The Persecution Of The Jews

Racism in the Third Reich

a) Hitler aimed to create one Aryan Master race within Germany

b) Hitler believed that German people needed to be purified by a programme of selective breeding

c) An Aryan person was someone tall, with fair hair, and blue eyes

d) SS recruited men only with the correct Aryan physical appearance

e) There was a network of race farms in Germany women who had been approved were to breed children fathered by SS officers.

Racial Indoctrination

The Nazi’s brought race into everything. Race studies and eugenics was taught at school. Scientists were ordered to promote race studies. Religion became a target. Nazis tried to show that while one strand of the bible was Jewish the other was Aryan, and that God had special purposes for Aryan people.

The Persecution of the Jews.

The persecution of the Jews can be split into several distinct stages in Nazi Germany.

Stage 1: Bullying of the Jews. Denial of Civil Rights. 1933-1938

For the first 5 years the Nazis gradually deprived the Jews of their rights as citizens. To begin with they refused them the protection of the Police. On 1st April 1933 there was a boycott on Jewish shops. On 7th April 1933 all Jewish Civil Servants were dismissed. In September 1933 all Jews were banned from inheriting land. On 20th March 1933 the first concentration camp Dachau was set up.

Book burning directed at works of Jewish authors in Berlin in May 1933, many Jews, including Einstein emigrate.

1935 saw many more laws rushed through. Jews were banned from public parks, swimming pools, restaurants and all public buildings. In the same year in September the Nuremburg Laws which made it illegal for any marriage or relationships between Germans and Jews. A newspaper called ‘Der Sturmer’ was published which spread vicious lies about Jews.

Stage 2: Violence and Jews were separated 1938-1941

From 1938 the position of the Jews in Germany deteriorated rapidly. The Nazi regime was in complete power now, indoctrination and terror had removed any opposition. The turning point came with The Night of the Long Knives on 9th November 1938. Throughout Germany Jewish shops and synagogues were ransacked or destroyed and many people were killed or injured. The event is also known as Kristallnacht. From now on, Jews could not trade, from April they could not even choose their children’s names they had to keep to an approved list. In 1941 they were forced to wear a large yellow six point star sewn on their coats, and they were segregated into ghettos from 1940. Jewish children were forbidden to attend German schools.

Stage 3: The Holocaust 1941-1945

The Holocaust is the name for the scheme of mass destruction, or genocide was introduced by the Nazis during the second world war. This became known as The Final Solution and was decided at the Wannsee Conference of 1942. The anti-Semitic policies became even more extreme, extermination camps were set up, mainly in German occupied Poland and here over 6 million Jews were murdered between 1941 and 1945. Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews in Germany occupied land. Historians cannot agree as to whether this was always Hitler’s intention or not, but the war certainly accelerated the decision, Jews could not emigrate as Hitler had originally planned, and the occupation of land had meant many more Jews in German controlled land than before.

The Nazis used 2 main forms of mass murder in the territories they occupied:

1. special SS detachments with machine guns called einsatzgruppe.
2. the use of gas chambers in the extermination camps, such as Treblinka, Chelmo and above all Auschwitz, the camp in which 2million were killed by the SS.

Why is it important that the Holocaust is remembered?

Related pages: Germany 1919-1945

Category: History

Author: Mrs March