-
Silencing Opponents
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 eliminating these enemies, they turned to gypsies, Freemasons, and Jehovah's witnesses. In order to create the "master race", they also targeted Germans that were homosexuals, the mentally deficient, mentally ill, physically disabled, and the incurably ill. -
The Beginning
On this day, 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. -
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property. To make things easier for the Nazis to identify them, Jews had to wear a bright yellow Star of David attached to their clothing. Worse was yet to come. -
Period: to
Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)
During the span of a couple days, Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany and Austria. Around 100 Jews were killed, and hundreds more were injured. Some 30,000 Jews were arrested and hundreds of synagogues were burned. Afterward the Nazis blamed the Jews for the destruction. -
SS St. Louis
This German ocean liner passed Miami in 1939. Although 740 of the liner's 943 passengers had U.S. 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 murdered in the Holocaust. -
The Final Solution
By this time only a quarter of a million Jews were in Germany. Obsessed with ridding Europe of its Jews, Hitler imposed the "Final Solution"- a policy of genocide. Jews were ordered into ghettos, segregated Jewish areas in certain Polish cities, surrounded with barbed wire and stone walls. Jews were also put into concentration camps, or labor camps. Life in the camps was a cycle of hunger, humiliation, and work that almost always ended in death. -
The Death Camps (Chelmno, Auschwitz)
Out of the six camps built in Poland, 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. -
The Final Stage
At a meeting held in Wannsee, Hitler's top officials agreed to begin a new phase of the mass murders of Jews. They would add a third method of killing-murder by poison gas. The Jews were separated into groups, those strong enough to work and those who would die that day. They were told to leave their belongings, undress for a "shower", and even given a bar of soap. Finally, they were led into the chamber and poisoned with cyanide gas. Prisoners were also shot, hanged, or injected with poison.
