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After taking power in 1933, the Nazis had concentrated on silencing their political opponents- communists, socialists, liberals, and anyone else who spoke out against the government. -
Hitler took power in Germany he ordered all non aryans to be removed from government jobs. -
As the Nazis tightened their hold on Germany, their persecution of the Jews increased. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property. -
November 9-10, 1938, became known as Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass." Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany and Austria. -
Official indifference to the plight of Germany's Jews was in evidence in the case of the ship St. Louis. This German ocean liner passed Miami in 1939. -
Obsessed with a desire to rid Europe of its Jews, Hitler imposed what he called the "Final Solution" a policy of genocide, the deliberate and systematic murder of an entire population.
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The Germans built six death camps in Poland. The first, Chelmno, began operating in 1941 before the meeting at Wannsee. Each camp had several huge gas chambers in which as many as 12,000 people could be killed a day. -
At a meeting held in Wannsee, a lakeside suburb near Berlin, Hitler's top officials agreed to begin a new phase of the mass murder of Jews. To mass slaughter and starvation they would add a third method of killing- murder by poison gas.
