1. Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany By: Caileb Travier

2. Background
Sometimes called “the longest hatred,” anti semitism has persisted in many forms for over two thousand years.
In the first millennium of the Christian era, leaders in the European Christian hierarchy developed or solidified as doctrine ideas that all Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Christ and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans. The scattering of the Jewish people was punishment both for past transgressions and for continued failure to abandon their faith and accept Christianity.

3. Background
In the tenth and eleventh centuries, these doctrines about Jews were hardened and unified in part because of the following: threat to the Church hierarchy from the impending split between Roman Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy and successes in converting the heathen ethnic groups of northern Europe.
For centuries the Church taught that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death, not recognizing, as most historians do today, that Jesus was executed by the Roman government because officials viewed him as a political threat to their rule.

4. Background
There were many myths about Jews took place during this time:
“Blood libel”- a myth that Jews used the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes.
Jewish failure to convert to Christianity was a sign of service to the anti-Christ as well as innate disloyalty to European civilization.

5. Nazi Rise to Power
Within the context of the economic depression of the 1930s and using not only racist but also older social, economic, and religious imagery, the Nazi party gained popularity and, after seizing power, legitimacy, in part by presenting "Jews" as the source for a variety of political, social, economic, and ethical problems facing the German people.

6. Nazi Rise to Power
Inspired by Adolf Hitler's theories of racial struggle and the "intent" of the Jews to survive and expand at the expense of Germans, the Nazis, as a governing party from , ordered anti-Jewish boycotts, staged book burnings, and enacted anti-Jewish legislation.

7. Nazi Rise to Power
In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws defined Jews by race and mandated the total separation of "Aryans" and "non-Aryans."
The laws excluded German Jews from Reich citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with persons of "German or related blood."
The laws defined a "Jew" as someone who had three or four Jewish grandparents regardless of whether that individual identified himself or herself as a Jew or belonged to the Jewish religious community.
Even people with Jewish grandparents who had converted to Christianity were defined as Jews.

8. Nazi Rise to Power
After the September 1939 German invasion of Poland (the beginning of World War II), anti-Jewish policy escalated to the imprisonment and eventual murder of European Jewry.
The Nazis first established ghettos (enclosed areas designed to isolate the Jews) in the Generalgouvernement (a territory in central and eastern Poland overseen by a German civilian government) and the Warthegau (an area of western Poland annexed to Germany).

9. Kristallnacht
On November 9, 1938, the Nazis destroyed synagogues and the shop windows of Jewish-owned stores throughout Germany and Austria (Kristallnacht).
Kristallnacht, literally, "Night of Crystal," is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish actions which took place on November 9 and 10, This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.

10. The Final Solution
The Nazis frequently used euphemistic language to disguise the true nature of their crimes. They used the term “Final Solution” to refer to their plan to annihilate the Jewish people.
After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, police units (acting as mobile killing units) began massive killing operations aimed at entire Jewish communities. By autumn 1941, police introduced mobile gas vans. These paneled trucks had exhaust pipes reconfigured to pump poisonous carbon monoxide gas into sealed spaces, killing those locked within. They were designed to complement ongoing shooting operations.

11. The Final Solution
To justify the murder of the Jews both to the perpetrators and to bystanders in Germany and Europe, the Nazis used not only racist arguments but also arguments derived from older negative stereotypes, including:
Jews as war profiteers and hoarders
A danger to internal security because of their inherent disloyalty and opposition to Germany.

12. The Final Solution
German police murdered nearly 2,700,000 Jews in the killing centers either by asphyxiation with poison gas or by shooting. In its entirety, the "Final Solution" called for the murder of all European Jews by gas, shooting, and other means. Six million Jewish men, women, and children were killed during the Holocaust—two-thirds of the Jews living in Europe before World War II.

13. Works Cited
“Antisemitism in History: From the Early Church to 1400.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
“Kristallnacht.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
“‘Final Solution’: Overview.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
“The Nuremberg Race Laws.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
“Antisemitism in History: Nazi Antisemitism.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,