HOLOCAUST NOTES

PAPER 3

🕯️ CAMBRIDGE A LEVEL HISTORY 9489 — THE HOLOCAUST

Contextual Knowledge Bank

🟦 1933 — Hitler comes to power

30 January 1933 — Hitler becomes Chancellor

Hitler appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg.

Nazis began rapidly turning Germany into a dictatorship.

Jews were increasingly excluded from German society.

1 April 1933 — Boycott of Jewish businesses

SA organised a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.

Marked an early organised attack on Jews under Nazi rule.

7 April 1933 — Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service

Jewish people and political opponents were removed from many government jobs.

Began the systematic exclusion of Jews from public life.

🧠 Remember:

1933 = exclusion begins

🟨 1935 — Nuremberg Laws

15 September 1935

Nuremberg Laws

Two major laws:

Jews lost their status as German citizens.

Marriage/sexual relations between Jews and Germans classified as “Aryans” were prohibited.

Why important?

The Nazis turned antisemitism into formal legal discrimination.

🧠 Remember:

1935 = Jews lose citizenship

This is REALLY useful for your current extract because it mentions 1935 and Jews being excluded from military service.

🟧 1938 — Major escalation

March 1938 — Anschluss

Germany annexed Austria.

➡️ Around 200,000 Austrian Jews suddenly came under Nazi rule.

This helps explain how Nazi expansion increased the number of Jews under German control.

9–10 November 1938 — Kristallnacht

State-supported violence against Jews across Germany and Austria.

Synagogues attacked/burned

Jewish businesses and homes attacked

Jews were arrested

Around 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps

Why important?

It was a major escalation from legal discrimination → organised physical violence.

🧠 Remember:

1938 = violence

And BOOM — your extract literally mentions the destruction of synagogues and Jewish businesses.

🟥 1939 — WAR CHANGES EVERYTHING

30 January 1939 — Hitler's Reichstag speech

Hitler publicly threatened the “annihilation” of European Jewry if another world war occurred.

This is directly relevant to your extract.

You can use it as contextual knowledge to support the historian's argument that Nazi antisemitism existed before the war actually began.

1 September 1939 — Germany invades Poland

🚨 MASSIVE Paper 3 date.

Germany invaded Poland.

This brought approximately two million Polish Jews under German control.

Why important?

The Nazis now controlled a vastly larger Jewish population.

This led to:

ghettos

forced labour

deportations

starvation

increasing persecution

🧠 Remember: