Nuremburg Laws During The Holocaust

In the tumultuous period leading up to World War II, a series of laws were devised in Nazi Germany that subjected the Jewish people to prohibitory and discriminatory forms of treatment. Although the Jewish people only accounted for 503,000 of the 55 million occupants of the country, Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship preached the incorporation of anti-Semitism into law and practice in order to quell the people he considered to be the enemy of the country.

The Nuremberg laws were passed on September 15th, 1935. The Nuremberg Laws were two laws which excluded the Jews from German life, as well as took away some of their natural rights. 1st law stated that only full blood Germans and their blood relatives were members of the Reich. 2nd law said that Germans could not

Did the authors of the Nuremberg Laws write them with the knowledge that the Holocaust was perpetrated because of these laws? In my opinion it didn’t seem like the authors of the Nuremberg Laws had knowledge of what was going to enact the Holocaust. Instead it seems that their intentions for writing the Nuremburg laws were what helped start the beginning of the holocaust.

The Nuremberg Laws were laws established in 1933 by Adolf Hitler during his reign as German chancellor. These laws aimed to maintain the integrity of all Germans, as well as regarding Jews as the inferior race to all races. The Nuremberg Laws also identified who would be classified and considered a Jew, and banned marriages between Jews and non-Germans with extreme emphasis on Jews. As a result, many Jews were treated inhumanely by not only losing their citizenship rights, but their jobs, freedom, and for some, ultimately their lives. More than six million Jews were placed and killed in concentration camps in the Holocaust. This has been deemed one of the most horrific events in human history.

The main goal of the Nazis pertaining to the European Jews was that of total extermination. At the yearly party rally held in Nuremberg in 1935, the Nazis announced new laws which regulated a large number of the racial speculations common in Nazi philosophy. Two distinct laws passed in Nazi Germany in September 1935 are referred to on a whole as the Nuremberg Laws: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Assurance of German Blood and German Honor. These laws epitomized large portions of the racial hypotheses supporting Nazi philosophy. They would give the legitimate structure to the orderly abuse of Jews in Germany. The laws rejected German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood." Ancillary ordinances to the laws disenfranchised Jews and denied them of most political rights.

The second law established who would be granted full political and civic rights and those who would now be deprived of them. Citizenship rights were to be granted to those who were citizens of the Reich, which were only individuals classified as being of "German or related blood", therefore Jews were excluded from any and all citizenship rights becoming state subjects, essentially making them foreigners in their own country. Kristallnacht refers to Jewish pogroms that took place in 1938. These attacks took place against synagogues, Jewish owned businesses, other Jewish establishments, and Jewish citizens in general. This was also the start to organized Nazi attacks, and the mass incarceration of the Jews. There was no clear Instructions on how to execute the violence, so it caused the destroying of Jewish property and inhumane treatment of Jewish people. Kristallnacht essentially became the turning point in the Nazis persecution of the Jewish people. It expanded the efforts to removed Jews from German economics and social life. Kristallnacht and the events that followed essentially showed the Nazi regime that they can count on the nationwide support of anti-Semitism from the general public. This showed the Nazis that they can easily move forward with their plans without a lot of opposition

This identity as disgusting, impure creatures helped to set them apart from the pure Aryan race in society. This set up the Aryan race as superior and the Jewish race as inferior. This was reinforced physically through structural discrimination such as the Nuremberg laws and the forced wearing of the Star of David. The Germans the then found a false concreteness in this distinction that the Jews were evil and were ‘rats' who conspired against them. This allowed them to find concreteness in their belief that the Holocaust was legitimate. However, it was false considering that the Jews had fought in the German army and proved their loyalty to the German state. The Germans' perception of the Jews' identity allowed them to deny the freedoms of the Jews. They began by denying the Jews' right to be Germans, which opened the door for other denial of freedoms, such as even the right the life. These included the boycott of Jewish businesses in 1933, the Nuremberg

“Being a Jew or a German is a part of the blood” (Feldman,), this is a statement from the Nuremberg Laws, which was consigned to the Jews in September of 1935 ("United States Holocaust Memorial Museum."). The Nuremberg Laws consisted of five discriminating guidelines such as: 1. “The “Reich Citizenship” (it stated that only a person of “German or related blood” could be a citizen, have political rights, or could hold office), 2. the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor” (this made it illegal for Jews and non-Jews to get married or engaged in sexual relations together), 3. Jews were not allowed to have non-Jewish female servants under forty-five years old, 4. Jews were forbidden to fly the German flag, 5. (being a Jew is a part of a person’s blood) (Feldman,)”. Jews were not able to eat, shop, or even use the restroom in certain places. Children that went to school were taught anti-Semitic lessons, and the Jewish children were taunted and chaffed, not by peers’ alone, but teachers as well. This dreadful method compelled children to refuse attending school ("United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.").

Obviously not the first to initiate anti-Jewish policies, the German Nazis began the era of annihilation, or the attempt to kill all European Jews. Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist Party in Germany, excluded Jews from the protection of German law by allowing Jewish property to be seized and Jews to be sent to concentration camps where they underwent forced labor, torture, and execution.6 Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy continued with the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 "for the protection of German blood and German honor."7 These laws resulted in Jews losing rights of citizenship and marriage to Aryans, the requirement that Jews carry special identification cards and give their children specific Jewish names, and the framing of the definition of a "Jew" for legal purposes. Through the Nuremberg Laws, Hitler was slowly taking away Jewish liberty and as a result, making it difficult for Jews to resist their annihilation, which unfolded with mass killings and continued until the end of World War II and the operation of death camps. Becoming apparent throughout the Nazi's annihilation of Jews was that "The Germans…were engaged in no random game of terror and

By 1933, the Jewish population in Germany was around 525,000 people which was only one percent of the total German population. During the years to follow, Nazis established an “Aryanization” of Germany. Non- Aryans (non- Germans) were dismissed from civil service, Jewish- owned businesses were liquidated, and Jewish layers and doctors were stripped of their clients. Later in 1935, the Nuremberg Laws were enacted by the Nazi government. The Nuremberg Laws were composed of two new racial laws, the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law to Protect German Blood and Honor. The Nuremberg Laws restricted Jews, it declared that anyone who had three or four Jewish grandparents would be deemed as a Jew, and anyone with two Jewish grandparents would be deemed a Mischlinge (half-breed). The Nuremberg Laws led to Jews becoming targets of wide-spread discrimination and persecution. These laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship and outlawed marriage and sexual intercourse between Jews and non-Jews. They also prohibited Jews from obtaining certain jobs (such as jobs in the government, medical field, and in law). They prohibited Jews from certain entertainment and recreational activities (such as parks, beaches, theaters, sporting events). Under the Nuremberg Laws Jews were also prohibited

Nuremberg Laws: A list of laws that promoted the Nazis and Hitler’s racist ideologies- that Jewish people must register, they were no longer considered Reich citizens, and they were not allowed to have relationships with other non-Jewish Germans.

The Nazi law and regulation used to exclude Jews from organizations, professions, and other aspects of public life. On April 7, 1933, the first major law that reduces the rights of Jewish citizen was ‘the Law for the Restoration of the professional civil service. According to the law all non- Aryan specially, Jews were excluded from all civil services including clerical employees and other professionals. At the same day they issued another law that Jews were denied admission

Jews and only the Jews were singled out for total elimination. Even though the Germans did not want a few groups in their way, they did not want to kill them off. The ideal of reducing inferior Polish and Russian populations to create space for a stretched out German Reich would not be realized, but the elimination of as many Jews as possible from the world stage stayed Germany's all time major concern, to which resources sustained to be directed even as the war was being lost. Nor were the Jews given a opportunity to change or correct their customs. The Nazis did not want the Jews to inner mix with Germans so they created a law. At no point in time, for any reason was a Jew allowed to break these laws, or they would be torture, maybe even murdered. According to the Commentaries to the German Racial Laws of 1936, “The Blood Protection Law deals with the segregation of Jewish and German blood from the biological point of view… As an acute danger threatened the German people from Jewry alone, the law aims primarily at the prevention of further mixing of blood with the Jews" (“The Yellow Star” 4). When Jews rights were being taken away, a lot of Jews attempted to run away from Germany, and thousands succeeded

Before the invasion of Poland, There were laws put in place by Hitler and his advisors that took away the full rights of Jewish people. No more citizenship rights for Jews. Germans classified Jews as a people on their own. With all of these Anti-Jewish measures, the Nazi leaders wanted to drive the Jews out of Germany by systematically isolating them from German society and by excluding them from the German economy, taking away any opportunity for them to make a living in Germany. This was seen as one of the first steps towards the “Final

Document- From 1935-1938, the anti semitic laws made to foreshadow the elimination of minorities in Poland. One of the biggest ones was in 1938 when the New “Citizenship” law where you would have to live in the country for 5 years to be a citizen- largely affected immigrants coming to Germany, especially of Jewish descent.