-
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. Once the Nazis had eliminated these enemies, they turned against other groups in Germany, such as Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, and Jehovah's Witnesses.
-
On April 7, 1933, shortly after Hitler took power in Germany, he ordered all "non-Aryans" to be removed from government jobs. This order was one of the first moves in a campaign for racial purity that eventually led to the Holocaust-- the systematic murder of 11 million people across Europe, more than half of whom were Jews.
-
In 1935, the Nuremburg Laws stripped the Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property. To make it easier for the Nazis to identify them, Jews had to wear a bright yellow Star of David attached to their clothing.
-
November 9-10, 1938, became known as Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass." Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany. Around 100 Jews were killed, and hundredds more were injured. Some 30,000 Jews were arrested and hundreds of synagogues were burned. Afterward, the Nazis blamed the Jews for the destruction.
-
German Ocean liner, St. Louis, passed Miami in 1939. Although 740 of the liner's 943 passengers had US immigration papers, the Coast Guard followed the ship to prevent anyone from disembarking in America. The ship was forced to return to Europe. More than half of the passengers were later killed in the Holocaust. This event was evidence of official indifference to the plight of Germany's Jews.
-
By 1939, only about a quarter million Jews remained in Germany. 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 killing of an entire population. The Nazis condemned to slavery and death the Jews,other groups that they viewed as inferior or unworthy or as "enemies of the state." Jews were dragged from hmes and herded on trains or trucks for shipment to concentration camps, or labor camps.
-
The first death camp, 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. Auschwitz was the largest of the death camps.
-
The Final Solution reached its final stage in early 1942. At a meeting held in Wansee, 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 a third method of killing--murder by poison gas.
