Persecution Of Jews

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“To what extent did the persecution of the Jews intensify between 1933 and 1945?” Throughout the period of 1933 to 1945 the persecution of the Jews intensified greatly. It started out as stripping them of their German citizenship and then over time turned into genocide. Let it be said however that this persecution happened gradually, with many significant turning points. One of the first things that the Nazi’s did to try and persecute the Jews was the boycott on all Jewish owned shops and professions. This was where the Nazi’s ordered the German citizens to avoid Jewish shops. Some Nazi SA member’s waited outside the shops thus preventing people from coming in. The Star of David was painted in yellow and black across thousands of doors and…show more content…
Kristallnacht in English translates to ‘Night of the Broken Glass’. It gets its name from all of the broken glass left on the streets of Germany after SA troopers broke into Jewish homes, shops, synagogues and buildings, smashing the windows. At least 91 Jews were killed in the attacks, and 30,000 were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Over 1,000 synagogues were burned (95 in Vienna alone) and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Martin Gilbert writes that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was as widely reported as it was happening. The event, which occurred on 9-10 November 1938, left a long lasting impression on the whole of Germany. One reason as to why Kristallnacht was so significant was because German officials both ignored it and even encouraged it. This shows how virtually the whole of Germany had been brainwashed to believe that this was the only solution. The event could easily be argued as the turning point of the persecution of the Jews. This is because it was the first time that the Jews were violently attacked. Even though, thanks to the Nuremberg Laws, the Jews had been outcast from society, Kristallnacht went one step further and actually killed them to remove them fully. Kristallnacht…show more content…
The Final Solution was Nazi Germany's plan during World War II to exterminate the Jewish people in German-occupied Europe, which resulted in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust, the destruction of Jewish communities in continental Europe. From 1938 until June 1941, the Nazis set out to get rid of the Jews in Germany and its occupied territories. When they were unable to expel most of the Jews, they forced them into ghettos pending other solutions. After the invasion of the Soviet Union, in 1941 the Nazi government turned to the plan to exterminate European Jews. Heinrich Himmler was the chief architect of the plan, which came to be called the Final Solution of the Jewish question. However it was Hitler who decided on the fate of the Jews at a meeting of senior Nazi figures headed by Reinhard Heydrich in a Berlin lakeside mansion at Wannsee on January 20th 1942. In this meeting Hitler said: “ In the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be brought to the east for Labour. Large Labour gangs will be formed, with the sexes separated, which will be used for road construction. No doubt a lot of them will drop out through natural wastage. The remainder who survive will have to be dealt with accordingly”. The Final Solution soon turned into the Holocaust, which was where over 6 million Jewish people were killed in Labour camps all around Europe. This
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