The Omen

by David Seltzer

It was an historical log of persecution that began with the Jews being driven from Israel by King Solomon, then slaughtered by the Crusaders as they fled. In the year 1000 it had been documented that twelve thousand Jews were murdered, then in the year 1200 all who had sought refuge in England were expelled or hanged. In the year 1298 one hundred thousand Jews were slaughtered in Franconia, Bavaria, and Austria; in September, 1306, another one hundred thousand were expelled from France under threat of death. In 1348 the Jews were accused of having caused a worldwide epidemic of Black Plague, and more than a million of them were sought out and killed across the globe. In August, 1492, the very time that Columbus was gaining glory for his country by discovering the New World, the Spanish Inquisition drove out half a million Jews and put another half million to death. The grim log continued, to the time of Hitler who annihilated over six million Jews, leaving only eleven million, homeless and poverty-stricken, across the entire face of the globe.