Nazi Germany and Individual Jews Essay

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Describe how Jews were discriminated against In Germany from1933 to 1939.
Discrimination is an unfair treatment of a racial group. Discrimination of Jews has been going on since the time of Jesus Christ. The Bible says that Jews had agreed to his crucifixion therefore leading to his death. Many people then believed that bad luck had been caused by Jews’ foolish idea. Jews in Germany (the citizens) had been living in the country for over a thousand years. Even though they were made the scapegoat for the death of Christ and slightly discriminated, they weren’t tortured harshly until Hitler and his Nazi party came to power in 1933. WW1 (1914-18) became known as The Great War because of its vast scale and its huge impact on nations, individuals, and the extensive damage. Germany suffered heavy casualties, lost land and had to pay reparations (compensations). This left the economy weak and the people low in spirits. The Nazi’s had grown increasingly popular within Germany in 1920s and early 1930s because of Hitler’s fierce attacks on the treaty of Versailles, which many Germans believed was an unfair punishment for their country.
Capitalizing deeply on Hitler’s power as far as Anti-Semitism is concerned (hating on Jewish people), Jews lived in permanent fear during the Nazi period. Law after law was passed to deprive them off their rights and restrict their lives. Most non-Jewish Germans turned against the Jews living in their local communities and violent outbursts were frequent. However, a large proportion of German Jews did not leave the country because they believed the situation would not last.
On March 5th May 1933, five weeks after Hitler became German Chancellor, election were held throughout Germany under which, following strong Nazi intimidation, the Nazi Party declared itself the winner: eighteen million Germans, 44 percent of the electorate , had voted for Hitler. Four days later, on March 9, the first mass attacks on Jews took place in the streets throughout Germany. Groups of storm troopers, in their familiar brown shirts with swastika armbands, working in groups of between five and thirty, surrounded individual Jews and beat them up.
The book burning on 10th May 1933 was alarming, as books of great authors including Einstein were burnt. Nazi raiding parties went in to public and private libraries; they threw and heaped the books on the streets, from there Nazi columns of beer-hall fighters had picked them up and burnt them in Berlin Universities. This happened because the Nazi leaders (example; Dr Joseph Goebbels) believed they weren’t fit for Germany.
The Legal assault on the Jews reached its peak with the laws adopted at the time of the 1935 Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg. The Nuremberg Laws were passed at a time when some concern was being evinced in government circles about anti-Semitic excesses in Germany. In August 1935, for example, the finance minister, Hjalmer Schacht, complained about “irresponsible Jew baiting”, while the interior minister, Wilhem Frick, even drafted an order to the state governments telling them to direct the police to intervene against illegal activity against Jews. They made “racial purity” a legal requirement for everyday German life and banned marriages between “Aryans” and “non-Aryans”. Jews were no longer able to vote in German elections, and a Reich Citizenship Law deprived them of their German Citizenship. Thus German Jews, whose families may have lived in Germany, effectively became stateless in their own country. Hitler’s racial and sexual obsession was an obvious influence on the Nuremberg Laws. Jews were said to be “alien” and were therefore forbidden to display the German flag. Similarly, only the “racially pure” could be full German citizens, hence the withdrawal of the right of Jews to vote. Only those of German blood would be given a certificate of citizenship, so Jews were no longer “citizens” but

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