The Significance Of Kristallnacht And The Holocaust

The Holocaust was organized by Adolf Hitler and it targeted Jewish people. In the beginning, the Nazis only targeted their political opponents such as Communists or Social Democrats. These were the people that were sent to the first concentration camp. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 labeled anyone with three or four grandparents as a Jew and those with two Jewish grandparents as half-breeds. Under the Nuremberg Laws, Jews became routine targets for stigmatization and persecution (“History”). The Nazis portrayed Jews as a race and not a religious group. Religious anti-Semitism could be resolved by conversion, political anti-Semitism by expulsion. Ultimately, the logic of Nazi racial anti-Semitism led to annihilation (Berenbaum 1). “Kristallnacht” was a night in November of

Finally, many purely hated Jews because they were not Aryan. Germany was one of these countries. Hitler, the leader of Germany, has carried hate for the Jews since early childhood. Primarily, he blamed them for his mother’s death along with him not getting into his dream school, Vienna Art College. Also, they were blamed by Germany for defeat in WWI and as the cause for unemployment. However, mainly Jews were persecuted because of the way they looked. At the time, Hitler wanted a racially pure Germany. He believed that by adapting the Darwin theory of survival of the fittest, he would be able to create a stronger generation and kill those that are impure or disabled.

Consistent with Rossel, Germany has had a past of anti-Semitism, starting in 1542 when the great German Protestant leader Martin Luther wrote a booklet called Against the Jews and Their Lies. Even earlier the Catholic Churches had taught that the Jewish people killed Crist and should therefore be hated (10). Early teachings of anti-Semitism lead to a hating of the Jewish community, but with the German’s calling themselves the “Aryan Race” and the Jewish people calling themselves the “chosen one’s” there was bound to be competition on who was superior.

The Holocaust was a great tragedy, but it didn't happen overnight. It was a long process of demeaning Jews as subhuman. This started as early as 1933 when Hitler first came to power. However, Kristallnacht, or The Night of the Broken Glass, was like the dam bursting. It was when the government of Germany encouraged its people to loot and burn Jewish shops, synagogues, and schools. In addition, many Jews were pulled out of their houses in the middle of the night and sent to concentration camps. In some towns so many of the men were sent to the camps that the women and children were forced to clean up the broken glass that littered the streets. Kristallnacht was a very significant point in the Holocaust,

In the 1930's the Wall Street crash occurred and the Jews having an image of being well educated and very wealthy and selfish due to all their large important businesses they ran in Germany. Hitler portrayed an image of the Jews to the Germans as though the reason why some Germans are out of jobs is because the Jews have stolen their jobs and are invading Germany being 'parasites' and taking what belongs to 'pure' hardworking German people. Therefore when the economic situation in Germany was very low and the German economy was suffering from the depression, the Jews were blamed for having all the German money and for Germans being very poor and starving during the time of the depression in the 1930's. Despite the fact the Jewish people were not particularly communist at all, due to Hitler being anti- communist, this was another act of using them as scapegoats. Anti - Semitism had been current in Europe for centuries, even since the days of 'Christ'.

Well first off, Hitler and the Nazis weren’t the first people to treat the Jews poorly; they were just the ones to treat them the worst and the most recent. But up until recent time the Jewish people have always been treated poorly throughout the history of their religion. The Jews have always been like the little guy in school that always gets beat up on. According to the website Why Did Hitler Hate The Jews? Hitler just built upon and used anti-Semitic ideas that already existed from past cultures and societies. The Nazis hatred of the Jews was so different in that they believed that the Jews were biologically and racially distinct, that there was a kind of biological struggle for dominance over the entire human race between the Jews and everybody else (The Nazi Hatred of the Jews). The Nazis singled them out because they thought the Jewish people were pests, the Nazis didn’t even consider them humans, and needed to be eradicated to make the world

At the end of WWI in 1918, Germany’s economy was in ruins. There were very few jobs, and bitterness began to take over the country. According to the text, “Hitler, a rising politician, offered Germany a scapegoat: Jewish people. Hitler said that Jewish people were to blame for Germany’s problems. He believed that Jews did not deserve to live.” (7) This was the birth of Antisemitism--prejudice against Jewish people. Europe’s Jewish people have always been persecuted due to their “different customs and beliefs that many viewed with suspicion.”(7) Hitler simply reignited the flames, and a violent hatred was born.

Rumors about jews were spread to the German people which led to extreme racism and hate towards the jewish race in germany. Many germans had grown up around jewish families and still believed the horrible things they were being told. Seeing that people hated people they’d grown up around because of things they were being told by their government about those people is sickening for most. Similar to jewish people, the japanese people in america were hated by fellow countrymen because of rumors after being attacked by japan during pearl harbor,hate for japanese skyrocketed. People thought all Japanese Americans were spies for the Japanese government. Lik elie, being hated by fellow countrymen because of rumors and racism can greatly affect your faith in humanity. Like your fellow countrymen, you'd expect people around the world to step in and stop these social injustices against other people around the

Kristallnacht changed Jewish lives dramatically in over just one night. Kristallnacht or better known as ¨The Night of Broken Glass¨ due to all the broken glass on the streets from the destruction for Jewish places was a horrible day in history with terror and destruction. Due to it Jewish lives were majorly affected.

I have learned that after World War I, Europe experienced severe economic and political problems that intensified anti-Semitism almost everywhere. This added to the old charges that Jews were unpatriotic and greedy and there was the accusation that they were behind the spread of Communism. In Germany, Adolf Hitler, who had become a racial anti-Semite as a youth in his birth country of Austria, made attacks on the Jews from the beginning of his career in the Nazi party in postwar Munich. Such attacks became the mainstay of Nazi propaganda throughout his rise to power, but he did not always use them. Hitler and his followers used these attacks when it played for their position and not when it served against them.

The Nazis had a very strong hatred of the Jews and anyone that denied them. The question is what brought this awful hatred for this peaceful race. This hatred was unlike other discrimination of the Jews before this because this was all based on racial and biological hate. They wouldn’t even hold peaceful discussions with the Jews. To this day we still don’t completely understand what brought the people to believe these awful things. However, over time we did begin to grasp a good general idea of it.

The German Jews believed that assimilation was the future and only thought it would deepen and get better. Anti-Semitism was on the fringe of society and politics but some Jews remained reluctant to throw themselves into the German culture- they believed the good times would not last. They were not fuelled with this hope of everything being forgotten about Jews being ‘outsiders’ and ‘alien’ and that’s fair enough as some Jews were still until the 1930’s were being treated as

First of all, the Nazis used false information about Jewish people and utilized negative Jewish stereotypes to legitimize the horrific acts of violence during the Final Solution. The Nazis were evil towards the Jews. Movies, newspapers, and posters were only some of the ways anti-semitic messages were thrown out into the public. A newspaper called Der Sturmer pumped out stories devoted to showing Germans how dirty Jews were (Marcovitz 15). Things like “Jews are immoral, indecent, dishonest, ugly, fat, not human, cannibalistic”, and “Jews eat their children and drink their blood”, were common headlines (Marcovitz 15). Jews were not humans. They were on the same level as bugs and needed to be exterminated from Germany and all of Eastern Europe. Also, stereotypes from 100’s of years ago were still alive and well. Jews were tax collectors a long time ago, and some people still hated them for it. Some people could not let go of old derogatory lies and the Nazis loved this. Hate towards the Jews was stronger than kindness and the Nazis fed off of this. If people saw the propaganda and the heard old stereotypes, then maybe they would hop on board with the Nazis.

Anti-semitism in Germany led by Adolf Hitler would back up a plan called the final solution, to exterminate all of the Jews in Europe. Out of the 100 million Jews aimed for extermination, 6 million of them were killed. On his path to German greatness, Jews became victim to inconceivable actions. First the Nuremberg Laws were passed which stripped Jews of their german citizenship, eliminating their opportunity to flee to other countries. After Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, Hitler forcefully deported Jewish people into fenced confinements called ghettos. More Jews died here than in any extermination camp due to the harsh conditions and labor. Most people living in ghettos had no access to running water or a sewage system and overcrowding

2). Even though this was not a violent treatment of the Jews, it was an attempt to bankrupt and dehumanize them of everything they had worked for their whole lives (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). As a result, Jews became a segregated people. They had to ride on buses and trains only in the seat that were clearly marked for them (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). Jewish children were allowed to be bullied at school in an attempt to keep them from coming to school. Hitler used this to brand the Jews as a lazy people (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). The Nuremberg Laws passed in 1935 gave even more power to the Nazis and took away more dignity of the Jews. The Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and marriages between Jews and non-Jews were not allowed (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). At this point, the Jews who could afford to pay a fine to leave the country were allowed to do so, but the ones who could not afford it had to stay behind and were not allowed to get food or medicine (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). Hitler’s campaign against the Jews escalated in 1938 with “Krystalnacht” – The Night of the Broken Glass (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). After a Nazi diplomat was found shot to death, Hitler began a seven day war of terror against the Jews (Jews in Nazi Germany pg. 2). Shops that were owned by Jews were destroyed and robbed, homes and synagogues burned