GCSE Coursework: The Holocaust

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James Wilmshurst                                                                                                30/11/2004

10S                            GCSE Coursework: The Holocaust

Question 1

              In Germany in 1939 Jews were discriminated against in many ways. The turning point of the Nazi’s hatred was underlined in late 1938 on 9th November. A Jew had killed a German diplomat in Paris because he was angry at the way his parents had been treated by the Nazi’s. So, on 9th November Josef Goebbels used this incident as an excuse to start a riot. This riot was to prove key in the Nazi’s war against Jews. Police and the SA began to destroy Jewish shops, homes and synagogues throughout Germany, 7000 Jewish businesses were wrecked, between 20000 and 30000 were arrested and put in concentration camps and nearly 200 synagogues were destroyed, but, surprisingly, only 90 were killed. These 3 nights were later named ‘Kristallnacht’ meaning Crystal Night.

              After Kristallnacht discrimination got much, much worse. Anybody of Jewish religion were expelled from German schools, and the same for university students and made to go and learn at Jewish only schools/universities. Jews were also forced to sell their business to Aryans for very low prices. The Nazis ‘encouraged’ the Jews to leave Germany by setting up a government office for Jewish emigration. They were evicted from their homes and made to live in homes designed especially for Jewish occupation. They were forbidden to do a few things aswell, these were things like forbidding them from buying cakes and chocolate, disallowing them from running shops or businesses, forbidding them from buying radios and even stopping them from owning a dog. A lot of these things were designed to either:

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  1. Make it difficult for the Jews to earn a living.
  2. Take civil rights away from the Jews.
  3. Take away self-respect or dignity that they had left.

Jews were also made to wear a gold star on every piece of clothing, with a penalty of death for removal of the symbol, to humiliate them even further every Jew with a non-Jewish first name must be referred to as Israel (males) or Sarah (females). All in all 1939 was a year in which Jews were caused great humiliation.

James Wilmshurst

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