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Between 1933 and 1945, the German
government was led by Adolf Hitler and the
Nazi Party who carried out the systematic
persecution and murder of Europe’s Jews.
This genocide is known as the Holocaust. The Nazis also persecuted and killed millions of other people they considered politically, racially, or socially unfit. -
Adolf Hitler held the first session
of the German Parliament after he became chancellor in 1933. This was where majority of the political parties voted to pass the “Enabling Act” giving Hitler
the power to rule by emergency decree. -
Those who opposed of the Nazis and their mission such as Communists and Socialists were among the first to be rounded up and imprisoned by the regime. -
Although Jews were their primary targets, the Nazis
also persecuted Roma, persons with mental
and physical disabilities, and Poles for racial, ethnic, or national reasons. Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Wit-nesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered oppression and death. -
The Nazis attempted to lead a large boycott on Jewish owned shops and businesses across Germany. However, many Germans continued to shop at Jewish stores despite the boy-cott, and was cancelled after
24 hours. In later weeks and months more discriminatory measures against Jews followed
and lasted. -
An instructional chart distinguishes individuals with
pure “German blood”, “Mixed blood”, and Jews. The laws also prohibited marriage and sexual
relation-ships between Jews and non-Jews. -
On the night of November 9–10, 1938, the Nazi regime unleashed orchestrated anti-Jewish violence
across Germany. Synagogues
were vandalized and burned,
7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 96 Jews
were killed, and nearly 30,000
Jewish men were arrested and
sent to concentration camps. -
Ghettos were city districts, often enclosed, where the Germans concentrated the regional Jewish population to segregate it from the non-Jewish population. In November 1940, German authorities sealed the Warsaw ghetto, severely restricting supplies for the more than 300,000 Jews living there. -
German authorities ordered concentration camp
prisoners to evacuate in order to keep them away from advancing Allied troops entering Germany. Prisoners were evacuated by train, ship, or on
foot. They suffered from malnutrition, exhaustion, harsh weather, and mistreatment. The guards were given strict orders to shoot prisoners who could no longer walk or travel.