several people have compared the current migrant crisis in europe to the arrival of the barbarians in rome in the fourth century — for example, here’re steve sailer, peter frost, and historian tom holland. their concern — at least that of steve and peter — is the future of the west: will these migrants (help to) bring down modern western civilization just as the goths et al. did to rome? the question is not just an emotional or an irrational one — migration is one of the main driving forces of evolution (along with things like natural selection and genetic drift), since the movement of individuals from one population to another also means the movement of genes. and because all behavioral traits are heritable, the transference of genes via migration ought to be a matter of interest and importance to one and all. (that’s not to say that it should never be allowed, just that people(s) ought to pay it due attention.)

what i haven’t seen though are any comparisons to a more recent mass migratory event, one which also happened to feature germany, a major player in today’s migrant crisis. i suppose that’s because the whole subject is rather sensitive, but that’s no excuse for ignoring it — rather to the contrary! so, here goes…

in the late-1800s/early-1900s, at least a couple of million (i haven’t been able to find a precise number) eastern european jews migrated to and/or through germany. and how well did that work out for everybody?

from Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany [pgs. 11-12]:

“In the last two years of the 1860s, a few thousand Russian Jews crossed into Prussia seeking relief from cholera epidemics and famines that were wreaking havoc in the western part of the Tsarist Empire. Desperately ill and malnourished, the refugees deluged their German coreligionists with pleas for economic assistance and medical attention. The latter responded by launching numerous ad hoc committees that collected funds throughout Germany and then funneled their receipts to Jewish communities along the frontier; these, in turn, provided relief to the needy. In time, the immediate crisis passed. Many of the Russian Jews remained in Prussia or traveled farther west, some as far as the New World. And the ad hoc committees, convinced that their mission had ended, folded their operations….

“Over the next half-century, the momentum of Jewish emigration from Russia steadily increased. During the 1870s perhaps 40,000 to 50,000 Jews migrated westward. After the pogroms of 1881, however, the trickle turned into a flood as tens of thousands abandoned their homes annually…. By the early twentieth century, over 100,000 such refugees emigrated each year, so that by 1914 at least two and a half million Russian Jews had settled in Western countries, including England, France, Canada, Argentina, and principally the United States.

“Concurrently, Jews from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Rumania also were on the move. In the face of economic boycotts and rising unemployment at the end of the nineteenth century, Jews emigrated from the Polish sectors of the Hapsburg Empire. Rumanian Jews, too, made their way west after their country denied them citizenship and introduced blatantly anti-Jewish policies….”

(yes, eastern europeans are, on average, more xenophobic than most western european populations. and, judging by the above, they apparently have been for some time).

“…Between 1870 and the outbreak of World War I, over 400,000 Jews left their homes in the Galician, Bohemian, Moravian, Hungarian, and Rumanian lands to seek a new future in Western countries, while and even larger number migrated *within* the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

“Whereas anti-Semitism and impoverization provided the push to drive Jews *from* Eastern Europe, emigrants were also drawn *to* Western lands. They were lured by the promise of eonomic opportunity in the more industrialized West and the knowledge that their fellow Jews in England, France, Germany, and the New World countries enjoyed comparatively greater freedom and prosperity. The promise of toleration and opportunity, therefore, also attracted adventuresome Jews to seek their fortunes in new environments.“

funnily enough, during at least some of this period, germany behaved more like macedonia or serbia today, shuffling the migrants onwards to the next country (making a ton of cash in the meantime, sounds like). ‘course the eastern european jews wanted to just migrate through germany, kind-of like the middle eastern/north african/african migrants of today don’t want to stay in macedonia or serbia or hungary [pgs. 13-14]:

“Germany had a vested economic interest in allowing Jewish refugees into the Reich. For Germany — and especially its shipping companies — hoped to benefit from the lucrative business of transporting Eastern Jews to England and America via the ports of Hamburg and Bremen. The sheer number of Jewish transmigrants embarking from German ports was staggering, exceeding 700,000 during the peak years between 1905 and 1914….

“The extent of German interest in encouraging Jewish transmigrant traffic is illustrated by some of the policies pursued by governments and shipping firms. For example, according to Prussian decrees in force between the 1890s and the outbreak of World War I, no Russian transmigrant was officially allowed into Germany without a proper pass, a ticket for passage out of the country, plus an additional sum of money. (Each person over ten years of age had to posses 400 mark, and children needed 100 mark.) Significantly, individuals holding tickets on German ships were exempted from this rule and permitted into the Reich even if they possessed less money. Perhaps the most revealing episode in the campaign to develop the transmigrant traffic occurred in 1893 when the eastern-most states of the Reich sealed their borders in response to cholera epidemics in Eastern Europe. Led by the Hamburg America Line, German shipping companies successfully lobbied for a reversal of this policy, arguing that Jewish transmigrants posed no health risk to the German populace. To further allay fears, shipping firms expended significant sums of money to erect special transport centers in key German cities and vast barrack areas in port cities; such facilities were designed to isolate Jewish travelers from the German populace and thereby eliminate objections to the temporary presence of these Jews on German soil.”

unfortunately, even though most of them didn’t even stay very long in germany, the ostjuden left a bad impression on the minds of germans. i couldn’t even tell you if any of the stereotypes were true or not, and if true by how much — and i really don’t want to get into a discussion about it here and now (although i strongly suspect that eastern european jews are, on average, more clannish than german jews, so there’s possibly that) — but even german jews at the time panicked a bit over the behaviors of their eastern cousins. from Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 [pgs. 33, 57]:

“German Jews undertook massive charitable work on behalf of the persecuted East European Jews at the same time that they sought the most efficacious means to prevent their mass settlement in Germany….

“Ultimately the difference between German Jews and Ostjuden, both in and out of Germany, was regarded as cultural in nature. Liberal German Jews viewed Eastern Jewish culture as ‘ghetto’ culture which by definition was backward and underdeveloped. The German historical experience had made it abundantly clear that Jewish modernization was conditional upon deghettoization, and this in turn left no room for *Kulturjuden* along the lines still maintained in Eastern Europe.

“This point of view was perfectly understandable. German Jews felt like Germans and their culture *was* German culture. By the beginning of the twentieth century they possessed almost nothing akin to the ‘Jewish’ culture that characterized life in the ghettos of Eastern Europe. The distance they felt, the dissociation from Ostjuden was, then, predicated upon both an objective and subjective reality.”

eastern european jews had a very different (bio-)culture to german jews and gentiles, one that, unfortunately, did not sit well with too many members of the mainstream culture. (the timing was bad, too. more on that below.) am i blaming jews for the holocaust? no. but i am warning — again — that in order to prevent future genocides, we need to understand previous ones, and that includes examining them with a biological/evolutionary eye. as i said previously:

“humans don’t *really* fight and kill neighboring populations or discriminate against subgroups within their nations — not to mention enslave one another — for any of the goofy ideological, religious, or ‘moral’ excuses that they give. those are mostly just after the fact rationalizations that they’ve come up with (no, really — the human brain is not to be trusted!). like other creatures, humans very often try to eliminate or dominate other groups *because they are in competition with them for resources* [pdf] — or, at least, *feel* that they are anyway, whatever the reality on the ground may be.”

bill hamilton pointed to the fourfold increase in the number of ashkenazi jews in eastern europe over the course of just the nineteenth century as a possible contributing factor to the holocaust. this would’ve represent an enormous change in the competition for resources between jews and gentiles in eastern europe. couple that already existing situation to the mass migration of a (bio-)culturally different population into/through germany at the turn of the century, and THEN the appalling economic conditions in germany after wwi and the stock market collapse — further feuling the competition for resources — and you have a recipe for an absolutely horrific biological disaster.

no, i’m not saying that such a scenario is guaranteed to happen again in the west with our new migrants. if there’s enough manna from heaven to go ’round, people probably won’t take it out on their neighbors. (there’s been no genocide of jews in the u.s. where times have generally been pretty good. always.) but i am saying that the powers that be ought to be MUCH more careful in shuffling peoples around willy-nilly. they’re playing a very dangerous game.

see also: us and them

previously: historic mating patterns of ashkenazi jews and gene-o-cide and human biodiversity, racism, eugenics, and genocide

(note: comments do not require an email. eastern european jewish immigrants on an american liner, 1906.)