The Jews were also persecuted socially more than in any other way as they were banned from parks which would have isolated the Jewish community from other local communities forcing them into one group which could be discriminated against with less effort from the Nazis. Encouragement was given to Jews to emigrate from Germany which may have seemed logical at the time with the build up of tension, but it would have made the Jews feel less part of a country which they thought they belonged to. The Nuremberg laws also had a profound effect on the Jewish community prohibiting them, by law, from marrying Aryan Germans. This would have made the Jewish community feel segregated from the Germans even more than they already were. In November 1937 the “Eternal Jew” travelling exhibition opened which went around Germany to “teach” people about how the Jews were genetically and racially inferior, this would have been an outrage to the Jewish community making them feel less human compared to the “Aryans”. This would have further separated the Jewish community with the rest of Germany. All Jewish passports were marked with a J further separating Jews from others.
The Jews were also politically discriminated against as laws were laid excluding them from government jobs which introduced the “Aryan clause” this would have caused some upset with the Jews as they would think that their views were no longer taken into account and that they could not make a difference in Germany. To put things simply about political discrimination I would say that the Jews were not allowed to have any high ranking or important position in the German government.
The Jews were also economically discriminated against with the first official boycotts of Jewish shops and professions taking place from April 1933 onwards. Not only would this have been bad for business but this would have also caused the loss of Jewish jobs and created a bad atmosphere for all Jews with professions that were targeted. In 1938 a decree was passed to eliminate Jews from economic life, they were banned from shops, businesses and all trade. This would have destroyed the lives of many Jewish businessmen and sent them into the gutter.
Kristallnacht took place on November 9th 1938 and was a mixture of social, economic and educational persecution. Hundreds of shops and department stores had their windows smashed and their contents looted and destroyed while Jewish homes were broken into and vandalized. This had a social and economic effect on the Jews, it was hard for them to understand what or why this was happening to them. Around 25,000 men were rounded up and later sent to concentration camps this would have been devastating to the Jewish community, to have so many of the men they would have relied on for support to be simply taken away was shocking to the Jewish community. Jewish school children were also rounded up from schools and taken away.
I think that by the time Kristallnacht had taken place the Jewish community had been hit in every way possible and Kristallnacht was the final step in persecution before it escalated to murder. Kristallnacht had a devastating effect on the Jews putting them below anyone else in Germany and the Jewish community saw this and understood that they would be targeted no matter if they stayed out of the way of the Nazis, which had been the general assumption before. I think that Kristallnacht was the final step in separating the Jewish community from the rest of Germany.
