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Click <<< to go back | Click >>> to go forward Click image for larger picture!	The Jewish presence in Europe has a long history of persecution, exile and wanderings from one country to another. In some countries of Eastern Europe, Jews have resided for over a thousand years. Their movement from one European country to another was usually motivated by religious persecution and by edicts of expulsion. Just as the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 caused Spanish and Portuguese Jews to escape to other, friendlier, European countries, so did the later "pogroms" (organized massacres of Jews) in Russia and Eastern Europe force Jews to emigrate either to Palestine or to America. Many Jews, however, remained and having been given a chance to establish productive lives, contributed for generations to the culture and economy of their respective countries.
The Holocaust ended a long remarkable Jewish Presence in Europe. This map indicates the number of years that Jews lived in the countries of Europe.