Why were Jewish people unliked during the war?

Answer 1

Tension between the early Christian Church and Judaism was a natural outcome of competitiveness, first within Judaism, then between Judaism and Christianity. The early Christian Church, during the apostalic period, from the time of the Crucifixion up until the early part of the second century, regarded itself first as part of Judaism, then separate and in competition with Judaism. What we find in Paul's epistles, written prior to the Gospels, is that Paul was a Jew and proud of it. So, there was no hatred or dislike there. Mark's Gospel, is generally regarded by scholars to have been written around 70 CE. Christians still felt part of Judaism and Mark says that Jesus told the apostles to preach to the Jews, not to Samaritans and Gentiles. There is some tension evident in the Gospel between Christians and Pharisees, but not so much Jews as a whole. We know that Christians were still welcome in the Temple until its destruction in the year 70, and that they attended Jewish synagogues. Matthew's Gospel was probably written some time after 80 CE. The Temple had been destroyed but Christians continued to attend Jewish synagogues. Pharisees were becoming the dominant Jewish sect, with the Sadducees fading from history. In Matthew chapter 5, the Pharisees seemed to set a standard for righteousness. Matthew had Jesus tell his followers to obey the pharisees and scribes, but he was also quite sarcastic about them. This was also a time when Christians began to criticise Pharisees, whom thay would have seen as their natural rivals within Judaism, but Matthew still did not display hostility towards Jews as a whole. By the time of Luke's Gospel and Acts, we can see the beginning of some hostility between Christians and mainstream Jews. In Acts chapters 24-26, the captain of the guard rescued Paul from the Jews. John's Gospel came even later, clearly at a time when Christians were beginning to see themselves as distinct from Jews. John was openly hostile to the Jews and referred to "Jews" generically, in contexts where the earlier Gospels directed their criticism towards the Pharisees alone. Eventually, the Jewish religious authorities banned Christians from worshipping at synagogues and required that worshippers prove their faith by denouncing Christians.

Answer 2

Well, there were several reasons.

The first thing to realize is that dislike/distrust of Jews was not at all a new development. Anti-semitism has been prevalent in Europe for centuries... there are any number of old folk songs and legends that refer to supposed murders of children committed by Jews for reasons that, if you actually know anything about Judaism, make no sense whatsoever (for example, a common theme in such tales is that the Jews murdered children in order to ritually consume their blood, while in actuality the consumption of blood... even the blood of animals, let alone humans... is strictly forbidden by the Torah). Even in more respectable works, Jews are often depicted as fairly unsavory individuals... Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice is one example, but hardly the only one. It's a bit of an exaggeration to say that any time a story written in the Medieval or Renaissance periods makes a point of mentioning that a particular character is a Jew, that character will turn out to be evil or at best greedy... but it's not all that much of an exaggeration.

(Side note: while it's not really fair, there is some historical reason for the perception of Jews as greedy. During the Middle Ages in many European countries, Christians were forbidden from charging interest on loans, but Jews were not subject to this restriction. However, Jews were barred from a number of other jobs... so the profession of moneylender became one of the few viable options they had.)

Because of this long history of mistrust and prejudice, people in general were not terribly kindly disposed towards the Jews. Enter the Nazi regime and their explicit policies, coupled with Propaganda feeding the general anti-semitic feelings that already existed, and what you get is a culture where it takes a significant amount of courage to actually step up and say or do something to help the Jews. Even people who may not have personally felt all that much animosity towards Jews often found it easier to go along with the (perceived, if not actual) popular sentiment, at least in public.

Countries not under Nazi control weren't as subject to the propaganda (though undoubtedly some leaked through), but still had the generalized anti-semitism mentioned earlier, and in some cases were also facing a sudden influx of Jewish refugees, many of them destitute (due to their possessions having been confiscated, or used as bribes to allow them to escape), from the time when Jews were still being allowed to emigrate rather than being rounded up and killed outright. This didn't help matters any; people in the US may find it helpful to mentally replace the word "Jew" with "illegal immigrant" (or some more perjorative term) to better understand the attitude of many European countries towards Jews in general and the refugees in particular.