The Holocaust Museum of Porto held an information session about the antisemitic stereotype of "money". Antisemitic elites and rulers historically persecuted Jews and scapegoated them for possessing "too much money" as a deliberate tactic of economic and religious scapegoating. This happened all over the world and not just in Portugal.
Soviet Socialists and National Socialists were equal in terms of insults, discrimination and theft of Jewish property. Jews were falsely accused of disloyalty to the Motherland, labeled as "rootless cosmopolitans," and suspected of having Western capitalist sympathies.
Nazi elites persecuted Jews and weaponized accusations of Jewish wealth as a calculated strategy of Economic Scapegoating and Economic antisemitism. By falsely portraying Jews as greedy puppet-masters of both capitalism and communism, the regime deflected blame for Germany's economic ruin after World War I, rallied public support, and justified the systemic theft of Jewish property.
During the Great Depression, hyperinflation and unemployment devastated the German public. Hitler exploited the pre-existing, false narrative that Jewish financiers were responsible for Germany's financial ruin. Nazi propagandists inconsistently, but effectively, accused Jews of leading both predatory global capitalism and subversive international communism. This allowed them to appeal to working-class anger and elite capitalist fears simultaneously.
At the same time, in the USSR, Soviet elites used antisemitic scapegoating to distract from systemic economic failures, preserve their own power, and enforce ideological conformity. By weaponizing historical stereotypes of Jews as wealthy "bourgeoisie," the regime deflected public anger away from the state's own disastrous economic policies.
The Soviet economy was plagued by chronic shortages and inefficiencies. Elites blamed a so-called "black market" and economic crimes on Jews, making them convenient scapegoats for the regime's inability to provide a high standard of living.
Originating from Tsarist traditions where Jews were historically barred from agriculture and restricted to financial or merchant roles, successive regimes capitalized on these ingrained stereotypes to unify the populace against an "internal enemy."
During Joseph Stalin and antisemitism and subsequent Cold War eras, the Soviet state heavily promoted nationalism and paranoia. One of the main targets was the grandfather of the Portuguese Leiva da Rocha - Nachman Leibovitch, who lost all his immense fortune in Lithuania, and was also murdered in Siberia.
The Soviet state implemented systemic quotas limiting Jewish access to higher education and certain professions. This effectively created an underclass that could easily be accused of hoarding resources or operating outside the socialist system.
