Racial State Part 2: Policies Towards Jews Flashcards
When did the boycott of Jewish shops start?
On the 1st of April 1933, the Nazi regime imposed a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses.
What were the reasons behind the boycott of Jewish shops?
Hitler claimed that the boycotting of Jewish shops was justified retaliation against Jews in Germany and abroad who had called for a boycott of German goods.
What were the events of the boycott?
Goebbels organised an intensive propaganda campaign to maximise the impact of the boycott which was carried out by gangs of brown-shirted SA men.
The SA market out which places of business were to be targeted and stood menacingly outside to intimidate would-be customers. Shops weee the main targets, but it also applied to Jewish professionals such as doctors and lawyers. Court proceedings involving Jewish lawyers and judges were disrupted in Berlin, Breslau and elsewhere. Many Jewish lawyers were attacked in the street and had their legal robes stripped from them. Jewish doctors, school teachers and university lecturers were also subject to similar rough treatment by the SA.
What was the impact of the boycott?
It made a big public impact and featured prominently in news coverage both in Germany and in foreign countries, but it was not an unqualified success.
Why was the boycott unsuccessful?
SA were unclear as to which businesses were Jewish and which weren’t. Many businesses were half-Jewish or half-German in ownership; many others were controlled by the foreign creditors or German banks.
A number of German citizens defiantly used Jewish shops to show their disapproval of Nazi policies. Boycott was abandoned after only one day, even though the SA had hoped it would last indefinitely.
Hitler only ever intended the boycott to be a brief affair giving a grudging concession to the radical activists. His main aim was to avoid instability, while he carried through his ‘legal revolution’. He was willing to allow a considerable degree of Nazi intimidation. It was useful to him as an expression of ‘spontaneous public anger’ that only his new government could satisfy, however, too much ‘spontaneous public anger’ and Hitler’s position might be threatened by the conservative elites on whom he still depended.
How did Civil Service Law discriminate against the Jews?
In April 1933, the Nazi regime introduced the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, requiring Jews to be dismissed from the Civil Service. Under the 1933 law, people were considered ‘non-Aryan’ if either of their parents or either of their grandparents were Jewish. Even so, they couldn’t identify who was Jewish.
What did Hindenburg insist on regarding Jews?
Hindenburg insisted on exemptions for German Jews who had served in the First World War and for those whose fathers had been killed in war. The exemption was put in place by Hitler out of political necessity, and after Hindenburg’s death on 2 August 1934, the exemptions amendment lessened the laws impact because it applied to 2/3s of Jews in the Civil Service.
What was the impact of the Civil Service Law?
The Civil Service Law had devastating economic and psychological levels of Jewish emigration. In 1933, 37,000 Jews left Germany.
What laws impacted Jews in the legal profession?
Jewish lawyers made up about 16% of German’s legal profession, often working in family firms. Of the non-Aryan lawyers practising in 1933, 60% were able to continue working. In the years that followed, the regime introduced stricter regulations to try to close these ‘loopholes’. The exclusion of lawyers was a gradual process over several years.
What laws impacted Jewish Doctors?
More than 10% of German doctors were Jews. Nazi officials at local government level and in private associations initiated their own anti-Semitic measures. Some local authorities started removing Jewish doctors from their posts. Anti-Semitic propaganda against Jewish doctors treating Aryans laced with lurid stories about inappropriate and malicious actions supposedly carried out by Jewish doctors. The regime announced a ban on Jewish doctors in April 1933. In theory, Jewish doctors could now treat only Jewish patients, but many Jewish doctors carried on their normal practice for several years after 1933.
What laws impacted Jewish Education?
In April 1933, the Law against Overcrowding of German Schools and Universities restricted the number of Jewish children who could attend state schools and universities. Not all Jewish children were forced out of state schools at this point. The process was not completed until 1938. Jewish children could also still attend private education and Jewish schools (which were one of the few places Jewish teachers could find work). These schools had many problems in gaining funding and in maintaining academic standards, but Jewish children were not yet completely denied an education. The key aim of the Nazis, of course, was the segregation of Jewish children from Aryan children. The idea that educated Jews are dangerous and that they shouldn’t waste resources and money on pupils who’d grow up to be enemies of Germany. Many Jewish professors lost their jobs which were seized upon by German academics.
What laws impacted the Jewish press?
In October 1933 the Reich Law passed allowing the Nazi regime to shut down publications that didn’t align with their beliefs. Jews had had a prominent role in journalism and publishing in Weimar Germany, and the Press Law effectively silenced the large number of Jewish journalists editors, many of whom were forced to leave the country. The closing down of the free press was not only a matter of laws and regulations; there were also many instances of violence and intimidation.
How was discrimination prominent in German society?
Discrimination against Jews occurred all over Germany as a result of local interventions. Pubs and other businesses put up signs saying that Jews were welcome. Pro-Nazi activists took the lead in pushing for anti-Jewish measures in local schools, village committees and almost all areas of public life.
Albert Herzfeld, a middle class Jew who had served in the Germany army, was barred from his artists’ club in 1935. Later, Herzfeld was barred from his favourite restaurants and the spa in Wiesbaden. Many Germans were embarrassed by overt discrimination. Such people were reluctant, for example, to break off from family doctors they had relied on for years, or were appalled to see literary classics seen as Jewish purged from the local library.
When Nazi activists in Leipzig demanded the removal of a statue to the great composer Felix Mendelssohn, even the local party boss drew the line and blocked the proposal. Open opposition to discrimination was rare. Most people who were unhappy about the discrimination kept their heads down and retreated into ‘internal exile’.
What did Hitler say at the Nuremberg Rally?
At the Nuremberg Rally in 1935 Hitler announced that the Communist international had declared war on the Nazis. He claimed that it was time once and for all to “deal with Jewish Bolshevism”.
What did the Reich Citizenship Law do and what was the purpose of it?
The Reich Citizenship Law stripped Jews and many minorities of German citizenship. Only those with purely German Blood could be German Citizens. All others were classified as “subjects”.
The purpose of it was to enforce segregation legally. It created a distinct ‘Volk’.
