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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 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. The order was one of the first moves in a campaign for racial purity that eventually led to the Holocaust. -
Jews Targeted
in 1935, the Nuremburg 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. -
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. -
The Plight of the St. Louis
Official indifference to the plight of Germany's Jews was in evidence in hte case of the ship St. Louis. This German 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. -
Hitler's "Final Solution"
By 1939 only a quarter million Jews remained in Germany. But other nations that Hitler occupied had millions more. Obsessed with a desire to rid Europe of its Jews, Hitler imposed what a called the "Final Solution"--a policy of genocide, the deliberate and systematic killing of an entire population. In addition to Jews, more groups were: Gypsies, Freemasons, and Jehova's Witnesses. Concentration camps were labor camps. Families were often seperated, sometimes forever. -
Death Camps
The first camp, Chelmno, began operating in 1941--befpre the meeting 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. -
The Final Stage
The Final Solution reached its final stage in early 1942. at a meeting in Wannsee, a lakeside suburb near Berlin, Hitlers 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 of poison gas.
