The Holocaust was the systematic killing of minority groups throughout greater Germany by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in World War II. Included in these killings where gypsies, homosexuals, the disabled, and predominantly Jewish peoples. Ideological prejudices against the Jews have existed throughout history, and in modern times has been coined antisemitism. This prejudice is one of the central themes of Nazi philosophy. It is the topic of this paper to academically examine the discrimination of Jews throughout history into the modern era, to better understand how Nazi antisemitism is a culmination of these ideas, and their modern interpretation. To begin we must first turn back the clock in order to observe Jewish prejudice in the ancient world, and how it has come to influence modern antisemitism. Animosity towards Jews has existed throughout history and can be found as far back as antiquity. In the Roman Empire Jewish refusal to adopt Roman religious ritual and practice was viewed as a destabilizing threat to the instituted authority. When this uneasiness caused by the Jews refusal to participate in Roman religious practice was combined with political conflict the Roman authority often turned to the prosecution and attacking of the Jews (Bergen, 4). With the acceptance and conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, Jewish discrimination amplified, it is during this time, and the time periods afterward, we find many of the features of antisemitism emerging. In the fourth century the Christian Father Saint Augustine taught that Christianity superseded Judaism, and because of this Jews should be tolerated, yet kept in a degraded state. This notion that Jews where something “other”, or different from Christians lead to many different forms of anti-Jewish belief, among them, that Jews were treacherous, and unnatural, stereotypes we find promulgated into modern times. An example of these anti-Jewish ideas during this time period was that of the Judensau, or Jewish pig. The Jewish pig was a form of anti-Jewish propaganda which portrayed Jewish men mingling with, and suckling on the teats of a pig. This image created a popular view of the Jew as sub-human, a people which consort with the unclean, and conspirators for they do not even adhere to their own religious doctrine, (the prohibition of the consumption of pork can be found in Leviticus chapter eleven). These notions wrongfully attributed to Jews were seen as evidence for their persecution and discrimination, not only religiously, but also politically throughout Europe. In fifteenth century Spain we find such political prejudice through the rule of King Ferdinand. Between the years of 1492 and 1497 Ferdinand implement a law in which all Jews were to be expelled from the country unless they were to make the conversion to Christianity, yet this attempt to assimilate the Jewish population brought w