Nazi Policy

Through Nazi policy, the Jews of Europe were slowly stripped of basically ever human right that they once possessed. The Holocaust was the organized persecution and murder of six million Jews by German soldiers during World War II.

Different laws and regulations towards the Jews were established shortly after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party came into power. Through the Nuremberg laws, Hitler redefined German Jews as non-citizens and, thereby, banned them from political participation. Jews were prohibited from any form of contact with German citizens and Jewish civil servants were forced to resign. All Jews were forced to register their names with the Germans and the children were not permitted to go to school. Businesses and homes were removed from Jewish possession and, in some cases, families went from an extravagant lifestyle to a plain and filthy existence. Many Jews were required to live in very small areas of about sixteen square blocks at the same time and residencies in ghettoes were mandatory so the Nazi party could contain the Jews in one small place.

As the war and Nazi reign progressed, new measures were being taken against the Jews. In the late 1930s, the Nazi's began to remove the Jews from the ghettoes and send them on crowded trains to concentration camps. They were beaten, tortured, and shot right in the street and in the internment camps for ridiculous reasons Ð'- or no reason at all. As seen in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List German officers often took delight in using Jews as target practice. To escape from these racial acts, Jews began to hide in the most unlikely places such as pianos, sewers, and underneath floorboards. Near the end of the war, the Jews were so frustrated with how they were being treated that rebellions started to break out. The first uprising took place in Warsaw, Poland on April 19, 1943. Even though almost all of the rebels were killed by the German's attempt at burning down