No one will suspect the Spanish Inquisition >.>

I managed to loan a book form the library with a little bit about the Spanish Inquisition in it today. Huzzah!

Now I know nothing on the Spanish Inquisition really - but if i am going to do it for history it makes sense to do some reading on it and I was amazed to find out that the whole reason the inquisition was created was to get rid of Jews that had jobs in the royal administration and church.

As you all know Jews have been out casted and fought against for centuries.

During the 14th Century, in Spain, a hundred years before the inquisition was created, tension against the Jews was reaching a high where hundreds if not thousands of Jews were murdered. They were offered to convert to Christianity or die. Of course many converted and they were then named as 'converso.' They were mistrusted and disliked as many suspected them of practicing Judaism in secret. Despite this, as I said, many rose to high places of power.

Longgg story short - a hundred years later in the reign of Kind Ferdinand and Queen Isabelle at the throne the hatred of the Jews grew to a new level. Queen Isabelle did not mind Jews because she had many royal advisers who were Jews but of course, in these tales there is a man who works to manipulate the throne.
This man was Torquemada - the to-be leader of the Inquisition and hater of the Jews and heretics.

Torquemada did all he could to persuade the Queen to take action against the 'covnerso's'. Many high status Catholic Bishops were annoyed at how these people got such decent jobs. The Queen was well against it until news reached her that several Converso's had been practicing Judaism in a holy holiday and she was also a hater of heretics.

Long story short again: She gave Torquemada power to get rid of all heretics in the country. The Spanish Inquisition lasted for about 300 years but Torquemada did more in the years he was in power than the Inquisition ever did for the next 300 years. He tortured, killed and drove out over 300,000 Jews and heretics. Even innocent people were killed as they confessed to whatever crimes were against them to be rid of the torture.

He eradicated all Jews from Spain.

My point is this: This man did the same thing as Hitler. His hatred was irrational and very unreasonable. He's ways of getting rid of Jews were not as efficient as Hitler's but the idea was the same. And yet Hitler is the only one known and discredited for doing so.

I only happened across this information because of a Monty Python sketch- if I had never got into Monty Python I would never know this information and undoubtedly millions of other students may never know this man named Torquemada.

My frustration comes from the fact we all hate and despise Hitler for what he did - many refuse to believe in the holocaust and don't get me wrong I do believe entirely it was a terrible horrific thing and should never happened again - but there are people who don't seem to realise this happened all before.

We hate Hitler because he came up with the Final Solution but Torquemada had a similar ideal and yet he is almost unknown to high school students. Why should we have to realise how bad Hitler was if we do not realise how bad this man was as well? They are two of the same and if we have memorials for the holocaust why not for what Torquemada did.

300,000 Jews lie forgotten somewhere in history after suffering horrendous pain and yet we are only taught to see what the Nazi's did.

If I ask a 14 year old child if they know about what The Spanish Inquisition did I am certain my reply would be, "I don't know." And it annoys me that whoever makes our school curriculum (government?) leads kids to believe Hitler was the only man with a hate towards Jews.

*rant over*