Anti-Jewish boycotts

Anti-Jewish boycotts are organized efforts to exclude Jews, Jewish-owned businesses, or Jewish institutions from economic, political, social, or cultural life. They have been described as a manifestation of economic antisemitism and broader antisemitic discrimination.¹

In Hungary, promotion for boycotts began in 1875 with an antisemitic speech from Győző Istóczy in the Hungarian House of Representatives.²³ From the 1880s there were calls in some of the Catholic press, such as the daily newspaper Magyar Állam, for Jews to be boycotted.⁴ The government passed laws limiting Jewish economic activity from 1938 onwards.⁵

In Russia, after a series of anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, towards that end in 1880 they were forbidden from purchasing land or taking mortgages (see the May Laws). Quotas limited Jewish access to educational institutions and from 1892 they were banned from participation in local elections and could constitute no more than 10% of company shareholders.⁶

In 19th century Austria, Karl Lueger, an antisemitic mayor of Vienna who inspired Hitler,⁷ campaigned for a boycott of Jewish businesses as a last resort for his party.⁸ Jews were only allowed to live in Vienna from 1840. An organization called the Antisemitenbund campaigned against Jewish civil rights since 1919. Austrian campaigns tended to heighten around Christmas and became effective from 1932.⁹

In Ireland, Father John Creagh in Limerick campaigned against the town's small Jewish community in 1904, leading to a boycott of Jewish businesses and the departure of the Jewish population from the town.¹⁰

In Ukraine, there was a boycott of Jews in Galicia, with allegations of Jewish support for Poland, while Poles in Galicia boycotted Jews for supporting Ukraine.¹ In 1921, the German student union, the Deutschen Hochschulring, barred Jews from membership. Since the bar was racial, it included Jews who had converted to Christianity.¹¹ The bar was challenged by the government leading to a referendum in which 76% of students voted for the exclusion.¹¹

In Quebec, French-Canadian nationalists organized boycotts of Jews in the thirties.¹²

The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany took place on 1 April 1933, soon after Adolf Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on 30 January 1933. Nazi authorities presented it as retaliation for foreign criticism of the regime and for the anti-Nazi boycott of German goods, but historians describe it as an early stage in the regime's campaign to isolate Jews from German economic and public life.¹³¹⁴

It was the first of many measures against the Jews of Germany, which ultimately culminated in the "Final Solution". It was a state-managed campaign of ever-increasing harassment, arrests, systematic pillaging, forced transfer of ownership to Nazi party activists (managed by the Chamber of Commerce), and ultimately murder of owners defined as "Jews". In Berlin alone, there were 50,000 Jewish owned businesses.¹⁵

In Poland, National Democracy, known as Endeks, and other nationalist groups promoted economic boycotts of Jewish businesses, especially during the interwar period.¹⁶ The campaigns included public agitation against Jewish trade, pressure on customers, picketing and attacks on Jewish-owned shops and workshops, and efforts to exclude Jewish merchants and artisans from commercial associations and credit networks.¹⁷ Ritual Kosher slaughter was banned in Poland in 1936, in Germany in 1930 following the similar legislation enacted in many other European countries.¹⁸ In 1936, Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski publicly endorsed an "economic struggle" and "economic boycott" against Jews, becoming formal government policy from June 4, 1936.¹⁹²⁰ Polish universities placed growing limits on the number of Jews allowed to attend, (see numerus clausus) and increasingly forced them to sit separately from non-Jewish students, a practice known as "Ghetto benches" which became law in 1937.²¹

In the United States, antisemitic supporters of the radio priest Charles Coughlin promoted "Buy Christian" campaigns that encouraged consumers to avoid Jewish-owned businesses. Coughlin, a Canadian-born Catholic priest based near Detroit, reached an estimated audience of 30 million listeners at the height of his radio career.²²²³ In 1939, the American Jewish Congress reported that a group organized by Coughlin followers in New York had distributed a "Christian Index" listing businesses to patronize as part of a "Buy Christian" drive.²⁴

The related Christian Front, founded in response to Coughlin's appeals, organized boycotts of Jewish businesses and became associated with street harassment and attacks on Jews in New York City in 1939. These campaigns were often justified through anticommunist rhetoric that associated Jews with communism and presented Jewish businesses as legitimate targets for exclusion.²⁵²⁶

In Palestine, the Arab leadership organized boycotts of Jewish businesses from 1929 onwards, with violence often directed at Arabs who did business with Jews.²⁷ A series of riots in Egypt described by one British Embassy official as "clearly anti-Jewish" occurred in 1945, starting on the date of the Balfour Declaration. In the following weeks, the Egyptian press attacked Egyptian Jews as capitalists, white-slave traders, and other slurs while calling for a boycott of Jewish goods. Later in 1945, the Arab League began a boycott of Jewish businesses in British Mandatory Palestine.²⁸

In the 2000s, the BDS movement, which advocates for a total boycott of Israeli products, is regarded by some Jewish civil rights organizations (such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center), as well as pro-Israel organizations and scholars as driven by antisemitism.²⁹³⁰³¹ This has been disputed by the BDS movement itself and Jewish supporters of BDS.³²³³³⁴