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Teaching the Holocaust and other Genocides
 
Created in collaboration with the Holocaust & Human Rights Center, the NYS Education Department, and the NYS Archives Partnership Trust.

Expulsions from Western and Central Europe

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Expulsion of the Spanish Jews in 1492: The following account gives a detailed and accurate picture of the expulsion and its immediate consequences for Spanish Jewry. It was written in Hebrew by an Italian Jew in April or May 1495:

After the King [Ferdinand] had captured the city of Granada from the Moors, and it had surrendered to him on the 7th [of January 1492]... he ordered the wxpulsion of all the Jews in all parts of his kingdom - in the kingdoms of Castile, Catalonia, Aragon, Galicia, Majorca, Minorca, the Basque provinces, the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and the kingdom of Valencia. Even before that the Queen had expelled them from the kingdom of Andalusia.

Source

Marcus, Jacob. The Jew in the Medieval World: A Sourcebook, 315-1791, (New York: JPS, 1938), 51-55 as quoted in the Fordham Jewish History Sourcebook: The Expulsion from Spain, 1492 CE. https://sourcebooksfordham.edu/
jewish/1492-jews-spain1.asp

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Expulsion of Jews from France

Illustration of the expulsion of Jews from France in 1182 by King Philip Augustus found in a manuscript [Ms. 5] of the "Grandes Chroniques de France." 

Expulsion of Jews Map

Source 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Edict_of_Expulsion

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Discussion Questions:

  1. What is your reaction to the text and images?
  2. What contributed to the expulsion of the Jews from Western Europe?
  3. Where did the eventually settle?