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Not until the 1930s, however, with the ascendancy of National Socialism and Adolf

Hitlersaccession to power in Germany, did racial antisemitism become a political instrument in


the hands of the masses and, later on, the official policy of a modern state. From then on the
essence of Jewishness was believed to be biological. In the past a Jew could theoretically avoid
persecution by assimilating, renouncing the customs of his tradition, or adopting a non-Jewish
faith. However, the racial element eliminated these possibilities. The new racial outlook defined
the German people as the finest and purest branch of the Aryan-Nordic race (along with the
Nordic-Scandinavian peoples) and labeled Jews as a subhuman race that strove to challenge the
correct world order and deprive the supreme race of its position of dominance and
leadership. Unless the Aryan race won the struggle and established its dominion, Jews would
bring about the extermination of the human race.In the 1930s, Germanys Jews some 500,000
people made up less than one percent (0.8%) of the German population. Most considered
themselves loyal patriots, linked to the German way of life by language and culture. They
excelled in science, literature, the arts, and economic enterprise. 24% of Germanys Nobel Prize
winners were Jewish. However, conversion, intermarriage, and declining birth rates, led some to
believe that Jewish life was doomed to disappear from the German scene altogether.
The paradox was that Nazi ideology stemmed from Germany and the German people, among
whom Jews eagerly wanted to acculturate. Indeed, there was a widespread belief amongst many
Jews in the illusion that the role they played within industry and trade and their contributions to
the German economy would prevent the Germans from completely excluding them.
Nazi anti-Jewish policy functioned on two primary levels: legal measures to expel the Jews from
society and strip them of their rights and property while simultaneously engaging in campaigns

of incitement, abuse, terror and violence of varying proportions. There was one goal: to make the
Jews leave Germany.
On March 9, 1933, several weeks after Hitler assumed power, organized attacks on Jews broke
out across Germany. Two weeks later, the Dachau concentration camp, situated near Munich,
opened. Dachau became a place of internment for Communists, Socialists, German liberals and
anyone considered an enemy of the Reich. It became the model for the network of concentration
camps that would be established later by the Nazis. Within a few months, democracy was
obliterated in Germany, and the country became a centralized, single-party police state.
On April 1, 1933, a general boycott against German Jews was declared, in which SA members
stood outside Jewish-owned stores and businesses in order to prevent customers from entering.
Approximately one week later, a law concerning the rehabilitation of the professional civil
service was passed. The purpose of the legislation was to purge the civil service of officials of
Jewish origin and those deemed disloyal to the regime. It was the first racial law that attempted
to isolate Jews and oust them from German life. The first laws banished Jews from the civil
service, judicial system, public medicine, and the German army (then being reorganized).
Ceremonial public book burnings took place throughout Germany. Many books were torched
solely because their authors were Jews. The exclusion of Jews from German cultural life was
highly visible, ousting their considerable contribution to the German press, literature, theater, and
music.
In September 1935 the Nuremberg Laws were passed, stripping the Jews of their citizenship
and forbidding intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews. Jews were banned from universities;

Jewish actors were dismissed from theaters; Jewish authors works were rejected by publishers;
and Jewish journalists were hard-pressed to find newspapers that would publish their writings.
Famous artists and scientists played an important role in this campaign of dispossession and
party labeling of literature, art, and science. Some scientists and physicians were involved in the
theoretical underpinnings of the racial doctrine.

Sinti and Roma (Gypsies)


The Nazis considered the Sinti and Roma a socio-racial problem to be expurgated from the
German nation. Nomadic Sinti and Roma were subjected to special depredations; their fate was
tantamount to that of the Jews. Of the 44,000 Sinti and Roma who lived in the Reich, thousands
were sent to concentration camps after the war began. Others were concentrated in transit camps
before being sent to ghettos and extermination camps during the war. Between 90,000-150,000
Sinti and Roma were murdered by the Germans throughout Europe.
Homosexuals
Homosexuals were stripped of their civil rights because the Nazis considered homosexuality an
affront to their goal of encouraging natural population growth and normal family life.
Approximately 15,000 homosexuals were imprisoned in camps and thousands perished.
The Disabled
Between 200,000-350,000 mentally and physically disabled individuals were forcibly sterilized
until 1939. Beginning in 1939, approximately 200,000 were murdered during the Euthanasia
program either by gassing, lethal injection or starvation. The Nazis sought to increase the

proportion of healthy and racially superior members of the national community


(volksgemeinschaft) by quickly and unsentimentally eliminating the sick and the weak.
The Catholic Church
Beginning in 1933 the Nazi regime arrested thousands of members of the German Catholic
central party, as well as Catholic priests. They disbanded schools and Catholic institutions as part
of the totalitarian policy of the regime and its attempts to eliminate any competing authority. This
took place despite the Concordat that had been signed with the Vatican in 1933. During World
War II Catholic organizations were oppressed and thousands of Catholic priests were imprisoned
and murdered throughout the areas occupied by the Nazis.
Another small minority that was oppressed because of their unique religious beliefs were
the Jehovahs Witnesses. They believed that in the eschaton non-members of the group would be
judged, they opposed military service and took a clear stance opposing the regime. As a result,
many of the groups members were arrested and some were incarcerated in concentration camps.

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