It's a pretty common narrative. And it's an easy one to exploit. Hitler used anti-semitism to make it an even more poignant narrative. Instead of a distant fore

It's a pretty common narrative. And it's an easy one to exploit. Hitler used anti-semitism to make it an even more poignant narrative. Instead of a distant foreigner, the Nazis got to point at foreigners who were living amongst them: Jews. And that, in particular, was a very, very old narrative that the Jewish people had been forced to suffer many times before. One of the most interesting classes I took as an undergrad was a history course that focused on the challenges that faced Jews during and after the diaspora, and how they met those challenges while somehow managing to preserve their culture, faith, and a shared sense of identity over the course of--literally--millennia as a minority group inside other cultures and empires. Maristella Botticini's The Chosen Few: How Education Shaped Jewish History, 70-1492 is one of a few rather fascinating books on the subject.