This was just the beginning of the new lives of the Jews.
1935 – The Nuremberg Laws are introduced. What laws did they impose against the Jews and how did these laws affect their lives?
On the 15th of September, the Nuremberg Race Laws were introduced. This was a new law added to make Jewish peoples lives even more hellish than it already was. The law was that any Jew to marry, or have a sexual relationship, with any non-Jewish person was illegal. Marriages that had already been, were declared invalid. If anyone went against the new laws, imprisonment was the punishment.
It also meant that Judaism was not known as a Religion anymore, but a race and you can’t change your race so no Jew could convert to another Religion.
The new law also required all Jewish people to wear a Star of David badge, with their names. This was yet another way of separating Jews from the Aryans.
It wasn’t just Jews that the Nazis had a problem with. They also hated homosexuals, gypsies etc.
They had completely had their German citizenship removed.
1938 – Kristallnacht. What event sparked Kristallnacht and what did the Nazis do to the Jews on this night?
On the night of 9-10th November 1938, with Hitler’s approval, a massive campaign of organised violence against the German Jews broke out across Austria and Germany.
This was because Hitler heard that a Nazi was shot by a young Jewish man. Adolf was sat at a dinner table in Munich. He turned to a friend, Joseph Goebbels and said to him quietly,
‘The SA should be allowed to have a fling’.
This was a big enough signal.
Jewish businesses like their shops were ruined and battered. The windows were smashed and littered all in the streets. This is how the horrific event got its name, Kristallnacht- the Night of Broken Glass. Synagogues were burnt down, Jewish homes got broke into. Whilst the people in them were beaten, including children!
The young man who instigated this event was called Herschel Grynszpan. He walked into the German embassy and shot a German diplomat named Ernst vom Rath. Herschel shot him five times. Rath died two days later. Grynszpan said that he would shoot the first German to walk out of the door, so he did. Herschel was so angry about how the Germans had treated the Jews, he just thought he would get revenge. He never thought that it was the beginning of something terrible like Kristallnacht.
Ninety one Jews were murdered and over twenty thousand men were arrested and kept in concentration camps.
Even though the Nazis caused the whole scene, they still fined the Jewish community one billion Reichsmarks for the damage.
There were seven thousand, five hundred Jewish homes and businesses vandalized and a shocking 267 synagogues destroyed by fire.
1939 – World War 2 Begins. Hitler invades Poland and imposes the Nuremberg Laws on the Polish Jews. It is now law for all Jews to wear the Star of David.
Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. at that point France and Britain realised that Hitler had gone to far and that it would be time to stop him. So they declared war. To France and Britain’s disadvantage, Adolf, by this time had built up a strong disciplined and powerful army.
He had swept across Poland in weeks, by using his Blitzkrieg policy. (Lightening war). This meant attacking strongly and quickly.
They used the same plan a year later, but this time by attacking Scandinavia Holland, Belgium, and France. This again only took a few weeks, killing everything and anything in their way.
1940- The Jews of occupied Europe are forced to move to Ghettos. What were conditions like in the ghettos?
Ghettos were streets in a run down area of a city, an awful place to live in. The living conditions were horrific. Starvation, disease and cramped conditions were all popular in the ghettos.
People were fed two pieces of bread a day, if that. Eventually their skeletons began to show. They had no fat, just bone!
People were so infested with disease and so hungry, they would literally drop dead. One of the worst possible ways to die, and it was happening to thousands of innocent people a day.
30,000 people lived in a ghetto which would only be meant for 7,000. This is how cramped it was!
People would go to extremes just to survive, even the children would have to risk getting shot just to smuggle a slice of bread. They would go through cracks in the wall so they could get to the other side. If they were lucky, a Pole would give them food but whatever they ate would normally carry disease anyway!
Jew had it bad. The things they went through were unbearable they wouldn’t wake up to seeing a bright day with birds chirping. It was more like a black damp day with people screaming. That was if they woke up at all. Many died over night!
Seeing someone get shot or dying in pain wouldn’t be a surprise to them either. This was their everyday life!
Getting abuse physical and mental was also another thing the Nazis did a lot
Whilst all of this was going on around them, Jewish people still just tried to make everything as normal as possible. This would have been very hard.
Jewish people wanted to make their lives in the Ghettos as close to they were before all the terror came.
They went on their own business just as before. Although it was very different because there was a risk of getting shot or killed whereas before there weren’t.
This was the only thing keeping them from going insane. It didn’t for long though.
Towards the end, things got so bad that people just thought it was a nightmare because they didn’t think anything as bad as what was happening to them could happen in reality.
1941- The Einsatzgruppen begin slaughtering Jews. What methods did the Einsatzgruppen use?
Polish Jews were forced into ghettos in the eastern part of Poland, when Germany invaded Poland. The conditions of these ghettos were so dreadful. Considering over 600,000 Jews died between 1939 and 1941.
It was getting later, and the Nazis were still undecided on what to do about the “Jewish Question”. Throughout the invasion of Russia, they were getting to the point where they had no choice but to make up their minds
So, this is where the Einsatzgruppen were set up. These were squads which organised a colossal massacre of the Jews. 3000 soldiers were sent to shoot Jews starting from Poland right across to the occupied areas of Russia. Going to every ghetto, every village, and every place they could think of to capture more and more Jewish people.
The Jews were put into groups, those that were able to do labour, were sent to the concentration camps, they would work them to the point of death. The Jews that were left, mainly consisted of the elderly, the children and the women, were taken into the countryside and shot to death. The awful part was that local citizens would volunteer to do this!
Eventually, the Eisatzgruppen method was beginning to be a problem. It would cost quite a lot of money and it was stressful. So Hitler told Himmler, (the head of the SS) to think of a new way to kill the remaining Jews, in order to replace the previous method.
1942-1945- The Wannsee Conference. Why is the Wannsee Conference so important? What decisions did the Nazis make about the ‘Final Solution’?
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on the 20th January 1942. The conference was to inform all senior Nazis and all the senior Governmental administrators of plans for the ‘Final Solution’. It only lasted 90 minutes.
Himmler’s second in command SS officer, Reinhard Heydrich, met with 15 top Nazi bureaucrats to co-ordinate the Final Solution plan. This was the last attempt to exterminate the entire Jewish population of the whole of Europe. That is an estimated 11 million people.
Transporting Europe’s Jews to eastern labour and death camps was decided at the conference.
At Wannsee, decisions were taken that led directly to the Holocaust. It was decided that from then on, the mass murder of all Europe’s Jews would be planned in great detail. They also decided that the strong and fit would be kept to work in Germany for a few months, before they were killed. The unfortunate ones, like the old, weak or young would be sent for ‘’special treatment’’. In the official report, it didn’t use words like ‘’gassing’’ or ‘’murder’’. Resettling would be a word used.
There were 16 people in the conference. This meant there were 16 copies of the plan. Most were destroyed however the 16th copy survived. It provided historians with useful information with a detailed insight in the meeting. Those who attended the meeting were:
Gauleiter Dr Meyer: Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Reichsamtleiter Dr Leibbrandt: Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories
Secretary of State Dr Stuckart: Reich Ministry for the Interior
Secretary of State Neumann: Plenipotentiary for the 4 year plan
Secretary of State Dr Freisler: Reich Ministry of Justice
Secretary of State Dr Buehler: Office of the Government General
Under Secretary of State Dr Luther: Foreign Office
SS-Oberführer Klopfer: Party Chancellery
Ministerialdirektor Kritzinger: Reich Chancellery
SS-Gruppenführer Hofmann: Race and Settlement Office
SS-Gruppenführer Mueller: Reich Main Security Office
SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann: Reich Main Security Office
SS-Oberführer Dr Schoengarth: Security Police and SD
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Lange: Security Police and SD
SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich: Chief of the Security Police and SD
All 16 were chosen by Eichmann.
In Paragraph III, Eichmann states the following:
"Another possible solution of the problem (of the Jews) has now taken the place of emigration, i.e. the evacuation of the Jews to the east, provided that the Führer gives the appropriate approval in advance.
These actions are, however, only to be considered provisional, but practical experience is already being collected which is of the greatest importance in relation to the future final solution of the Jewish question.
Approximately 11 million Jews will be involved in the final solution of the European Jewish question."
If the Wannsee Conference had been something else other than the plan for the mass murder of Jews in Europe, then Adolf Eichmann would have had the opportunity to state this at his trial in Israel in 1961. Instead he defended himself by stating that he was simply obeying orders.
