After the first world war, Germany was almost at breaking point with the ramifications it was subject to after signing the treaty of Versailles. By the 1930s Germany, along with the whole of Europe, had been forced in a state of economic crisis as a result of the Wall Street Crash. This caused hyper inflation, widespread unemployment and poverty across the whole of Germany. The economic crisis was adding fuel to the flames of the already present anti-Semitic bonfire. A scapegoat had to be found and the Jewish-Germans were chosen. At the time of the Nazi takeover in 1933, the Jewish religion made up about 0.8% of the German population and the historian Daniel J. Goldhagen in his book ‘Hitler's Willing Executioners’ preposes that the remaining majority of Germans and Austrians knew and approved of the extermination of the Jewish race and that most would have actively participated in it had they been asked to do so. Goldhagen argues that one person cannot be responsible for the wrongdoings of a whole country and that the German people…
The Holocaust was the country that sponsored mass murders for of over six million Jews by the Nazi government during World War II. It was the culmination of close to a decade of official discrimination, racial segregation, and brutal violence against the Jewish residential district in Germany. Under the shield of the war, the Nazis turned to systematic genocide after 1941, setting up industrial-style “extermination camps” planning to execute the detained Jewish population of Germany and Europe. While other groups targeted for extinction by the Nazi state, including gypsies, gays and communists, anti-Semitism was a fundamental tenet of Nazi ideology. In fact, Hitler believed until the end that the “war against the Jews” was a more important goal than victory in the conventional military battles of World War II. The Holocaust is today known as one of the worst mass crimes in human history.…
The first areas that we look at that were prevalent and were used to lay the foundation during the holocaust were those of racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism. Racism can be defined as a “prejudice and discrimination on a basis of race”, and prejudice can be defined as an “attitude or prejudging, usually in a negative way” (Henslin, J., 2014). Finally anti-Semitism is a “prejudice, discrimination, and persecution directed against the Jews” (Henslin, J., 2014). The leaders of the Nazi party used all of these elements (racism, prejudice, and anti-Semitism) in the 1930’s to come to power by uniting the German people in a common cause and that was to purge Germany and ultimately the world of what was keeping Germany from being great and that was seen as the Jewish…
Jews were gradually being kicked out of German society by the Nazis through all of the laws created. This wasn’t right for the Nazis to do. This caused hard times for Jewish families as they became more and more close to being killed. Nazis had created commercials, posters, and passages in newspapers that discrimenated against Jews.…
In the introduction, Kaplan explains how life was for German Jews before the start of the Nazi rule. She gives details about how most Jews adapted passionately to the social, political or cultural styles, in order to proclaim their German patriotism (12), later they began to ignore this when Nazi actions started taking place. Kaplan then talks about how Jews experienced ostracism through the examples of the boycott of Jewish possessions in April of 1933, which was a…
German anti-Semitism played the main role in Holocaust and extermination of Jewish population in Europe during World War 2. There are different views on this subject among historians. Some support the fact that German society was anti-Semitic and ordinary Germans’ hatred towards Jews was the main factor in horrors of Holocaust. One of supporters of this idea is political science professor Daniel Goldhagen. He argues that German citizens were willing to commit all kinds of crimes against European Jewry during years of World War 2. In his article “The Paradigm Challenged” he emphasizes that many books were written about the Holocaust and none of them includes studies of the perpetrators; people who designed and implemented the strategies of mass extermination of Jews. Goldhagen discussed that most scholars have a very strange view on the attitude of perpetrators. In their studies most perpetrators presented as victims of the Nazi regime and social pressure of that time. They made Germans look like they had no choice, but to follow violent and unlawful orders of their leaders. In fact there was always a choice not to kill innocent people. There is no record of anybody from German military being seriously punished for not following the order to kill Jews. Despite that, ordinary German soldiers were killing Jewish people all around the Europe and the Western part of Soviet Union. Also the writers who defense German perpetrators and look for more complicated explanation of their…
In school, there seemed to be no escape in Nazism as in Geography classes, pupils are taught which lands to invade as Germany is need for more Lebensraum. More Nazi ideology included in their Maths questions by asking for calculations such as the weight of an aircraft after the bombs have dropped in Warsaw (the centre of international Jewry). Of course, these all meant that school was not a happy place for the Jews. They would be teased and laughed of in front the class by the teacher encouraging the German Aryan kids to join in so this taught them how to be completely disapproving of the Jews.…
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, German Jews began to see the implementation of domineering rules and regulations by the Third Reich. Their businesses were boycotted, they were denied German citizenship, and were disproportionately persecuted when compared to “Aryan” Germans. Some were even sent to early forms of concentration camps, where they held some arrested Jewish people. Still, these sentiments towards Jews, although terrible, were mostly nonviolent, save the occasional beating. However, anti-Semitism reached its boiling point in 1938. The assassination of Ernst vom Rath by a seventeen year old Jewish boy caused the Nazi regime to turn from solely hateful and oppressive policies to primarily violent and murderous…
World War II was a terrible time for the Jews. Close to six million Jews died over the course of the War in Europe. This meant America had the largest Jewish population in the world. After the events of World War II, Jews didn’t know where to turn to; the once great sanctions of Judaism were in need of guidence with no one to lead them except for the dominant reform judaism in the United States and eventually Israel with the more conservative view on Judaism. While rebuilding Judaism in post-World War II America was widely accepted by most Northern Americans, the South however did not accept Jews because of their determination to end Jim Crow laws. The South grew more anti-semitic as the Jewish community fought for equal rights for all. In…
Jewish emancipation in Germany dates from 1867 and became law in Prussia on July 3, 1869. Despite the fact the prominence which Jews had succeeded in gaining in trade, finance, politics, and literature during the earlier decades of the century, it is from the brief rise of liberalism that one can trace the rise of the Jews in German social life. For it is with the rise of liberalism which the Jews truly flourished. They contributed to its establishment, benefited from its institutions, and were under fire when it was attacked. Liberal society provides social mobility, which led to distaste among those who had acquired some place in a sort of a hierarchy. Although many were, not all anti-Semites were anti-liberal, but most anti-Semites opposed Liberalism's whole concept of human existence, which provides much equality.…
On April 1 1933, he ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, doctors lecturers and lawyers. Jews were banned from government jobs under the ‘Law for the restoration of the professional civil service’ and were forbidden to join the army from May 1935. From September 1935, the first of the ‘Nuremburg laws’ were passed, the law for the protection of German blood and honour prohibited marriages between Jews and non Jews, which meant that any sexual relations between Jews and non Jews outside of a marriage was a criminal offence which could result in imprisonment. The ‘Reich Citizenship Law’ removed the rights of Jews as German citizens, meaning Jews could not vote making them feel like guests in their own county. During this time Jews suffered greatly under Hitlers power and many took the opportunity to leave the country in 1936 when Germany hosted the Olympic games. The persecution did lead to the emigration of nearly 150,000 people in which 30% were Jews between 1933 and 1938.The Jews that remained in Germany didn’t want to leave their personal property and possessions that they have worked hard for, and stayed in hope that Hitler would change. Their assumptions couldn’t have been more mistaken as the process of Aryanisation only continued to worsen when more drastic measures were taken to force Jews to leave Germany. Hitler’s treatment towards the Jews even went as far as organizing a vast assault on Jewish property, which involved many homes, shops and synagogues destroyed. This outrageous event was called ‘Kristallnacht’ (crystal night or night of broken glass) as so many windows were significantly smashed that night. During Kristallnacht, over 100 Jews were killed and 20,000 sent to concentration camps and were made to pay one billion schmarks for the damage. After this, a decree was made that excluded Jews from German economic life which meant that…
A very important move of the Nazi’s against the Jews was the Law for Restoration of Professional Civil Service in 1933, this law dismissed Jews from civil service. It had a big and terrible impact on the economical and psychological state of middle-class Jews. But it did what the Nazi’s intended for it to do, because of this law, 37000 Jews left Germany. Later that year other similar laws were passed, all aimed at excluding Jews from jobs and professions. However passing a law, how discriminating it is, is not violence. It seemed that the Nazi regime tried to bully the Jewish people away from Germany. Without using violence, this proves that there were features of the anti-Semitic policies that did not include violence.…
The laws that the powerful Nazis created were aimed towards Jews, and affected Jews throughout Germany with the hope of exterminating them from all of…
1. In 1935, Hitler introduced Germany to the Nuremberg Laws. They stripped Jews of citizenship, rights and they also provided a new way to define Jews. Hitler commented on his laws that they will help Jews by leading to "a level ground on which the German people may find a tolerable relation with the Jewish people" (Documents on Nazism 1919-1945, p.464). Regardless of what he said, his main idea was to destroy Jews from German society. He definitely knew that with these laws, he’s creating a shortcut to the “legal” destruction of Jews. In his words, Jews were incompatible with “true Germans” (Documents on Nazism 1919-1945, p.465).…
Jews faced several problems that made life very difficult and strenuous during the mid-1930s. People who were Jewish were often persecuted and treated as the worst class of people when it comes to social hierarchy. Throughout this time, there were many things happening to Germany that were of and related to government, which destroyed the ability for a Jewish citizen to have a positive life. There were several hardships and problems faced by Jews regarding emigration out of Europe. Also, Jewish people during this time period suffered from government and social ridicule, losing many rights and necessities that should be given to every human being upon birth.…