ABSTRACT
If it had not been for the terrible events that unfolded between 1933 and 1945, the Jews of Europe would, in all probability, have continued to live as they had for nearly a millennium. Arriving on the continent after the conquest of the then-known world by Alexander the Great (ca. 333 B.C.E.), European Jewish communities developed primarily after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.) and the failure of the Bar-Kokhba revolt (ca. 132–135 C.E.). Despite the fact that Jews in Europe thus predated the arrival of many of the ethnic groups associated with European countries, Jews did not become prominent until after the ninth or tenth century. 1
