The Nuremberg Laws
Throughout the years anti-Semitism caused many horrific and gruesome events. One such event was the Holocaust. Because of the Holocaust millions lost their rights freedom and dignity. The Nuremberg Laws created during the Holocaust, stripped away Jews freedom, and in doing this these laws infuriated millions.
The Nuremberg laws did many things to the lives of many races, and cultures. The laws stole the ability to make your own decisions such as, choosing whether you have kids with another race. For infants they took away their right to live. Also “anyone with a hereditary disease or illness was condemned to die” (Grün 105). Many where enraged by the fact that they could not, make their own decisions. Also the laws completely ignored the fact that every man is created equal.
The Nuremberg Laws were created under strict laws and regulations. “The Nuremberg Laws effectively ended Jewish emancipation and civic equality “(Biesinger). The laws were proclaimed at the yearly party rally in Nuremberg Germany on September 15, 1935 by Adolf Hitler.
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He did not think of the idea he got the idea from his chief of the medical center Gerhard Wagner. Wagner had wanted more strict racial laws. The laws were not only to make Jews suffer but also to create the pure Aryan race (Biesinger). “Nazi parties interfered with Nuremberg Germany on sept.
10, 1935 to explain the requirements to be a citizen of the country of Third Reich which was under Hitler’s control” (Axelrod). The first law said that nobody can be a citizen unless they were part of the D.L.O.G.R. (Defense League of German Reich). On top of that they had to have German blood or German relatives. The second law states that “Marriages between Jews and citizens of German blood or German-related stock are forbidden (Grün 105). On October 18, 1935 a law was created to “ensure the continued derivation of the Jewish people from the healthy stock “(Grün 105). This laws was called the Healthy Stock Law. Anyone who disobeyed the laws were sentenced to death or hard labor. The only exception to the laws were during the Olympics of 1936(Catherford). Where Hitler tried to show off and prove that his pure Aryan race is superior to all other
races. Reactions to the Nuremberg laws varied from party to party, and country to country. But no matter where you were at or who you were your reaction was usually negative unless of course you were for anti-Semitism. For example Hans Globke wrote commentaries for these laws. Jewish business owners were forced to shut down due to them being subject to boycott. (Hughes 100). Jewish students were expelled from school (Saldinger 10). Jews could not do anything about it and if they tried they were sent to a lifetime of hard work and labor (Biesinger). Anti-Semitism has created and caused many terrible things, such as the Nuremberg laws that were created during the Holocaust. The laws were created under strict laws and regulations to make Jews lives miserable. These laws impacted several religious parties. The laws caused millions to lose their pride, honor, and some even their want to live.
Anti-Semitism, hatred or prejudice of Jews, has tormented the world for a long time, particularly during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a critical disaster that happened in the early 1940s and will forever be remembered. Also known as the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, an assassination by the German Nazis lead by Adolf Hitler.
To understand the Holocaust you need to understand six words, definition, expropriation, einsatzgruppen, concentration, deportation, and death camps. The Germans define the Jews biologically based on religion of their grandparents. When the regime came to power in January 1933 part of the Nazi movement wanted to out rid or Jews overnight, what they did was they began to legislate against the Jews and rapidly the Jews were kick out not only in civil service but also in education, universities, teachers lawyers and doctors. The Jews became something that was not needed. The climax of this early period of legislation was the Nuremberg laws. The laws were there to determine officially citizenship in Germany, however the only definition that were given who is a citizen were definition for who was not a citizen and the only people define as not citizen of Germany were the Jews. In other time in history Jews could convert, they could hide themselves by assimilating within the host country. However under racial theory during the Nazi period Jews were Jews because of the blood that was coursing thought their veins. So the ultimate theory was that if you wanted to get rids of Jews that you couldn’t do it through conversion or any other way then to murder them.
After The Great depression and World War I, Germany was left in a fragile state. The economy was ruined, many people were unemployed and all hope was lost. The Nazis believed it wasn’t their own fault for the mess, but those who were inferior to the German people. These Nazi beliefs lead to and resulted in cruelty and suffering for the Jewish people. The Nazis wanted to purify Germany and put an end to all the inferior races, including Jews because they considered them a race. They set up concentration camps, where Jews and other inferior races were put into hard labor and murdered. They did this because Nazis believed that they were the only ones that belonged in Germany because they were pure Germans. This is the beginning of World War 2. The Nazi beliefs that led to and resulted in the cruelty and suffering of the Jewish people
The Jim Crow Laws were aimed at African Americans that lived in the United States. These laws were different, as the African Americans didn’t have to go through any screening process. It was plain and simple for people to figure out due to their skin color. The Nuremberg Laws were aimed at the Jewish population of Europe in the German region, as well as the people that the Nazi’s deemed unfit to contribute to their war efforts. The laws themselves aren’t identical; however, both sets of laws make the lives of those affected by it a living hell.
After Germany lost World War I, it was in a national state of humiliation. Their economy was in the drain, and they had their hands full paying for the reparations from the war. Then a man named Adolf Hitler rose to the position of Chancellor and realized his potential to inspire people to follow. Hitler promised the people of Germany a new age; an age of prosperity with the country back as a superpower in Europe. Hitler had a vision, and this vision was that not only the country be dominant in a political sense, but that his ‘perfect race’, the ‘Aryans,’ would be dominant in a cultural sense. His steps to achieving his goal came in the form of the Holocaust. The most well known victims of the Holocaust were of course, the Jews. However, approximately 11 million people were killed in the holocaust, and of those, there were only 6 million Jews killed. The other 5 million people were the Gypsies, Pols, Political Dissidents, Handicapped, Jehovah’s witnesses, Homosexuals and even those of African-German descent. Those who were believed to be enemies of the state were sent to camps where they were worked or starved to death.
The Holocaust began in 1933 when the Nazis instigated their first action against the Jews by announcing a boycott of all Jewish-run businesses. The Nuremberg Laws went into place on September 15, 1935 which began to exclude the Jews from public life. These laws went to the extent of stripping German Jews of the citizenship and then implemented a prohibition of marriage between the Jewish and the Germans. These laws set the legal precedent for further anti-Jewish legislation. Over the next several years, even more laws would be introduced. Jews would be excluded from parks, fired from civil service jobs, required to register all property and restricted Jewish doctors from practicing medicine on any person other than Jewish patients.
HItler created laws, named the "Nuremburg Race Laws," which set barriers on Jewish people. The laws would give all Jewish people a curfew and restricted them from using public transportation. Over time the Nuremburg Race Laws grew, they eventually restricted Jews form owning a business and seperated them from the rest of the country. They were forced to attend Jewish schools. These actions are very similar to the Jim Crow Laws in the United States during the period of segregation. The race laws Hitler created expanded to include more people including mentally handicapped, physically disabled, and colored people.
There are many factors which lead to the Holocaust, however anti-Semitism was the greatest cause of the conflict. Anti-Semitism is the common name for anti Jewish sentiments. During Hitler was in power, anti-Semitism was used by the Nazis too carry out the Endlosung, which means “final solution to the Jewish Question” (“The Roots of the Holocaust”). However, anti-Semitism was not something that was created by Germany. Through centuries, Jews were a persecuted people. Jews have faced heavy discrimination throughout the Middle Ages, 1800s and mid early 1900s.
The Jewish people were targeted, hunted, tortured, and killed, just for being Jewish, Hitler came to office on January 20, 1933; he believed that the German race had superiority over the Jews in Germany. The Jewish peoples’ lives were destroyed; they were treated inhumanly for the next 12 years, “Between 1933 and 1945, more than 11 million men, women, and children were murdered in the Holocaust. Approximately six million of these were Jews” (Levy). Hitler blamed a lot of the problems on the Jewish people, being a great orator Hitler got the support from Germany, killing off millions of Jews and other people, the German people thought it was the right thing to do. “To the anti-Semitic Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, Jews were an inferior race, an alien threat to German racial purity and community” (History.com Staff).
The Holocaust, the mass killing of the Jewish people in Europe, is the largest genocide in history to this date. Over the course of the Holocaust nearly six million Jewish people were killed by the Nazi Party and Germany led by Adolf Hitler. There are multiple contributing factors to the Holocaust that made it so large in scope. Historians argue which of these factors were most significant. The most significant contributing factor is the source of the Holocaust, the reason it occurred. This source is Adolf Hitler and his hatred for Jewish people. In comparison to the choices of the Allies to not accept Jewish refugees and to not take direct military action to end the Holocaust, the most significant contributing factor of the Holocaust is that Adolf Hitler was able to easily rise to power with the support of the German people and rule Germany.
As Hitler was rising in power, his plan all along was to “make Germany better,” as he thought he was doing. In his eyes, making Germany better was everyone being equal. He wasn’t going to hesitate to take the first chance he could to jump on the Jews. He would act on any little reason he could. A German official was assassinated in Paris and Germans were angry because it was in the hands of a Jewish teenager. It gave the Germans a chance to attack at the Jews (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). There were a lot of unnecessary laws passed that were meant to take away the Jewish peoples happiness. For example, they had a curfew of 9:00 pm and 5:00 am in the summer, and 8:00 pm and 6:00 am in the winter. Kristallnacht, or otherwise named, The Night of the Broken, was like a turning point for the Jewish people that started off the Holocaust (American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise). Hitler made a lot of laws like the one stated above and continued to do so to try and get a reaction out of them.
The Holocaust had lasting effects on the relationship between the individual and society. Society put individual Nazis on trial for the actions they took in the Holocaust during World War II. The main trial was the Nuremberg trial and there were other subsequent trials as well. These trials were essential in showing the concern that justice and fairness should prevail for the victims. Therefore, the trials that took place after the Holocaust, especially at Nuremberg, involve and impact society as well as the lives of many people.
The Nuremberg trial was built up to be the trial of the century. In the word's of Norman Birkett, who served as a British alternate judge: it was "the greatest trial in history" . The four most intriguing characters of this trial were of vast contradiction to each other; there was Herman Georing the relentless leader, Joachim von Ribbentrop the guilty and indecisive follower of Hitler, Hjalmar Schacth the arrogant financial wizard of the Rich and Albert Speer the remorseful head of armament and munitions. Three of the four allies wanted the Nazi leaders to be executed without a trial Winston Churchill said, "They should be rounded up and shot like dog's" but the Americans persuaded the other allies that a trial would be most beneficial from a public relations standpoint, so now with the allies agreed the stage for Nuremberg was set.
Judgment at Nuremberg The Nuremberg trials took place between 1945 and 1949 and were used to judge the acts of over a hundred judges accused of committing war crimes. The movie "Trials at Nuremberg" dealt specifically with the justice trials. The justice trials adjudicated the criminal responsibility of judges accused of enforcing immoral, unjust, and inhumane laws set by the Nazi party. =
This proved how far Germans would go to "cleanse" their nation. Edwin, Hoyt P., Guinn P. Robert, Israel Gutman, and Trudy Ring. ("Nuremberg Laws." Then Again. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2017). Hitler also helped create concentration camps. The first concentration camps in Germany were set up after Hitler's election in 1933. This lead to the murder of 6,000,000 Jews, and 5,000 Jewish communities had been destroyed by the time the largest camp was liberated in 1945. ("Liberation of Nazi Camps." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, n.d. Web. 12 Apr.