This dossier is not an indictment; it is an act of remembrance. Every event and every figure carries its source and date. The aim stays the same as the rest of the site — to understand through facts, the better to fight hatred.
Chronology of persecution
The documented landmarks, from antiquity to today. Each entry links to its source.
- 586 BCEAntiquity
Destruction of the First Temple and Babylonian Exile
The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II captured Jerusalem, destroyed Solomon's Temple, and deported much of the population of Judah to Babylon.
Source: Wikipedia
- 70 CEAntiquity
Destruction of the Second Temple by Rome
During the First Jewish–Roman War, Roman forces under Titus besieged Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple, a turning point in Jewish history.
Source: Wikipedia
- 132–136 CEAntiquity
Bar Kokhba Revolt and Renaming of Judea
After crushing the Bar Kokhba revolt, Emperor Hadrian renamed the province Syria Palaestina and barred Jews from Jerusalem, causing heavy loss of life.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1096Middle Ages
Rhineland Massacres of the First Crusade
As the First Crusade set out, mobs and Crusader bands attacked Jewish communities in Rhineland cities such as Worms, Speyer, and Mainz, killing thousands.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1144Middle Ages
Blood Libel Accusations (Norwich)
The death of a boy in Norwich, England, produced one of the first blood-libel accusations, the false charge that Jews murder Christian children for ritual purposes, which spread across Europe.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1190Middle Ages
Massacre of the Jews of York
About 150 Jews who had taken refuge in Clifford's Tower in York, England, died in a mob assault, many by mass suicide, in one of medieval England's worst anti-Jewish attacks.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1215Middle Ages
Fourth Lateran Council and the Jewish Badge
The Church council convened by Pope Innocent III ordered Jews to wear distinguishing dress and restricted their public life, entrenching legal discrimination across Christendom.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1290Middle Ages
Expulsion of the Jews from England
King Edward I issued the Edict of Expulsion, forcing the entire Jewish community out of England; Jews were not readmitted until the seventeenth century.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1306 / 1394Middle Ages
Expulsions of the Jews from France
King Philip IV expelled the Jews from the French royal domain in 1306 and confiscated their property; after partial returns, King Charles VI ordered a final expulsion in 1394.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1348–1351Middle Ages
Black Death Massacres
As the plague swept Europe, Jews were falsely accused of poisoning wells, and hundreds of communities in the Holy Roman Empire and beyond were massacred or destroyed.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1391Middle Ages
The 1391 Massacres in Spain
Waves of anti-Jewish violence beginning in Seville swept the Iberian kingdoms, killing thousands and forcing mass conversions that created the class of conversos.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1478Early modern era
Establishment of the Spanish Inquisition
Ferdinand and Isabella established the Inquisition to root out Jews who had converted to Christianity but were suspected of secretly practicing Judaism, leading to trials, torture, and executions.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1492Early modern era
Alhambra Decree — Expulsion from Spain
Ferdinand and Isabella ordered all Jews who refused baptism to leave Spain, expelling a community of tens of thousands and ending centuries of Jewish life on the peninsula.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1497Early modern era
Forced Conversion and Expulsion in Portugal
King Manuel I ordered the forced conversion of Portugal's Jews and expelled those who resisted, ending the open Jewish presence that had grown after the Spanish expulsion.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1516Early modern era
Establishment of the Venetian Ghetto
Venice confined its Jews to a walled, gated quarter that gave the word 'ghetto' to history, a model of enforced residential segregation later copied across Europe.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1648–1657Early modern era
The Khmelnytsky Massacres
During the Cossack uprising led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky in Ukraine, tens of thousands of Jews were killed and hundreds of communities destroyed.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 179119th–20th century
Creation of the Pale of Settlement
Imperial Russia confined most of its Jews to a western border region known as the Pale of Settlement, restricting where they could live and work for over a century.
Source: Wikipedia
- 184019th–20th century
The Damascus Affair
A blood-libel accusation in Damascus led to the arrest and torture of local Jewish leaders, drawing international attention to anti-Jewish persecution in the Middle East.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1881–188419th–20th century
The Russian Pogroms
Following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, a wave of anti-Jewish riots swept the Russian Empire, destroying homes and businesses and spurring mass Jewish emigration.
Source: USHMM
- 189419th–20th century
The Dreyfus Affair
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish French army officer, was wrongly convicted of treason in a case driven by antisemitism; it divided France and exposed deep anti-Jewish prejudice in Europe.
Source: Wikipedia
- 190319th–20th century
The Kishinev Pogrom
In Kishinev (then Russian Empire, now Moldova), a pogrom killed dozens of Jews and injured hundreds, shocking world opinion and accelerating Jewish emigration and Zionism.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1933–193519th–20th century
Nazi Rise to Power and the Nuremberg Laws
After Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazi regime enacted the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, stripping German Jews of citizenship and codifying racial persecution.
Source: USHMM
- 193819th–20th century
Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass)
On 9–10 November 1938, Nazi-orchestrated attacks across Germany and Austria burned synagogues, looted Jewish businesses, and sent some 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps.
Source: USHMM
- 194119th–20th century
The Farhud Pogrom in Baghdad
During the Farhud in Baghdad, a violent pogrom killed around 180 Jews and injured hundreds, marking a turning point for the ancient Jewish community of Iraq.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1941–194519th–20th century
The Holocaust (Shoah)
Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered about six million European Jews, roughly two-thirds of the continent's Jewish population, in the genocide known as the Holocaust.
Source: USHMM
- 1948 onwardContemporary era
Exodus of Jews from Arab and Muslim Lands
From 1948 onward, amid persecution, violence, and expulsions, some 850,000 Jews left or were forced out of Arab and Muslim countries, ending communities that were thousands of years old.
Source: Jewish Virtual Library
- 1994Contemporary era
The AMIA Bombing in Buenos Aires
A car bomb destroyed the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and wounding hundreds, the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina's history.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2012 / 2015Contemporary era
Toulouse School and Hypercacher Attacks in France
A gunman murdered a teacher and three children at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse in 2012; in 2015 an attacker killed four Jewish hostages at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket in Paris.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2018Contemporary era
Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue Attack
A gunman opened fire during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 worshippers in the deadliest antisemitic attack in United States history.
Source: Wikipedia
- 2023Contemporary era
The 7 October Hamas Massacre
On 7 October 2023, Hamas-led attackers killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took some 250 hostages, the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust, followed by a global surge in antisemitic incidents.
Source: Wikipedia
Demographic impact
A cumulative total of "all Jews killed in history" cannot honestly be summed. But the curve of world Jewish population measures the imprint of persecution — and reveals a singular fact: 85 years on, it has still not returned to its 1939 level.
World Jewish population (in millions)
Source: Jewish Virtual Library / DellaPergola · Jewish Agency (2023)
The Shoah murdered about six million Jews — roughly one-third of the entire Jewish people alive in 1939.
Nearly two of every three European Jews were murdered; Europe's Jewish population fell from about 9.5 million to roughly 3.5 million.
More than 80 years on, the world Jewish population (~15.7 million in 2023) has still not returned to its 1939 peak of ~16.6 million.
Jews are about 0.2% of humanity today — down from roughly 0.8% before the Second World War.
Tolls by major event
Documented ranges, deliberately NOT summed (see the caveat below).
The honest limit
A single cumulative total of "all Jews killed in history" cannot be reliably produced: ancient and medieval records are fragmentary and often propagandistic, tolls blur direct killing with death from famine and disease, definitions of who was a Jew shifted, and forced conversion removed people from the count without killing them. Individual events are documented within ranges; summing them into one grand figure would be spurious.
⚠ Speculative — not a demographic consensus
Some commentators argue that, absent two millennia of massacres, expulsions and forced conversions, world Jewry today might number in the tens or hundreds of millions rather than ~15.7 million (one widely shared essay models ~165 million). No demographer endorses a specific figure; DellaPergola notes only that world Jewry "possibly more than doubled" in the 18th century once mass epidemics and community-destroying persecution eased. Treat such totals as thought-experiments, not measured findings.
List of pogroms
86 documented anti-Jewish pogroms and massacres, from antiquity to the 20th century. Each entry links to its source. "Victims" shows the estimated toll where established.
Still today: the figures
Jews are roughly 0.2% of the world's population, yet remain one of the leading targets of religiously motivated hate crime. Recent official statistics, dated and sourced.
In 2023, anti-Jewish incidents made up 68% of all reported religion-based hate crimes in the United States, according to FBI data, even though Jews are roughly 2% of the U.S. population.
Source: FBI UCR 2023 (via ADL)
In 2024, 69% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States targeted Jews — who are about 2% of the population; Jews were also the second-most targeted group of any kind, per FBI data released in August 2025.
Reported anti-Jewish hate crimes in the United States rose 63% in 2023 to an all-time high of 1,832 incidents, per FBI data.
Source: FBI UCR 2023 (via ADL)
The ADL counted 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024, up 5% from 8,873 in 2023 and the highest annual total in the 46 years the Audit has been kept.
The ADL's 2024 Audit found antisemitic incidents in the United States have risen 893% over the past decade and 344% over the past five years.
The Community Security Trust recorded 4,296 antisemitic incidents across the United Kingdom in 2023, the highest annual total ever documented in the country.
The Community Security Trust recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom in 2024 — the second-highest annual total on record, 56% above the highest pre-October-2023 year.
In the first half of 2025 (January–June), the CST recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom — the second-highest total ever for the first six months of a year, down 25% from the same period in 2024.
Source: CST (Jan–Jun 2025)
In May 2026, London's Metropolitan Police created a unit dedicated to protecting the capital's Jewish community — a measure reflecting the sustained level of antisemitic threat.
Source: Le Monde (2026)
France recorded 1,676 antisemitic acts in 2023 — nearly quadruple the 436 of 2022 — according to figures from the French Interior Ministry and CRIF, following the 7 October 2023 attack.
France recorded 1,570 antisemitic acts in 2024, according to SPCJ and CRIF — a slight fall from 2023 but a level they describe as 'historic', the second consecutive record-scale year.
Source: SPCJ / CRIF (2024)
In 2025, antisemitic acts made up 53% of all anti-religious acts recorded in France — 1,320 acts, more than 3.5 per day — even though Jews are less than 1% of the French population.
Source: SPCJ / CRIF (2025) · Ministère de l'Intérieur (2025)
In the EU Fundamental Rights Agency's 2024 survey (fieldwork 2023) of nearly 8,000 Jews across 13 EU countries, 96% said they had encountered antisemitism in the year before the survey.
Source: EU FRA Antisemitism Survey 2024
In the EU Fundamental Rights Agency's 2024 survey, 76% of Jewish respondents said they hide their Jewish identity at least occasionally, and 34% avoid Jewish events or sites because they do not feel safe.
Source: EU FRA Antisemitism Survey 2024
In the EU Fundamental Rights Agency's 2024 survey, 41% of Jewish respondents said they had considered emigrating, or had emigrated, because they did not feel safe as Jews in their country.
Source: EU FRA Antisemitism Survey 2024
In the EU Fundamental Rights Agency's 2024 survey, 53% of Jewish respondents worried about their own safety and 60% worried about their family's safety and security.
Source: EU FRA Antisemitism Survey 2024
Germany's RIAS federal association documented 8,627 antisemitic incidents in 2024 — a record, up about 80% on 2023 and an average of nearly 24 incidents per day.
Monitoring bodies recorded sharp global surges in antisemitism after 7 October 2023: in the immediate weeks the ADL logged a 388% rise in U.S. incidents, RIAS reported +240% in Germany and incidents rose 818% in the Netherlands versus the prior period.
Source: ADL Global Incidents Report 2023
The scale to keep in mind
About 0.2% of humanity is Jewish. Set against that number, the share of antisemitic violence within religious hate crime reveals a disproportion that official statistics document year after year.
Last verified: 2026-07-18
Sources: USHMM, Jewish Virtual Library, Wikipedia, FBI, ADL, CST, SPCJ/CRIF, RIAS, EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).