Numerous scholars and historians have cautioned against the comparison of the Holocaust with other humanitarian tragedies and genocides. In particular, historians of Jewish cultures have debated both the connection between events of Anti-Jewish and Anti-Semitic violence and the trajectory of development connecting medieval and early-modern Anti-Jewish violence with twentieth-century history. Without rejecting the caution against linking the Holocaust to earlier Anti-Jewish events, this thesis proposes to compare the social and intellectual conditions that led up to the Holocaust with those of another iconic tragedy in Jewish history, the persecution of the Jews by the Spanish Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. In particular, it compares four phenomena from each respective period: the rise of social Anti-Jewish movements, the emergence of Anti-Jewish legislation, the lack of a powerful central government, and the active participation of common civilians. In comparing these four categories from fifteenth-century Castile and Aragon and 1930s Germany, this thesis argues that while the events of the Holocaust and the Inquisition/Expulsion themselves cannot be compared directly or equated meaningfully, the conditions that gave rise to them bear striking similarities. The thesis concludes by exploring why, in light of these similar conditions, the events turned out so differently in the two cases.Judaic Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/85257/4/ejcohen.pd
