Day 1 – Before Deportation:

Adapted from:  http://holocaust.about.com/education/holocaust/msub2.htm

The Nuremberg Laws

9-15-35


National Day of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party). Parliament passed, during a special session, the anti-Semitic "Nuremberg Laws," the "National Citizens Law," and the "Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor." These laws were the basis for the exclusion of Jews from all public business life and for the reclassification of the political rights of Jewish citizens.

The "Nuremberg Laws" established a pseudo-scientific basis for racial discrimination. Only people with four German grandparents (four white circles in top row left) were of "German blood." Jewish is who descends from three or four Jewish grandparents (black circles in top row right).

In the middle stood people of "mixed blood" of the "first or second degree." These bizarre distinctions had deadly consequences. As there were no real racial differences, the Nazis had to use a trick: a Jewish grandparent was simply defined as a person who is or was a member of a Jewish religious community.

The Yellow Jewish Badge
The badge made a distinction. One day there were just people on the street, and the next day, there were Jews and non-Jews. A common reaction was as Gertrud Scholtz-Klink's stated in her answer to the question, "What did you think when one day in 1941 you saw so many of your fellow Berliners appear with yellow stars on their coats?" Her answer, "I don't know how to say it. There were so many. I felt that my aesthetic sensibility was wounded."6 All of a sudden, stars were everywhere, just like Hitler had said they were.

But soon after its implementation, the badge represented more than humiliation and shame, it represented fear. If a Jew forgot to wear their badge they could be fined or imprisoned, but often, it meant beatings or death. Jews came up with ways to remind themselves not to go out without their badge. Posters often could be found at the exit doors of apartments that warned Jews by stating: "Remember the Badge!" Have you already put on the Badge?" "The Badge!" "Attention, the Badge!" "Before leaving the building, put on the Badge!"

 

Under the Nazi regime, Jews were constantly in danger. Up to the time when Jewish badges were implemented, uniform persecution against the Jews could not be accomplished. With the visual labeling of Jews, the years of haphazard persecution quickly changed to organized destruction.

Kristallnacht
On the night of October 27, Zindel Grynszpan and his family were forced out of their home by German police. His store and the family's possessions were confiscated and they were forced to move over the Polish border. Zindel Grynszpan's seventeen-year-old son, Herschel, was living with an uncle in Paris. When he received news of his family's expulsion, he went to the German embassy in Paris on November 7, intending to assassinate the German Ambassador to France. Upon discovering that the Ambassador was not in the embassy, he settled for a lesser official, Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. Rath, was critically wounded and died two days later, on November 9.

On the nights of November 9 and 10, gangs of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. In all 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died (Snyder, Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Paragon House, 1989:201).

Over the next two or three months, the following measures were put into effect (cf., Burleigh and Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany, 1933-1945. New York:Cambridge, 1991:92-96):

  1. Jews were required to turn over all precious metals to the government.
  2. Pensions for Jews dismissed from civil service jobs were arbitrarily reduced.
  3. Jewish-owned bonds, stocks, jewelry and art works can be alienated only to the German state.
  4. Jews were physically segregated within German towns.
  5. A ban on the Jewish ownership of carrier pigeons.
  6. The suspension of Jewish driver's licenses.
  7. The confiscation of Jewish-owned radios.
  8. A curfew to keep Jews of the streets between 9:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. in the summer and 8:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. in the winter.
  9. Laws protecting tenants were made non-applicable to Jewish tenants.

 

 

 

 

Discussion Questions: What if ….
1. A law was passed taking away your citizenship.
2. A law was passed saying you could not associate with those who are citizens.
3. A law was passed saying you could not work or go to public school.
4. You hear that all the people with your color hair were killed in a nearby town.

 

Sterilization

Dateline: 08/11/97

In the 1930's, the Nazis introduced a massive, compulsory sterilization of a large segment of the German population. What could cause the Germans to do this after having already lost a large segment of their population during World War I? Why would the German people let this happen?

The Volk

As social Darwinism and nationalism merged during the early twentieth century, the concept of the Volk was established. Quickly, the idea of the Volk extended to various biological analogies and was shaped by the contemporary beliefs of heredity. Especially in the 1920's, analogies of the German Volk (or German people) began surfacing, describing the German Volk as a biological entity or body. With this concept of the German people as one biological body, many believed that sincere care was needed to keep the body of the Volk healthy. An easy extension of this thought process was if there was something unhealthy within the Volk or something that could harm it, it should be dealt with. Individuals within the biological body became secondary to the needs and importance of the Volk.

Since eugenics and racial categorization were in the forefront of modern science during the early twentieth century, the hereditary needs of the Volk were deemed of significant importance. After the First World War ended, the Germans with the "best" genes were thought to have been killed in the war while those with the "worst" genes did not fight and could now easily propagate.1 Considering the new belief that the body of the Volk was more important than individual rights and needs, the state had the authority to do whatever necessary to help the Volk.

Laws

The Germans were not the creators nor the first to implement governmentally sanctioned forced sterilization. The United States, for instance, had already enacted sterilization laws in half its states by the 1920's which included forced sterilization of the criminally insane as well as others. The first German sterilization law was enacted on July 14, 1933 - only six months after Hitler became Chancellor. The Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring (the "Sterilization" Law) allowed the forced sterilization for anyone suffering from genetic blindness, hereditary deafness, manic depression, schizophrenia, epilepsy, congenital feeblemindedness, Huntingtons' chorea (a brain disorder), and alcoholism.

The Process

Doctors were required to register their patients with genetic illness to a health officer as well as petition for the sterilization of their patients who qualified under the Sterilization Law. These petitions were reviewed and decided by a three member panel in the Hereditary Health Courts. The three member panel was made up of two doctors and a judge. In the case of insane asylums, the director or doctor who made the petition also often served on the panels that made the decision whether or not to sterilize them.2

The courts often made their decision solely upon the basis of the petition and perhaps a few testimonies. Usually the appearance of the patient was not required during this process.

Once the decision to sterilize had been made (90 percent of the petitions that made it to the courts in 1934 ended up with the result of sterilization) the doctor that had petitioned for the sterilization was required to inform the patient of the operation.3 The patient was told "that there would be no deleterious consequences."4 Police force was often needed to bring the patient to the operating table. The operation itself consisted of ligation of the fallopian tubes in women and a vasectomy for men.

Klara Nowak was forcibly sterilized in 1941. In a 1991 interview she described what effects the operation still had on her life.

Well, I still have many complaints as a result of it. There were complications with every operation I have had since. I had to take early retirement at the age of fifty-two - and the psychological pressure has always remained. When nowadays my neighbors, older ladies, tell me about their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, this hurts bitterly, because I do not have any children or grandchildren, because I am on my own, and I have to cope without anyone's help.5

Who was sterilized?

Asylum inmates consisted of thirty to forty percent of those sterilized. So who were the others? The main reason for sterilization was so that the hereditary illnesses could not be passed on in offspring, thus "contaminating" the Volk's gene pool. Since asylum inmates were locked away from society, most of them had a relatively small chance of reproducing. The main target of the sterilization program were those people with a slight hereditary illness and who were at an age of being able to reproduce. Since these people were among society, they were deemed the most dangerous.

Since slight hereditary illness is rather ambiguous and the category "feebleminded" is extremely ambiguous, some people were sterilized for their asocial or anti-Nazi beliefs and behavior.

The belief in stopping hereditary illnesses soon expanded to include all the people within the east whom Hitler wanted eliminated. If these people were sterilized, the theory went, they could provide a temporary work force as well as slowly create Lebensraum (room to live for the German Volk). Since the Nazis were now thinking of sterilizing millions of people, faster, non-surgical ways to sterilize were needed.

Experiments

The usual operation for sterilizing women had a relatively long recovery period - usually between a week and fourteen days. The Nazis wanted a faster and perhaps unnoticeable way to sterilize millions. New ideas emerged and camp prisoners at Auschwitz and at Ravensbrück were used to test the various new methods of sterilization. Drugs were given. Carbon dioxide was injected. Radiation and X-rays were administered.

The End

By 1945, the Nazis had sterilized an estimated 300,000 to 450,000 people. Some of these people soon after their sterilization also were victims of the euthanasia program. While many others were forced to live with this feeling of loss of rights and invasion of their persons as well as a future of knowing that they would never be able to have children.