and military strength. It eventually controlled the Italian Peninsula, assimilating the Greece, Greek culture of southern Italy (Magna Graecia) and the Etruscans, Etruscan culture, and then became the dominant power in the Mediterranean region and parts of Europe. At its hei ...
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