What countries were jews kicked out of
Executive summary
A long, well-documented pattern of expulsions, forced departures and mass exoduses has affected Jewish communities across centuries and continents — from medieval Europe (notably England, France, Spain and parts of Italy) to large-scale departures from Arab and Muslim-majority countries in the 20th century — but sweeping numerical claims like “Jews were expelled from 109 countries” are contested and often misleading [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Medieval and early modern Europe: expulsions that reshaped communities
Royal edicts, local decrees and periodic pogroms forced Jewish communities to leave England in 1290 and France around 1306, and produced expulsions, conversions or killings in southern Italy and across many German, Spanish and Portuguese jurisdictions — with the 1492 Spanish expulsion being the most famous example — trends documented in multiple historical overviews and curriculum resources [1] [2] [5].
2. Italy, city-states and episodic urban expulsions
Beyond national edicts, numerous Italian cities and regions expelled or persecuted Jewish residents at various times: episodes in cities such as Venice, Brescia, Florence, Rome and others are recorded in historical compilations and city chronicles, reflecting local politics, economic motives and religious pressures rather than a single uniform policy [6] [7] [2].
3. Roman, Byzantine and ancient-era displacements
In antiquity, military defeats and imperial reprisals led to mass displacement: the Bar Kokhba revolt (132–136 CE) resulted in massive loss of life and forcible displacements from Judaea, and other ancient expulsions and enslavements across Roman provinces are noted in scholarly surveys of the period [6].
4. The modern Middle East and North Africa: the 20th‑century exodus
Following the creation of Israel in 1948 and subsequent regional conflicts, large Jewish populations in Arab and some Muslim-majority countries either fled, were expelled or left under pressure; estimates place hundreds of thousands relocating to Israel, Europe and the Americas, with organizations and research projects documenting near-total reductions of Jewish populations in countries such as Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and others through the mid‑20th century [8] [9] [3].
5. Later and exceptional cases: dwindling communities and political expulsions
In the later 20th and early 21st centuries small remaining Jewish communities vanished or were reduced to handfuls in places like Libya and Afghanistan, contact with last individuals was lost in Somalia, and political moments — for example Idi Amin’s expulsion of Israelis from Uganda in the 1970s — produced abrupt departures tied to specific regimes or conflicts [6].
6. Counting expulsions — myth, reality and motive
Simple tallies — especially the viral “109 countries” figure — conflate very different phenomena (temporary expulsions, forced conversions, massacres, coerced emigration, legal denaturalization and wartime flight) and have been debunked or critiqued by historians and fact-checkers who say the claim is an antisemitic trope that distorts complex historical realities [4] [10] [11]. At the same time, mainstream Jewish organizations and academic studies document a genuine pattern of expulsions and mass exoduses (notably from the Muslim world in the 20th century), making clear that both the reality of persecution and the misuse of inflated counts must be acknowledged [9] [3].
7. How to read the record: nuance over slogans
A defensible historical account distinguishes categories — medieval state expulsions (England, France, Spain, various city-states) versus wartime and modern coercive departures (many Arab and Muslim-majority countries after 1948), versus episodic annihilation or enslavement in antiquity — and resists packaging the story into a single number without context; authoritative compilations and curated lists exist but vary in scope, criteria and quality, and claims should be checked against scholarly or primary-source evidence [5] [6] [7].