Anti-Semitism is a form of discrimination manifested by a hostile attitude against the Jews, by the simple fact that they are Hebrew. People who practice this form of racism are called anti-Semites.

The term "anti-Semitism" appeared for the first time in 1879, in an anti-Semitic propaganda brochure of the German journalist, Wilhelm Marr.

It seems that anti-Semitism began to manifest in the eleventh century, appearing as a form of religious discrimination. I can remind the Crusades (also known as the holy wars) ordered and financed by the Church; or the establishment of the "Roman ghettos" of the papacy where the Jews were forced to live, being a form of Jewish segregation by other people.

This kind of discrimination can take many forms:

-              Religious, church’s members considered the Jews as being responsible for the death of Jesus, which is hard to believe that because at that time the Jerusalem was occupied by the Romans. Also, Martin Luther says in his book "The Jews and Their Lies" that they poison the wells and they are murderers of stolen children, and John Chrysostom in his sermons, incited the people to religious hatred against Jews.

-              Economic, whereby Jews were considered bankers, moneylenders and capitalists obsessed about money.

-              Social, whereby Jews were considered to be socially inferior

-              Racist, whereby Jews were considered to be an inferior race to Aryan race

-              Cultural, whereby Hebrew culture and it’s system of values are characterized by negative attributes

Thus, anti-Semitism is a form of ethnic and religious intolerance, which can be joined to xenophobia and racial discrimination.

Anti-Semitism has gradually evolved, emphasizing especially in the last half of the nineteenth century, when there were developed anti-Semitic political movements.

Of course we cannot forget the darkest period of the history of anti-Semitism, represented by the period of the Second World War. When the war finished it was revealed that the Nazis massacred a lot of Jews, and also Roma populations about who the world hardly remembers that they were in the same situation.

Being in Poland, I could see the negative memories of the ghettos on the streets, but also in photographs which describes the torture which a lot of people they were subjected. All this massacre because some people thought that other are different than them.

In the city where I live now, Łódź, I discovered the history of the ghetto while I was walking on the streets. Often on city’s sidewalks it can be found written on them "GHETTO LITZMANNSTANDT".

These marks related to delimit the dimensions of Łódź ghetto, the second largest in Poland, after the one from Warsaw. Once I have met these signs on city sidewalks, I began to be very curious to know more about the dimensions of the ghetto. I was amazed when I had to map the ghetto in front of me. The ghetto was bigger than my hometown, Câmpina (around 40000 citizens). I realized that the pain of so many people Nazis rose to an extremely large number. And for this I didn’t need numbers from statistics, but only the size of the place where the ghetto was.

Also, from this city there were deported a lot of people to various extermination camps such as Auschwitz. I had the opportunity to visit the train station from where these people were deported, and near of this station is the largest Jewish Cemetery from Europe, which seemed to announce the tragic end of those who were to be deported. Today, the station is a museum in the memory of those who were deported from the ghetto. Here you can view pictures of people's work in the ghetto. On their faces I noticed one thing: their hope that this nightmare would end in one day.

The conditions of transportations were inhumane, the wagons being overcrowded. On the door of one of the wagons I could read: "Warning! Do not enter more than 20 people in the wagon”, in order to prevent any accident. But I can imagine that there were about 100 people who were deported in one wagon and even that some of them even died before reaching their destination because of dehydration or other causes, like unimaginable conditions to which they were subjected.

Visiting this city you still can feel the pain of those people in those days. It is something in everything that surrounds you which remembers you that terrible things happened here, in the place where you enjoy the freedom with others or you don’t know how to live as a free person.

Unfortunately, still we can meet anti-Semitic, racist or xenophobic attitudes. However I would like to ask all of these people if they are rational connected with their behaviour and thinking about people who are no different than others excepting the appearance, customs and traditions. After all, no human being resembles to other one, each of us is unique and we should respect each other because of it.

I want to remember all that we can’t change what happened in the past, but we can prevent the terrible things which happened in the past to not happen again.