Overview: World Jewish Life, 1980-2000
Moving Toward a New Millenium
The more things change, the more they stay the same. While this may be true in theory, the world at the turn of the millennium was a very different place for Jews than it was in 1980. Back then, the Cold War, which polarized both the Eastern and Western worlds in the post-WWII years, was coming to a close, eventually heralding new levels of freedom for the millions of Jews who lived behind the Iron Curtain.
The image of the "wandering Jews" is nothing new, but the 20 years between 1980 and 2000 saw the Jewish pattern of exile, resettlement, and salvation reoccur in modern times.
The Fall of Communism
The Soviet Communist regime left power in 1989, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Many Jews moved out of the former Soviet Union to settle in Israel, the United States, and Western Europe. In the 1990s, 900,000 Jews immigrated to Israel alone.
In Germany, the collapse of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the uneasy division between the Communist Eastern Bloc and Western capitalism. Much of the wall came down in a single night in November 1989. Meanwhile, a massive influx of Soviet Jews to Germany inflated the size of the German Jewish community, from a population of fewer than 40,000 in 1990 to more than 200,000 10 years later.
Throughout the rest of Eastern Europe, Communist governments crumbled. The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia marked the end of the persecution of the Jewish community. Similar revolutions in Hungary and Latvia sparked greater freedom there as well.
But the fall of Communism wasn't the only Jewish story during these decades.
Western Europe Apologizes
Before the Holocaust, many Jews deposited their savings into Swiss banks. In the aftermath of WWII, these banks insisted that their descendants provide death certificates, knowing that it was impossible to do so for anyone who died in a concentration camp. Only in 1995 did the banks start making considerable efforts toward uniting the families of Holocaust victims with their inheritances.
Pope John Paul II apologized for the Catholic Church turning a blind eye to the Holocaust. On two separate occasions--once in 1998, and again in 2000, he spoke out against "the attempt by the Nazi regime to exterminate the Jewish people." He did not, however, speak negatively about Pope Pius XII, who despite being informed about Jewish deportations and concentration camps, refused to speak or act against the Nazis.
Violence in South America
The military dictatorship in Argentina, originally led by Jorge Rafael Videla, kidnapped more than 1,000 Jews in its seven-year reign and was brought to an end in 1983. In 1992 and 1994, two major bombings of Jewish locations occurred--the first at the Israeli embassy; the second at the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center--killing more than 100 people in total.
The overthrow of Dictator Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua offered a safe space for Nicaraguan Jews to return to their country. Today, Nicaragua's Jewish population numbers less than 100, but they have reclaimed their community and Jewish practice.
Population Changes
Nicaragua wasn't the only far-flung Jewish community to go through changes during these years. The Israeli government rescued much of the Ethiopian Jewish community, known as Beta Israel, from starvation by organizing several stages of mass migration to Israel. The first phase, Operation Moses, took place from 1984-1985, and airlifted more than 8,000 Ethiopians.
Later that year, the U.S.-led Operation Joshua rescued 800 more. In 1991, Israel deployed Operation Solomon, which transported more than 14,000 Beta Israel. Ultimately, more than 120,000 people--85% of the Ethiopian Jewish community--were rescued from Ethiopia.
Other community's experiences demographic shifts as well. A mass exodus of Jews from Iran occurred around the Islamic Revolution in 1979, and the Jewish population dropped from 80,000 to 25,000 in the ensuing years.
The Jewish population of Australia doubled between 1975 and 2000, from 50,000 to 100,000, giving immigrants from India, Russia, and South Africa a new home.
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