The Nuremburg Laws Of The Holocaust

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Schindlerjuden An act of mass destruction, a loss of life; the Holocaust was the mass murder of the Jewish community under the regime of Nazi Germany. The Holocaust first began in 1933 under the power of Adolf Hitler, and eventually ended in 1945 when Nazi Germany was defeated by the allied powers. The term “Holocaust” originates from the Greek term “holokauston”, meaning, “sacrificed by fire”. The Nazis didn’t just focus on the full destruction of Jews, they also narrowed in on the other minorities such as the homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, and the disabled. An estimated 11 million died under the rule of Hitler, 6 million of those were Jews, and 1.1 million were children. Historians estimate that an approximate two-thirds…show more content…
On April 1, 1933, it all began. The Nazis initially provoked their first actions on Germany and German Jews by beginning a boycott against all Jewish businesses. This took an enormous toll on all Jewish families, quickly putting an end to their businesses, and bringing poverty to an all-time-high. Only five months later, on September 15, 1935, Hitler made his second move in persecution, by issuing the Nuremburg Laws. The Nuremburg Laws were made to exclude the Jews from all public life, forbidding them from all parks, firing them from all civil service jobs, making them register all property, and taking way all citizenship rights. The Nuremburg Laws set the legal model for all anti-Jewish laws to follow, making life as a German Jew more difficult than ever anticipated. Unfortunately, things quickly grew worse (Rosemberg). The night of November 9, 1938 marked the first act of violence. On that night, the Nazis provoked an organized massacre against Jews in Austria and Germany in what was termed “Kristallnacht”, meaning, “night of broken glass” (Holocaust Encyclopedia). This violent night consisted of the pillaging and burning of synagogues, and breaking the windows of Jewish homes and Jewish-owned businesses. Many Jews were physically attacked, while 30,000 others were arrested and taken to…show more content…
Hitler opened “camps”; he opened many different kinds of camps, all with different purposes. Hitler created concentration camps, transit camps, prisoner-of-war camps, labor camps, and most importantly, extermination camps; as a whole, the camps were generally referred to as Concentration Camps. After Kristallnacht, the persecution of Jews became more prominent and more organized, leading to a direct increase in the number of Jews being sent to Concentration Camps. Life within Hitler’s Concentration Camps was extremely difficult, and deaths were frequent. Prisoners were forced to participate in hard labor and were given small rations. The living conditions were extreme, and the use of torture was prominent. Within a number of camps, Nazi doctors used prisoners to administer medical experiments, often times resulting in death or extreme illness. Concentration camps were initially created to work, starve, and torture prisoners to death, but it wasn’t long before extermination camps were created for the sole purpose of killing prisoners quickly, efficiently, and in large numbers. While in control, the Nazis built six extermination camps: Treblinka, Aushwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, and Majdanek. At these camps, prisoners were told to undress completely, and prepare to shower; instead of a shower, the prisoners were taken into large gas

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