| Jewish communities established in Rome and Greece, oldest in Europe. Jewish traders follow Roman legions. |
Jerusalem and Second Temple destroyed; spoils depicted on Titus Arch, Roman Forum. |
Constantine summons Cologne Jews; earliest record of Jewish community in northern Europe. |
Moors find Jewish communities as they conquer Iberia. Over the next 300 years, Jews generally prosper with basic freedom of movement and religion. |
Charlemagne and successors friendly toward Jews of Rhineland and northern France who came to be known as the Ashkenazim. |
Jews prosper in cities like Mainz, Worms, Cologne and Speyer for more than a century through money-lending and other trades barred to Christians. |
First Crusade. Despite protective order of Emperor Henry IV, mobs accompanying crusading knights overrun Jewish communities from Rhineland to Prague on the way to Holy Land. |
Beginning of Jewish migration from Rhineland and France to the East. |
Fourth Lateran Council restricts Jewish rights. |
Emperor Frederick II defends Jews against "ritual murder" hysteria, establishes imperial power to protect--and to tax--Jewish communities. |
Poland's Boleslav V grants privileges to attract more Jewish families to eastern regions. |
Kabbalah mystic tradition develops in northern Spain; Zohar written in Guadalajara. |
King Edward I expels Jews from Britain. |
Black Death kills more than one-third of Europe's population in three years. Amid mass hysteria, Jews are accused of "poisoning wells," tortured and slaughtered en masse. |
Poland's Casimir the Great extends Jewish privileges throughout kingdom. Migration accelerates of Ashkenazi Jews from Germany who bring Yiddish. |
Jews expelled from France during reign of Charles the Mad. |
Inquisition expels Jews from Spain as Catholic monarchs end Moorish rule. Portugal follows suit four years later. Most of these Sephardic Jews go to Italy or to Turkish dominions, welcomed by sultans to Constantinople (Istanbul), Izmir, Thessaloniki. Others go to Amsterdam and Antwerp, where they establish silk trade. |
Venice's ghetto is first in Europe. Talmud printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg. |
Pope Paul IV orders Italy's Jews into ghettos and to wear badges. In Rome, Jews required to listen to Christian sermons. Leghorn and Florence among more tolerant cities. |
Cossack rebellion erupts in eastern Poland, victimizing thousands of Jews; some migrate back toward West. |
Cromwell quietly allows Jews to return to England from Low Countries. |
Great excitement in Jewish Europe when self-declared messiah, Shabbetai Zevi, seeks to land at Constantinople. Seized and forced to convert to Islam. |
Vienna expels Jews; 50 families allowed into Berlin. |
Baal Shem Tov born in Poland; founded Hasidic movement. |
Meyer Amschel Rothschild born in Frankfurt, founder of banking house. |
First partition of Poland between Germany, Austria and Russia. In 1791, Jews restricted to "the Pale" by Catherine the Great who withdraws privileges. |
American Revolution. Jews, who first came to U.S. from Netherlands in 1600s are included as full citizens. |
Moses Mendelssohn translates Bible into German. As Enlightenment spreads ideas of tolerance, he becomes leading voice for Jewish participation in European societies. |
Austrian Jews benefit from Emperor Joseph II's Tolerance Decree. |
French Revolution. Jews declared equal citizens; ghettos abolished. French armies under Napoleon extend rights into Low Countries, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Holland. |
Zacharias Frankel, speaks for Conservative Judaism in Breslau; Raphael Hirsch for Neo-Orthodoxy in Frankfurt. |
First Reform Temple, in Hamburg. |
England permits naturalization of Jewish residents. |
Liberal revolutions bring down ghetto walls in Germany and Austrian Empire. |
Lionel Nathan Rothschild is first Jewish member of British Parliament. |
Constitution bequeaths equal civil rights to Jews throughout new German Empire. |
After assassination of liberal Czar Alexander II, pogroms erupt against Jews in East. Generates mass emigration to the Americas and initial wave to Palestine. |
France bitterly divided over Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer unjustly court-martialed for treason. Spends years on Devil's Island before exoneration. |
Stirred by Dreyfus case, Theodor Herzl convenes first Zionist Congress in Basel, launching drive for Jewish state. |
Warsaw, Budapest and Vienna home of Europe's largest Jewish communities. |
World War I. Jews fight in all armies; 12,000 die as soldiers for Germany alone. Britain promises Jewish state in Palestine. Many new nations created. |
Nuremberg Race Laws strip Jews of 1871 civil rights. |
Germany annexes Austria; Kristallnacht. |
World War II begins with invasion of Poland. |
Most of Western Europe occupied. |
Holocaust underway; Russia invaded. |
"Final Solution" decided at Nazi Wannsee Conference; Auschwitz death camp opens. |
Warsaw Ghetto uprising; Danes smuggle Jewish citizens to neutral Sweden. |
In Budapest, Raul Wallenberg extends Swedish diplomatic protection to thousands of Jews. |
Holocaust ends as Allied and Soviet troops liberate death camps. Of war's vast toll, nearly 6 million were Jewish men, women and children, perhaps 70 percent of pre-war population in Europe. |
Large numbers of Jewish survivors begin emigration to Americas, others look to Israel. |
State of Israel declared. |