anti-semitism

early anti-semitic policy in Nazi Germany

1933 approved boycott of Jewish shops that prevented G’s from entering by buying

Jews expelled from artistic + cultural life

nuremberg laws

1935

formalised racial ideology into law

Law for the Protection of German Blood + Honour

• banned marriages + sexual relationships between Jews + Germans

Reich Citizenship Law

• stripped Jews of German citizenship

supplementary degrees defined Jews as a race

• anyone who descends from 3 fully Jewish grandparents or 2 fully Jewish parents

aryanisation policy

banned jews from:

• public parks

• theatres

• restaurants 

required to have special identity papers

Jewish doctors couldn’t treat G patients

forced to wear Star of David in 1941

Der Strümer

weekly anti-semitic newspaper

Julius Streicher

also produced school reading book “The Poisonous Mushroom” 1938

kristallnacht

9/11/38

in response to murder of Nazi diplomat by a Jew

authorised by NP, enacted by SA + SS

> 1000 synagogues attacked

> 7000 stores looted

Jewish community made to pay 30M reichsmarks for cost of destruction and fine of 1B reichsmarks

marked shift from discrimination to persecution

eastward expansion during WW2

swift victories in the East between 1939 - 41

approximately 7M Jews came under the control of the Nazis

Poland

where systematic extermination began

separated into > 400 ghettos across the country:

• Warsaw held over 400 000

majority held in ghettos were transported to extermination camps eg. Belzec or Treblinka

2.6 / 3M dead by 1945

einsatzgruppen

formed in 1941 under Heydrich

majority of victims were Russian Jews + captured political leaders

killed 1.4M in 1941

planning of the final solution

all German Jews transported to occupied territories in the East in late 1941 for “resettlement”

G declared “Jew Free” in May 1943

Göring empowered Heydrich to come up with an overall solution to the “Jewish Problem” in July 1941

the wannsee conference

January 1942

secret conference called by Heydrich with 15 govt. deputies and SS officials in Berlin

had the purpose of making the systematic murder of Jews more efficient

concentration camps

where enemies of the state were detained

one of the 1st camps was in Dachau 1933

prisoners beaten, abused + worked to death (Annihilation Through Work Policy)

camps were established near factories and quarries to profit off forced labour

• IG Farben Chemical Company supplied gas + owned a rubber plant near Auschwitz

extermination camps

built in occupied EE in 1941 - 1942

incl. Auschwitz-Birkenau or Treblinka

Jews transported in camps in cattle trains

were either killed immediately or used as slave labour until unfit to work

extermination began in 1942 and continued until 1944 using Zyklon B gas

approximately 6M killed at end of the war

Auschwitz

largest camp complex

originally opened as a labour camp in 1940 to service IG - Farben

became an extermination camp in June 1941

gas chambers could fit up to 2000 people and were disguised as showers

1.1M killed between 1942 and 1944