 From
the moment the Nazis came to
power in 1933, the Jews of Germany were
subjected to a never-ending series of
discriminatory laws. There would be,
during the twelve years of Hitler's Reich,
over 400 separate regulations issued
against Jews prohibiting everything from
performing in a symphony orchestra to
owning a pet cat.
 On
April 1 1933, the Nazi regime called for a
national boycott of all Jewish business.
 Lists of specific businesses and individuals
to be boycotted were published.
 German Jewish leaders were ordered to
deny reports of Nazi atrocities committed
against Jews.
 The boycott lasted three days and revealed
the efficiency of Nazi intelligence on Jewish
economic life.
 The idea that it was permissible to destroy
life without impunity was strengthened
 Stormtroopers
outside a Berlin
store posting
signs with the
words
‘Germans!
Defend
yourselves! Do
not buy from
Jews!’




At their annual party rally on 15 September 1935, the Nazis
announced new laws called the Nuremberg Race Laws
These laws deprived German Jews of their rights of German
citizenship, giving them the status of "subjects" in Hitler's
Reich.
The laws also made it forbidden for Jews to marry or have
sexual relations with Aryans or to employ young Aryan
women as household help. (An Aryan being a person with
blond hair and blue eyes of Germanic heritage.)
The Nuremberg Laws defined a person as a “Jew” as
someone three or four Jewish grandparents. They also
classified thousands of people who had concerted to
Judaism from another religion as Jewish.
Crowds of
people at the
1935 Nazi
rally at
Nuremberg
The introduction of
the Nuremberg
Laws
Entirely convinced that the purity of German blood is essential to the further
existence of the Germanpeople, and inspired by the uncompromising
determination to safeguard the future of the German nation, the Reichstag has
unanimously adopted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:
I. 1. Marriages between Jews and citizens of German or kindred blood are
forbidden. Marriages concluded in defiance of this law are void, even if, for
the purpose of evading this law, they were concluded abroad. 2. Proceedings
for annulment may be initiated only by the Public Prosecutor.
II. Sexual relations outside marriage between Jews and nationals of German of
kindred blood are forbidden.
III. Jews will not be permitted to employ female citizens of German or kindred
blood under 45 years of age as domestic servants.
IV. 1. Jews are forbidden to display the Reich and national flag or the national
colors. 2. On the other hand they are permitted to display the Jewish colors.
The exercise of this right is protected by the State....


As a result, two months later a supplemental Nazi decree
was issued which defined a "full Jew" as a person with at
least three Jewish grandparents. Those with fewer than three
grandparents were designated as Mischlinge (half-breeds),
of which there were two degrees: First Degree Mischlinge –
a person with two Jewish grandparents; Second Degree
ischlinge – a person with one Jewish grandparent.
The Nazis also issued somewhat complicated instructional
charts to help bureaucrats distinguish the various degrees of
Jewishness. Generally, the more "full-blooded" a Jew was, the
greater the level of discrimination. But much of the confusion
remained. In many cases, the necessary genealogical
evidence concerning Jewish family backgrounds was simply
not available.
Instructional chart
issued to help
bureaucrats
distinguish Jews from
Mischlinge (mixed
race persons) and
Aryans. The white
figures are Aryans;
the black figures
Jews; and the shaded
figures Mischlinge.
I.
1. A subject of the State is a person who belongs to the protective
union of the German Reich, and who therefore has particular
obligations towards the Reich. 2. The status of subject is acquired in
accordance with the provisions of the Reich and State Law of
Citizenship.
II. 1. A citizen of the Reich is that subject only who is of German or
kindred blood and who, through his conduct, shows that he is both
desirous and fit to serve the German people and Reich faithfully.
•Loss of citizenship was the most important step in the process that lead
to the ultimate exclusion and murder of German Jews. Citizenship, at
that time, was the only status that conferred specific rights and
privileges on individuals before International Law asserted that people
have rights regardless of whether or not they have citizenship under a
nation state.
 This
law required all persons wanting to
marry to submit to a medical
examination, after which a "Certificate of
Fitness to Marry" would be issued if they
were free of diseases. The certificate was
required for a marriage license
From the time the Nuremberg Laws were passed
until 1938, sporadic legislation resulted in further
severity against Jews. Street names that sounded
Jewish were changed and Jews whose first names did
not sound "Jewish" had to add "Israel" or "Sarah" to
their names.
 Passports and identity cards were marked with a "J"
for Jude.
 To enforce these laws, the SS increasingly began to
take power over the Jews. The result of the
Nuremberg Laws and the regulations which followed
was to bring together the various policies toward
Jews, which had been inconsistent and contradictory

 Anti-Semitism
existed before the
Nuremberg Laws of 1935
 However, the
Nuremberg Laws
institutionalised anti-Semitism and
stripped German Jews of their citizenship
and several of their political and
economic rights
The Nuremberg Laws were an important step
toward the Nazi goal to exterminate all Jews.
 The Nazis now had a definition that was
escalating in severity and leading to the
destruction of European Jewry.
 Once Jews could be defined and identified, they
could be segregated socially, politically, and
economically from other Germans.
 Jews were now outside the protection of a state
they had placed their confidence in for
generations.




Kristallnacht – Night of the Broken Glass
A pogrom – or series of attacks - against
Jewish people throughout Nazi Germany and
parts of Austria on November 9-10, 1938
These attacks were triggered by the
assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom
Rath by Herschel Grynszpan by a Germanborn Polish Jew in Paris, France on 7
November 1938.
 Following
this assassination, Nazi
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
delivered a speech in which he commented
that "the Führer has decided that…
demonstrations [against the assassination]
should not be prepared or organised by the
party, but insofar as they erupt
spontaneously, they are not to be
hampered.“ (Friedländer, Saul. Nazi
Germany and The Jews – Volume 1: The Years
of Persecution 1933-1939, London: Phoenix,
1997, pg 270)
Herschel Grynszpan
The interior of the
Fasanenstrasse
Synagogue in
Berlin after
Kristallnacht
The damage wrought on a
Jewish shop following
Kristallnacht
A ruined
synagogue in
Munich after
Kristallnacht
A man surveys the
damage to the
Lichtenstein leather
goods store after the
Kristallnacht pogrom.
Berlin, Germany.
November 10, 1938.
— USHMM #73909,
courtesy of National
Archives and Records
Administration,
College Park
A burning
synagogue
The word ‘Jews’ is
scrawled on the
exterior wall of the
destroyed synagogue
in Buehl. The
synagogue was burned
during Kristallnacht.
The Hebrew
inscription over the
entrance reads: ‘I shall
make for them a holy
place.’ Buehl,
Germany. Circa
November 1938. —
USHMM #98603, courtesy
of Stadt Buehl
Stadtgeschichtliches
Institut
The name
‘Kristallnach
t’ is derived
from the


On November 9-10 1938, Jewish homes, shops,
towns and villages were ransacked, as the SA
(Brown-Shirted Storm Troopers) and German and
Austrian civilians destroyed buildings with
sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in
pieces of smashed windows—the origin of the
name "Night of Broken Glass.”
People were subjected to all manner of
humiliations, including being forced to scrub the
pavements whilst being tormented by their
fellow Austrians, some of whom had been their
friends and neighbours.

British Daily Telegraph correspondent, Hugh Carleton
Greene, wrote of events in Berlin:
“Mob law ruled in Berlin throughout the afternoon and
evening and hordes of hooligans indulged in an orgy
of destruction. I have seen several anti-Jewish
outbreaks in Germany during the last five years, but
never anything as nauseating as this. Racial hatred
and hysteria seemed to have taken complete hold of
otherwise decent people. I saw fashionably dressed
women clapping their hands and screaming with
glee, while respectable middle-class mothers held
up their babies to see the "fun””


Ninety-one Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jewish
men—a quarter of all Jewish men in Germany—
were taken to concentration camps
Around 1,668 synagogues were ransacked, and
267 set on fire. In Vienna alone 95 synagogues or
houses of prayer were destroyed
("'German Mobs' Vengeance on Jews," The Daily
Telegraph, November 11, 1938, cited in Gilbert,
Martin. Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction.
Harper Collins, 2006, p. 42)
 The
violence was officially called to a halt
on November 11 1938 by Joseph
Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels, Nazi
Propaganda Minister
 After
this, the Jewish community was
fined 1 billion reichsmarks for the death
of vom Rath.
 In
addition, they were fined for ‘property
damage to the German nation’
The front page
of the New
York Times
on
November
11 1938
 Kristallnacht
changed the nature of the
persecution of the Jews from economic,
political, and social to the physical (eg:
with beatings, incarceration, vandalism
and murder)
 The
event is often referred to as
foreshadowing the Holocaust
Jews arrested
during
Kristallnacht line
up for roll call at
Buchenwald
Concentration
Camp, 1938