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1933, about 500,000 Jews lived in Germany
Jews held important positions in government and
taught in Germany's great universities.
Nazis carried out the first nationwide, planned
action against Jews: boycott their businesses on
April 1, 1933
Signs were posted saying “Don't Buy from Jews”
and “The Jews Are Our Misfortune.”
boycott was not very successful and lasted just a
day
A week later, the government passed a law
restricting employment in the civil service to
“Aryans.”
Jewish government workers, including teachers in
public schools and universities were fired
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1935: Nazis announced new laws
These laws included German Jews from Reich
citizenship and prohibited them from marrying
or having sexual relations with persons of
“German or related blood,” and they were
deprived of many political rights.
Anyone who had three or four Jewish
grandparents was defined as a Jew
Jews were required to carry identity cards
Jews had to change their middle names if
they did not possess recognizably "Jewish" first
names
On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, violence against the
Jews broke out across the Reich. It appeared to be
set off by the Germans’ anger over the assassination
of a German official in Paris at the hands of a Jewish
teen. In two days, 250 synagogues were burned, over
7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted,
dozens of Jewish people were killed. The morning
after the pogroms 30,000 German Jewish men were
arrested for the “crime” of being Jewish and were
sent to concentration camps where they perished.
After that night, many Jews committed suicide or
tried to leave.
Between 1933 and 1941, the Nazis aimed to make Germany
cleansed of Jews by making life so difficult for them that they
would be forced to leave the country. By 1938, about 150, 000
Jews had fled the country. Many Jews were unable to find
countries to take them in. In the summer of 1938, delegates
from 32 countries met at the French Resort of Evian. The
German government stated how “astounding” it was that the
foreign countries criticized Germany for the way the Jews were
treated when those countries in fact wouldn’t take them in.
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In 1939, the German government conducted a census of all persons living in
Germany. Census takers recorded each person's age, sex, residence,
profession, religion, and marital status, and for the first time, they also listed
the person's race as traced through his or her grandparents. This information
was later punched into coded cards by thousands of clerks.
The cards were sorted and counted by the Hollerith machine, an early
version of the modern computer. The Hollerith was invented in 1884 by a
German-American engineer, Herman Hollerith.
The information from the 1939 census helped Nazi official Adolf Eichmann to
create the Jewish Registry, containing detailed information on all Jews living
in Germany.
APRIL 7, 1933
JEWS ARE IDENTIFIED AND REMOVED FROM GOVERNMENT POSTS
AUGUST 17, 1938
JEWS REQUIRED TO ASSUME "JEWISH" NAME
SEPTEMBER 19, 1941
BADGE IDENTIFYING JEWS INTRODUCED IN GERMANY