Immediately after the Nazi takeover in 1933. Gobbels and Julius Streicher began to act violently against the Jews openly. Gangs of brown shirts physically attacked Jews on the street and smashed their houses. In 1934 there was a law that Jews were no longer allowed to join the civil service and were banned from work. In 1935 the Nuremberg Race Laws created a programme of legal persecution.
The Nuremberg Race Laws, 1935
- Marriage between Jews and Germans forbidden.
- ‘Full’ Jews deprived of German citizenship.
- ‘Full’ Jews defined as those having three Jewish grandparents.
Some Jews did fight back at this though. Groups of Jewish men who went to war told people of the honourable role they played in the 1914-18 struggles. Handbills were handed out which said that 12,000 Jew’s died fighting for the nation. But these little protests compared as nothing to what the Germans did. They used propaganda to show that Jews were enemies of the Germans and were unworthy to be called German citizens.
There was a story that a Jew had killed a German in Paris, the Nazi’s started the night which was known as Kristallnacht. On the 9th of November over 100 Jews died in a series of violent attacks. There were broken windows, smashed homes looted shops and attacked synagogues. 20.000 Jews were rounded up and blamed for the act. They were arrested, imprisoned and then sent to concentration camps.
By the time Germany was at war with Britain Jewish businesses were forbidden, Jewish doctors were no longer allowed and Jewish children were removed from state schools. There was a strict curfew for Jews living in towns and cities. The war made the anti Jewish attitude spread. Now that Hitler had hold of the Jews in Germany he now turned to killing non German Jews. Round-ups, deportations, and killings became more popular and more widespread. Concentration camps were being spread across Europe. The SS units followed the German army as it marched into Russia and killed millions of Jews.
The disgusting part of this was the fact that people were ready to say where their Jewish neighbours were hiding. In late 1941, the Jews were humiliated more by having to wear a yellow Star of David which would have been a symbol which most Jews wear to be proud. But this time they were told to wear it so they stood out. The Nazi’s who saw it picked up on the fact that the person wearing it was Jewish and isolated then destroyed them so that al Germans would not be contaminated by them.
Heydrich who was a chief spokesman, had a solution to this Jewish problem. Europe from east to west was to be “cleansed” of all its Jews. These Jews were to be moved to Eastern Europe where they would be made to work until they dropped dead from exhaustion and hunger. Those tough Jews who might survive all this would then be shot. Within months of the Wannsee Conference, concentration camps were set up to kill masses of Jews.
Various methods of killing were tried. The simplest way was to make them sit on their knees in front of a pit and shoot them and they fell into the mass pits which were then filled in. Then there was the gassing of prisoners and then after the burnt the bodies. The largest problem was not killing them but getting rid of the bodies. The killing was easy, most Jews gave up and others didn’t know they were goin to be killed until last minute. One trick was to tell the Jews that they were going to a large shower room to be disinfected that’s why they needed to strip and leave their clothes outside. It was only when the shower heads started to let put Gas that they realised their fate. Then panic broke out, but the doors were shut and there was no escape.
When the doors opened after the last victims died was sickening. Piles of bodies were packed together, some still twitching. Children laid in their mother’s arms, their mother’s cradling them to protect them. The bodies were covered in urine and excrement which out of terror had involuntarily happened. But the smell was a smell of death.
It was then that the sonderkomandos began their work of clearing the bodies. They were Jewish prisoners who volunteered to be death attendants. They calmed the prisoners before they entered the chambers. They told them that everything would be ok and they were just simply being washed. It was basically just a Jew being forced to betray another Jew.
Survivors only survived by cheating. Stealing food from other prisoners, gaining privileges, such as extra rations or a lighter work load by working with the guards and telling them who had broken camp rules. Apart from this, there were some heroes. Mothers who shortened their own lives by giving their children their rations. Men took the place of their friends when they were ill and done their work for them so that they could rest. There were even people who gave their lives for others; they pretended to be someone else so that they could be saved.
When the Jews were being transported, they were often in packed cattle trucks for days on end. Locked into wagons that had no windows, no food, no water and no sanitation. When they reached their destination, many of them had already died, those who survived were in desperate conditions. They were made to stand for hours while they were sorted into groups, those fit enough to work and those who were too old or frail. Those who couldn’t work were immediately killed. On average two thirds of every trainload were gassed within a matter of days. The program worked. 30 extermination camps were set up. They killed thousands of Jews on a daily basis. Auschwitz alone accounted for nearly one million deaths, which was one sixth of all Jews. The worst period was the summer of 1942-3 in which three quarters of all jews were killed in the holocaust.
From this picture we can see how the Jewish children were treated. It shows Hitler taking Jewish children out of a school and all the other German children are laughing at them. We can tell who the Germans are because they are fair with blonde hair and the Jews are dark. This shows how Hitler wanted them to look. The Jewish children are crying because they know where they’re being taken. On the other side of the picture it shows a Jewish child pulling out a German girl’s hair. This source was from a German children’s book and is primary evidence. The source was produced in 1938. The Nazi’s must have produced this anti Jewish picture for the children to use as part of their propaganda. The source was produced in Germany. The source was produced as a use of propaganda. They fed children’s minds to believe that Jews were bad so that they would go home and tell their parents. This source is biased as it shows what the Nazi’s wanted life to be like. They wanted the Jews to leave. It shows the Jews in a bad way, it shows them mocking the other children. They are shown sticking their tongues out at the Germans and pulling out their hair. The German girl is pure German with feminine features and the Jewish boy is trying to wreck that by ripping out her hair and making her look bad. This is how Hitler saw things not how the people did.
