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Silencing political 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. -
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. This order was one of the first moves in a campaign for racial purity and eventually led to the holocaust. -
Nuremberg Laws
As the Nazis tightened their hold on Germany, their persecution of the Jews increased. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws stripped 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. Worse was yet to come. -
Kristallinacht
November 9-10, 1938, became known as Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass." Nazi storm troopers attacked Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues across Germany and Austria. An American who witnessed the violence wrote, " Jewish shop windows by the hundreds were systematically and wantonly smashed, the main streets of the city were a positive litter of shattered plate glass." Around 100 Jews were killed, hundreds more were injured. 30,000 Jews were arrested and some synagogues were burned. -
The Plight of the St. Louis
Official indifference to the plight of Germany's Jews was in evidence in the case of the ship St. Louis. The German ocean liner passed Miami in 1939. Although 740 of the liners 943 passenger 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 cruise of the St. Louis, " wrote the New York Times," cries to high heaven of man's inhumanity to man." -
The Final Solution and Concentration Camps
The Nazis also targeted other Germans whom they found unfit to be part of the maters race. This included homosexuals, the mentally deficient,the physically disabled, and the incurably ill. Jews were dragged from their homes onto trains and trucks to go to concentration camps. The camps then later turned over to the SS, who expanded the concentration camp and used it to warehouse other undesirables. Life in the camps was a cycle of hunger, humiliation, and work that almost always ended in death. -
Death Camps
The Germans built six death camps in Poland. The first, Chelmno, began operating in 1941 before the meetings at Wannsee. Each camp had several huge gas chambers in which as many as 12,000 people could be killed a day, when prisoners arrived at Auschwitz the largest of the death camps, they had to parade by several SS doctors. With a wave of the hand, these doctors separated those strong enough to work from those who would die that day. Both groups were told to leave their belongings behind. -
The Final Stage
Those destined to die were then led into a room outside the gas chamber and were told to undress for a shower. To complete the deception, the prisoners were even given pieces of soap. Finally, they were led into the chamber and poisoned with cyanide gas that spewed from vents in the walls. It was sometimes carried out with cheerful music played by an orchestra of camp inmates. Gassing was not the only method of extermination used in the camps. Some were also shot,hanged,or injected with poison.
