The loss of a poor Jewish majority destroyed the comparative background for privileged Jews.

Evidence

Casting the Jewish elites in a major role in the implementation of their long-term plans of the solution to the ‘Jewish Question’ stood in stark contrast to the treatment allotted to the elites of the conquered Slav nations, meant to be enslaved rather than exterminated. For instance, ethnically Polish educated classes were subjected to persecution and annihilation from the very first day of the German occupation, long before the extermination of the Polish Jews took off. This fact misled the Polish Government in exile and the Polish opinion in general into believing that the Jews had been accorded a privileged status by the Germans, in comparison with their Polish neighbours — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 827 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Assimilated Jews feared equal rights because equality erased their exceptional status.; The decline of the nation-state eroded the Jews’ traditional political function; State protection converted privileged Jews from exceptions into representatives of a despised group. (+2 more)

Related

• The timing of Polish elite killings misled observers about Jewish privilege. (similarity 0.89)
• Assimilated Jews feared equal rights because equality erased their exceptional status. (similarity 0.84)
• Before modernity, segregated class perspectives kept hostile stereotypes of Jews from merging. (similarity 0.79)
• State protection converted privileged Jews from exceptions into representatives of a despised group. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• State protection converted privileged Jews from exceptions into representatives of a despised group. #expands (0.80)
• The timing of Polish elite killings misled observers about Jewish privilege. #exemplifies (0.80) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 827
• The decline of the nation-state eroded the Jews’ traditional political function #expands (0.75)
• Pre-modern caste structure made Jewish separation a normal rather than exceptional status #qualifies (0.75) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 126