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The Condemned
After taking power in 1933, the Nazis had concentrated on silencing their political opponents-communists, socialists, liberals, and anyone else who was against the government. -
The Persecution Begins
On April 7, 1933, shortly after Hitler took power in Germany, he ordered all “non-Aryans” to be removed from government jobs. -
Jews Targeted
In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship, jobs, and property. -
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Kristallnacht
November 9-10, 1938, became known as Kristallnacht, or “Night of Broken Glass.” Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany. -
St. Louis
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. 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. -
The Final Solution
Jews, Gypsies, Freemasons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses. They also targeted other Germans whom they found unfit to be part of the “master Race.” Concentration Camps or labor camps. Concentration camps- a prison camp operated by Nazi Germany in which Jews and other groups considered to be enemies of Adolph Hitler were starved while doing slave labor or were murdered. -
Death Camps
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. -
The Final Stage
The Final Solution reached its final stage in early 1942. 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.
