From the start of the Nazi party their intentions were clear. Their main aim was to persecute Jews. However, many people who voted for them did not really think that the Nazis would carry out the anti-Semitic acts that they preached. Even some Jews voted for them. Though within a few days of gaining power the Nazis called for a boycott of all Jewish businesses. As well as this all the newspapers were about anti-Jewish propaganda particularly the Der Stürmer run by Julius Streicher. Though for the first few years there was little organised persecution of the Jews.
In 1935, Hitler made the first steps to make sure that Aryans and Jews were kept separate. Below are the steps taken to achieve the latter:
1933: Official one-day boycott of Jewish shops, lawyers and doctors all over Germany.
1934: Anti-Jewish propaganda increased.
1935: Jews forbidden to join the army.
1935: The Nuremburg Laws
1936: A slow down on anti-Semitism as the Olympics were taking place in Berlin.
1937: Hitler spoke out against Jews, more Jewish businesses were confiscated.
1938: Jews had to register their property.
1938: Jews were not allowed to have contact with Aryans.
1938: Jews had to have a red letter “J” stamped on their passports.
1938: Kristallnacht-Nazis destroyed synagogues, Jewish homes and shops.
The anti-Semitism preached by Hitler greatly influenced the German population.
The Nuremburg laws (1935) pushed anti-Semitism to greater lengths. This barred Jews from being Jewish citizens and took away most of their basic rights (Reich Citizenship Laws). There also was a law for the protection of German blood and Honour-banned marriages between Jews and Aryans and forbade them to have sexual relations outside marriage.
The Night of the Broken Glass
The Night of the Broken Glass or Kristallnacht was quite significant as it highlighted the complete downfall in the Jewish society in Germany. Jews in many areas tied to resist the Nazis. All too often this led to worse treatment than before. In November 1938 a Jew shot dead a senior Nazi official. In retaliation, the SA carried a campaign of terror against the Jewish population. It started on 10 November 1938. Below is a list of the statistics:
400 Synagogues destroyed
7500 shops destroyed
91 Jews killed
30,000 sent to concentration camps.
After Kristallnacht the case for Jews got even worse. In January 1939 all Jews had to add new first names Sarah for women and Israel for men and in September the Second World War began. In the Second World War six million Jews and many other people who the Nazis wanted to get rid of were murdered (Holocaust). Though the Jews prefer to call it Churban (sacrifice). When Germany invaded Poland in 1939 another three million Jews came under nazi control. The war made it impossible to remove the Jews by emigration. The Germans allowed them only starvation ratios and thousands died from hunger, the intense cold or the disease typhus.
By the end of 1941 half a million Jews had been shot. By now Nazi leaders had decided on a final solution to their Jewish problem, to exterminate all of them. In January 1942 leading Nazis met in Wannsee in Berlin to work out details of the Holocaust. Death camps were built in Poland far away from Germany where Jews were worked to death or gassed. Some children and adults were used for hideous medical experiments, in particular by a doctor called Heissmeyer. Unbelievably the mass genocide was largely kept a secret from the German people, and from Germany’s enemies overseas.
The treatment of Jews escalated dramatically after the Second World War started, though the source of this extreme hatred started from the birth of the Nazi party. The end of the Second World War signalled the end to most of the suffering and death directed to Jews.
