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At the beginning of the 19th century there was a considerable amount of anti-Semitism in Europe. This was reflected in the
speeches and writings of Adolf Hitler. "Citizenship is to be determined by race; no Jew to be a German."
In Mein Kampf Hitler argued that the German (he wrongly described them as the Aryan race) was superior to all others.
He went on to say that Aryan superiority was being threatened particularly by the Jewish race who, he argued, were lazy and
had contributed little to world civilization.
According to Adolf Hitler, Jews were responsible for everything he did not like, including modern art, pornography and
prostitution. Hitler also alleged that the Jews had been responsible for losing the First World War. Hitler also claimed that
Jews, who were only about 1% of the population, were slowly taking over the country. They were doing this by controlling the
largest political party in Germany, the German Social Democrat Party, many of the leading companies and several of the country's
newspapers. The fact that Jews had achieved prominent positions in a democratic society was, according to Hitler, an argument
against democracy.
Hitler believed that the Jews were involved with Communists in a joint conspiracy to take over the world. Hitler claimed
that 75% of all Communists were Jews. Hitler argued that the combination of Jews and Marxists had already been successful
in Russia and now threatened the rest of Europe. He argued that the communist revolution was an act of revenge that attempted
to disguise the inferiority of the Jews.
Once in power Hitler was quick to express anti-Semitic ideas. Based on his readings of how blacks were denied civil rights
in the southern states in America, Hitler attempted to make life so unpleasant for Jews in Germany that they would emigrate.
The campaign started on 1st April, 1933, when a one-day boycott of Jewish-owned shops took place. Members of the Sturm Abteilung
(SA) picketed the shops to ensure the boycott was successful.
The hostility towards Jews increased in Germany. This was reflected in the decision by many shops and restaurants not
to serve the Jewish population. Placards saying "Jews not admitted" and "Jews enter this place at their own
risk" began to appear all over Germany. In some parts of the country Jews were banned from public parks, swimming-pools
and public transport.
Germans were also encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish civil servants, teachers and those employed
by the mass media were fired. Members of the SA put pressure on people not to buy goods produced by Jewish companies.
Many Jewish people now left the country. This included a large number of scientists including Albert Einstein, Edward
Teller, Otto Frisch, Felix Bloch, Eugene Wigner, Leo Szilard, Lise Meitner, Otto Meyerhof, and Fritz Haber. Most of these
scientists went to live in Britain and the United States and later played an important role in developing technology that
was used against Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
The number of Jews emigrating increased after the passing of the Nuremberg Laws on Citizenship and Race in 1935. Under
this new law Jews could no longer be citizens of Germany. It was also made illegal for Jews to marry Aryans.
There was more pressure put on for Jews. Hitler, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich organized a new programme designed
to encourage Jews to emigrate. Crystal Night took place on 9th-10th November, 1938. Presented as a spontaneous reaction of
the German people to the news that a German diplomat had been murdered by a young Jewish refugee in Paris, the whole event
was in fact organized by the NSDAP.
During Crystal Night over 7,500 Jewish shops were destroyed and 400 synagogues were burnt down. Ninety-one Jews were killed
and an estimated 20,000 were sent to concentration camps. Up until this time these camps had been mainly for political prisoners.
The only people who were punished for the crimes committed on Crystal Night were members of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) who had
raped Jewish women (they had broken the Nuremberg Laws on having sex between Aryans and Jews).
After Crystal Night the numbers of Jews wishing to leave Germany increased dramatically. It has been calculated that between
1933 and 1939, approximately half the Jewish population of Germany (250,000) left the country. A higher number of Jews would
have left but anti-Semitism was not restricted to Germany and many countries were reluctant to take them.
By the end of 1941 over 500,000 Jews in Poland and Russia had been killed. At the Wannsee Conference held in January 1942,
Reinhard Heydrich, Heinrich Muller, Adolf Eichmann and Roland Friesler discussed what became known as the Final Solution.
It was eventually decided to make the extermination of the Jews a systematically organized operation. After this date extermination
camps were established in the east that had the capacity to kill large numbers including Belzec (15,000 a day), Sobibor (20,000),
Treblinka (25,000) and Majdanek (25,000).
It has been estimated that between 1942 and 1945 a total of 18 million were sent to extermination camps. Of these, historians
have estimated that between five and eleven million were killed.
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