TIMELINE:
THE GROWTH OF
ANTI-SEMITISM IN NAZI GERMANY
Background image to this page: Long before Jews in Europe
were required to wear the Star of David on their persons in Europe or Germany,
the Nazis were using the symbol. In April 1933, when the Nazi Party orchestrated
a boycott of Jewish shops and businesses, Hitler's government ordered that Jewish
shops be marked with placards featuring "a yellow badge on a black background"
Robert Weltsch, a writer for the Zionist publication Judische Rundschau
commented "this regulation is intended as a brand, a sign of contempt.
We will take it up and make it a badge of honor."
In September 1941, Jews in the German Reich were ordered
to wear badges with the yellow star and the word "Jude." Jews in the
German-occupied lands of eastern Europe had been ordered to do the same two
years earlier.
1933:
Jan. 30 -- Adolf Hitler is named chancellor of Germany
by President Hindenburg. Hitler's partners in this coalition government agree
that Nazi minister Hermann Goering, as Minister of the Interior for Prussia,
would have jurisdiction over most of the German police. Goering quickly appoints
members of the SA and SS as auxiliary police. Police increasingly do nothing
while SA stormtroopers assault Jews in the streets.
Feb. 27 -- German Reichstag burns in act of arson, subsequently
blamed on a Dutch communist. Hindenburg agrees to let Hitler use emergency powers
and civil rights are suspended in Germany. The number of Nazi Party seats in
the Reichstag increases with new elections. The new Reichstag soon passes a
law that permits Hitler to rule by decree for the next four years.
March -- Joseph Goebbels is named Minister for Propaganda
and Public Enlightenment, and immediately begins encouraging the German press
to criticize Jews as a "cancer" within Germany. Heinrich Himmler,
as provisional head of the police in Munich, orders the establishment of a large
camp for keeping in "protective custody" Germans who"cannot be
allowed to remain free as they continue to agitate and to cause unrest."
This camp is built around an old gunpowder factory at Dachau.
April -- Nazi stormtroopers begin intimidating shoppers
to boycott Jewish-owned businesses. Reichstag passes several laws to remove
Jews from civil service jobs, restrict Jewish lawyers, judges and physicians,
and establish a quota system limiting the number of Jewish students in German
schools and universities.
May-July -- Books by Jewish writers, socialist writers
and others who are condemned as "subversive" or "decadent"
are burned in public bonfires. Reichstag passes law making the Nazi Party the
only legal political party in Germany. Another law permits government to revoke
citizenship of anyone who settled in Germany after November 9, 1918; this is
applied to large numbers of Jews from Poland and other eastern European countries.
August 25 -- Germany concludes Haavara Transfer Agreement
with Zionist officials, which will allow Jews to emigrate to Palestine with
a larger part of their savings than they could otherwise take out of Germany.
German press encourages Jews to take advantage of this and leave.
September 22 -- New law creating a Reich Chamber of
Commerce is used to eliminate Jewish-produced paintings, books, music, and other
cultural artifacts. Jewish writers, musicians, conductors, etc. are stripped
of their positions.
1934:
June- July -- After purging the SA of leaders that he
no longer trusts, Hitler grants the Heinrich Himmler's SS independence from
the SA. The SS will play the dominant role in the persecution of the Jews from
this time forward.
August -- After the death of President Hindenburg, Hitler
becomes both chancellor and president of the nation. The German military and
all public officials in Germany must now swear an oath of personal loyalty to
Adolf Hitler, pledging to obey whatever orders he may choose to give.
1935:
May 21 -- A new law on military service now excludes
Jews from serving in the military.
June 25 -- German government amends its 1933 sterilization
laws to allow the state to mandate abortions for women who are deemed "eugenically
unfit."
September 15 -- The New Racial Laws are announced at
the Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. These laws proclaim that German citizenship
is restricted to those "who [are] of German or kindred blood." The
state will decide who is and is not worthy of citizenship by issuing "Reich
Citizenship Papers." Marriage and sexual relations between Jews and non-Jews
is prohibited by the new law.
November 14 -- A special decree issued in conjunction
with the citizenship law defines what a "Jew" is under German law
and states "A Jew cannot be a citizen of the Reich." Earlier Nazi
laws had exempted Jewish military veterans from the harshest anti-Semitic measures
in education and the professions. This decree removes the exemptions.
December 31 -- Any remaining Jews in the German civil
service, including military veterans, are now dismissed from their jobs.
June 17 -- Hitler gives control of all police agencies
in German to the SS and makes Himmler the head of all German police. Persecutions
of the Jews fade as Germany prepares to host the Olympic Games at Berlin. Persecutions
of gypsies in Germany increase as many gypsies are arrested placed in detention
camps.
September 9 -- At the annual Party rally in Nuremberg,
Hitler announces plans to have the German military ready for war within 4 years.
Subsequent decrees make all Jews in Germany responsible for actions by "individual
Jews" that may hinder this plan.
1937:
July -- The Buchenwald concentration camp is completed
and opened.
December 14 -- Himmler issues a decree that permits
the arrest and detention of any "asocial" person. While the decree
is aimed at gypsies, it is applied to Jews and other "undesirables"
as well.
1938:
March -- The Anschluss: Germany annexes Austria. All
Austrian Jews are subjected to the retrictions of the 1935 racial laws.
April 26 -- A new decree orders Jews to register with
the state all their assets greater in value than 5000 RM.
July -- Representatives of 32 nations meet at Evian
France to discuss ways to help the growing number of Jewish refugees in Europe
and the world. Only the Dominican Republic offers to take in a sizable number
of Jewish refugees.
August 17 -- All Jewish men in Germany required to add
the middle name "Israel" to their names, and all women to add "Sara"
to their names.
September -- New decrees prohibit Jews from practicing
law or medicine in Germany.
October -- German Jews must have their passports stamped
with a "J" for "Jude," and over 15,000 "stateless"
Jews in Germany (Jews who had been born elsewhere, but who had lived in Germany
since 1919) are expelled and driven across the Polish border.
November -- A Jewish student in Paris, whose parents
had been among those expelled into Poland, kills a German diplomat in the German
embassy. In retaliation, Nazi Party members, led by SA leaders, go on a rampage
in Germany on November 9-10, killing Jews and burning synagogues, homes, and
businesses. Some thirty thousand Jews are arrested and detained in concentration
camps in the aftermath of the "Kristallnacht" pogrom -- the night
of broken glass.
1939:
January -- The SS takes charge of all emigration of
Jews from the Greater German Reich. Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag says
that a new war in Europe will lead to the "annihilation
of the Jewish race in Europe." The German army is already planning the
invasion of Poland.
March -- German troops occupy the remainder of the Czech
state. Jews in Bohemia and Moravia are arrested and placed in concentration
camps.
May 15 -- Ravensbruck concentration camp is completed
and opened for women prisoners.
June-August -- The SS creates special units - Einsatzgruppen
-- for the purpose of carrying out "special tasks" during the coming
attack on Poland. These tasks will include the murder of Polish leaders and
intellectuals, and the rounding up of Jews in Poland for the purpose of placing
them in ghettos.
September -- Germany invades Poland. Britain and France
declare war on Germany.
Sources: Gotz Aly, 'Final Solution': Nazi Population
Policy and the Murder of the European Jews (1999); Yitzhak Arad, et. al.,
editors, Documents on the Holocaust (1999); Saul Friedlander, Nazi
Germany and the Jews (1997); Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, The Columbia
Guide to the Holocaust (2000).
