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Discriminating signs during WW2. By: Mikel

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Even though Jews were being prosecuted in Germany, other countries would help Jews emigrate. Some countries were: Britain, North America, South America, and Palestine. Also, there were charity organizations. These charities would make sure the  Jews were able to immigrate to a knew country, so they wouldn't feel like a burden. But there was still hatred for the Jews.
By: Asher and  Bijaya

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Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime advertised and brainwashed German public citizens through art, books, films, the radio, music, educational materials, and the press to convey that the Aryan Race was superior over all the other races of the world as well as "also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews"
Mikel Forrer P.1
Source below

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"task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly."

Communicating the Nazi Message

Nazi Following the seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels. The Ministry's aim was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press.

There were several audiences for Nazi propaganda. Germans were reminded of the struggle against foreign enemies and Jewish subversion. During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews, particularly in 1935 (before the Nuremberg Race Laws of September) and in 1938 (prior to the barrage of antisemitic economic legislation following ). Propaganda also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and "restoring order."

Real and perceived discrimination against ethnic Germans in east European nations which had gained territory at Germany's expense following World War I, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland, was the subject of Nazi propaganda. This propaganda sought to elicit political loyalty and so-called race consciousness among the ethnic German populations. It also sought to mislead foreign governments-including the European Great Powers-that Nazi Germany was making understandable and fair demands for concessions and annexations.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union , Nazi propaganda stressed to both civilians at home and to soldiers, police officers, and non-German auxiliaries serving in occupied territory themes linking Soviet Communism to European Jewry, presenting Germany as the defender of "Western" culture against the "Judeo-Bolshevik threat, and painting an apocalyptic picture of what would happen if the Soviets won the war. This was particularly the case after the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943. These themes may have been instrumental in inducing Nazi and non-Nazi Germans as well as local collaborators to fight on until the very end.

The Role of Film

(1938), depicted the Films in particular played an important role in disseminating racial antisemitism, the superiority of German military power, and the intrinsic evil of the enemies as defined by Nazi ideology. Nazi films portrayed Jews as "subhuman" creatures infiltrating Aryan society. For example, The Eternal Jew (1940), directed by Fritz Hippler, portrayed Jews as wandering cultural parasites, consumed by sex and money. Some films, such as The Triumph of the Will (1935) by Leni Riefenstahl , glorified Hitler and the National Socialist movement. Two other Riefenstahl works, Festival of the Nations and Festival of Beauty and promoted national pride in the successes of the Nazi regime at the Olympics. 1936 Berlin Olympic Games

The Role of Newspapers

Newspapers in Germany, above all Der Stürmer (The Attacker), printed cartoons that used antisemitic caricatures to depict Jews. After the Germans began World War II with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Nazi regime employed propaganda to impress upon German civilians and soldiers that the Jews were not only subhuman, but also dangerous enemies of the German Reich. The regime aimed to elicit support, or at least acquiescence, for policies aimed at removing Jews permanently from areas of German settlement.

Covering up Atrocities and Mass Murder

During the implementation of the " ," the mass murder of European Jews, SS officials at Final Solution killing centers compelled the victims of the Holocaust to maintain the deception necessary to deport the Jews from Germany and occupied Europe as smoothly as possible. Concentration camp and killing center officials compelled prisoners, many of whom would soon die in the gas chambers, to send postcards home stating that they were being treated well and living in good conditions. Here, the camp authorities used propaganda to cover up atrocities and mass murder.

In June 1944, the German Security Police permitted an camp-ghetto, located in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (today: Czech Republic). The SS and police had established Theresienstadt in November 1941 as an instrument of propaganda for domestic consumption in the German Reich. The camp-ghetto was used as an explanation for Germans who were puzzled by the deportation of German and Austrian Jews who were elderly, disabled war veterans, or locally known artists and musicians "to the East" for "labor." In preparation for the 1944 visit, the International Red Cross team to inspect the Theresienstadt ghetto underwent a "beautification" program. In the wake of the inspection, SS officials in the Protectorate produced a film using ghetto residents as a demonstration of the benevolent treatment the Jewish "residents" of Theresienstadt supposedly enjoyed. When the film was completed, SS officials deported most of the "cast" to the Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center.

Mobilizing the Population

The Nazi regime used propaganda effectively to mobilize the German population to support its wars of conquest until the very end of the regime. Nazi propaganda was likewise essential to motivating those who implemented the mass murder of the European Jews and of other victims of the Nazi regime. It also served to secure the acquiescence of millions of others-as bystanders -to racially targeted persecution and mass murder.

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"task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly."

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This race was invented by Hitler. Hitler believed in racial purity and superiority in the German race. The German race was actually the Aryan race. Aryan means superior or master, so Hitler was saying that German was the master race. The ideal Aryan was not Jewish, blonde, blue-eyed, and tall.
By: Bijaya

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Nazi Racism For years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he was obsessed with ideas about race. In his speeches and writings, Hitler spread his beliefs in racial "purity" and in the superiority of the "Germanic race"-what he called an Aryan "master race." He pronounced that his race must remain pure in order to one day take over the world. For Hitler, the ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall.

When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, these beliefs became the government ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters, on the radio, in movies, in classrooms, and in newspapers. The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered "inferior." Beginning in 1933, German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations, operations making it impossible for the victims to have children. Among the targets of this public program were Roma (Gypsies), an ethnic minority numbering about 30,000 in Germany, and handicapped individuals, including the mentally ill and people born deaf and blind. Also victimized were about 500 African-German children, the offspring of German mothers and African colonial soldiers in the Allied armies that occupied the German Rhineland region after World War I.

Hitler and other Nazi leaders viewed the Jews not as a religious group, but as a poisonous "race," which "lived off" the other races and weakened them. After Hitler took power, Nazi teachers in school classrooms began to apply the "principles" of racial science. They measured skull size and nose length, and recorded the color of their pupils' hair and eyes to determine whether students belonged to the true "Aryan race." Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) students were often humiliated in the process.

Key Dates

February 24, 1920
Nazis outline political agenda
The first public meeting of the Nazi party, then called the German Workers' Party, takes place in Munich, Germany. Adolf Hitler issues a "25 Point Program" outlining the party's political agenda. The party platform embodies racism. It demands racial purity in Germany; proclaims Germany's destiny to rule over inferior races; and identifies Jews as racial enemies. Point 4 concludes that "No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the Nation."

July 18, 1925
The first volume of Mein Kampf appears
Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison for treason following his failed attempt to seize power in 1923. In Mein Kampf, he outlined his racial ideas. Hitler saw history as the struggle between races for living space. He envisioned a war of conquest in the east, with the Slavic peoples enslaved to German interests. He believed the Jews to be an exceptional evil, working within the nation to subvert "racial purity." He urged the "removal" of Jews from Germany.

July 14, 1933
Nazi state enacts racial purity law
Believing that "racial purity" requires state regulation of human reproduction, Adolf Hitler issues the Law to Prevent Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. Among other provisions, the measure prohibits "undesirables" from having children and mandates forced sterilization of certain physically or mentally impaired individuals. The law will affect some 400,000 people over the next 18 months.

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Nazi Racism For years before Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, he was obsessed with ideas about race. In his speeches and writings, Hitler spread his beliefs in racial "purity" and in the superiority of the "Germanic race"-what he called an Aryan "master race."

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Destruction all over Europe was the result of Hitlers disturbed mind. One popular theory for Hitlers hate for Jews was that his mother died under the care of a Jewish doctor that could not save her life.
By: Mikel

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The Nuremberg Laws increased the persecution of the Jews. The  laws made sure there was segregation between German Jews and Non-Jews. Also didn't allow Jews rights that non- Jews had.
By: Bijaya

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The Nazi's also discriminated the Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, blacks, the physically and mentally disabled, political opponents of the Nazis, including Communists and Social Democrats.
By: Greta and Austin

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Means: "Crystal Night"
Also referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass"
It was an anti-jewish pogrom where the windows of thousands of buildings owned by Jews were smashed and many jewish synagogues were destroyed.
By: Kyle

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A Nationwide Pogrom

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 pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.

Origin of the Name "Kristallnacht"

Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom-broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence.

Assassination of Ernst vom Rath

The violence was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA ( Sturmabteilungen: literally Assault Detachments, but commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth.

In its aftermath, German officials announced that Kristallnacht had erupted as a spontaneous outburst of public sentiment in response to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath. Vom Rath was a German embassy official stationed in Paris. Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, had shot the diplomat on November 7, 1938. A few days earlier, German authorities had expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany from the Reich; Grynszpan had received news that his parents, residents in Germany since 1911, were among them.

Grynszpan's parents and the other expelled Polish Jews were initially denied entry into their native Poland. They found themselves stranded in a refugee camp near the town of Zbaszyn in the border region between Poland and Germany. Already living illegally in Paris himself, a desperate Grynszpan apparently sought revenge for his family's precarious circumstances by appearing at the German embassy and shooting the diplomatic official assigned to assist him.

Vom Rath died on November 9, 1938, two days after the shooting. The day happened to coincide with the anniversary of the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch, an important date in the National Socialist calendar. The Nazi Party leadership, assembled in Munich for the commemoration, chose to use the occasion as a pretext to launch a night of antisemitic excesses. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a chief instigator of the Kristallnacht pogroms, suggested to the convened Nazi 'Old Guard' that 'World Jewry' had conspired to commit the assassination. He announced that "the Führer has decided that ... demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."

November 9-10

Goebbels' words appear to have been taken as a command for unleashing the violence. After his speech, the assembled regional Party leaders issued instructions to their local offices. Violence began to erupt in various parts of the Reich throughout the late evening and early morning hours of November 9-10. At 1:20 a.m. on November 10, Reinhard Heydrich, in his capacity as head of the Security Police ( Sicherheitspolizei) sent an urgent telegram to headquarters and stations of the State Police and to SA leaders in their various districts, which contained directives regarding the riots. SA and Hitler Youth units throughout Germany and its annexed territories engaged in the destruction of Jewish-owned homes and businesses. Members of many units wore civilian clothes to support the fiction that the disturbances were expressions of 'outraged public reaction.'

Despite the outward appearance of spontaneous violence, and the local cast which the pogrom took on in various regions throughout the Reich, the central orders Heydrich relayed gave specific instructions: the "spontaneous" rioters were to take no measures endangering non-Jewish German life or property; they were not to subject foreigners (even Jewish foreigners) to violence; and they were to remove all synagogue archives prior to vandalizing synagogues and other properties of the Jewish communities, and to transfer that archival material to the Security Service ( Sicherheitsdienst, or SD). The orders also indicated that police officials should arrest as many Jews as local jails could hold, preferably young, healthy men.

Destruction of Synagogues and Buildings

The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Many synagogues burned throughout the night in full view of the public and of local firefighters, who had received orders to intervene only to prevent flames from spreading to nearby buildings. SA and Hitler Youth members across the country shattered the shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial establishments and looted their wares. Jewish cemeteries became a particular object of desecration in many regions.

The pogrom proved especially destructive in Berlin and Vienna, home to the two largest Jewish communities in the German Reich. Mobs of SA men roamed the streets, attacking Jews in their houses and forcing Jews they encountered to perform acts of public humiliation. Although murder did not figure in the central directives, Kristallnacht claimed the lives of at least 91 Jews between 9 and 10 November. Police records of the period document a high number of rapes and of suicides in the aftermath of the violence.

Arrests of Jewish Men

As the pogrom spread, units of the SS and Gestapo (Secret State Police), following Heydrich's instructions, arrested up to 30,000 Jewish males, and transferred most of them from local prisons to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and other concentration camps.

Significantly, Kristallnacht marks the first instance in which the Nazi regime incarcerated Jews on a massive scale simply on the basis of their ethnicity. Hundreds died in the camps as a result of the brutal treatment they endured. Most did obtain release over the next three months on the condition that they begin the process of emigration from Germany. Indeed, the effects of Kristallnacht would serve as a spur to the emigration of Jews from Germany in the months to come.

Aftermath

In the immediate aftermath of the pogrom, many German leaders, like Hermann Göring, criticized the extensive material losses produced by the antisemitic riots, pointing out that if nothing were done to intervene, German insurance companies-not Jewish-owned businesses-would have to carry the costs of the damages. Nevertheless, Göring and other top party leaders decided to use the opportunity to introduce measures to eliminate Jews and perceived Jewish influence from the German economic sphere.

The German government made an immediate pronouncement that "the Jews" themselves were to blame for the pogrom and imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmark (some 400 million US dollars at 1938 rates) on the German Jewish community. The Reich government confiscated all insurance payouts to Jews whose businesses and homes were looted or destroyed, leaving the Jewish owners personally responsible for the cost of all repairs.

Anti-Jewish Legislation

In the weeks that followed, the German government promulgated dozens of laws and decrees designed to deprive Jews of their property and of their means of livelihood. Many of these laws enforced "Aryanization" policy-the transfer of Jewish-owned enterprises and property to "Aryan" ownership, usually for a fraction of their true value. Ensuing legislation barred Jews, already ineligible for employment in the public sector, from practicing most professions in the private sector. The legislation made further strides in removing Jews from public life. German education officials expelled Jewish children still attending German schools. German Jews lost their right to hold a driver's license or own an automobile. Legislation restricted access to public transport. Jews could no longer gain admittance to "German" theaters, movie cinemas, or concert halls.

American Press Reports on Kristallnacht

American newspapers across the country covered the Nazi assault on Jews in front-page, banner headlines, and articles about the events continued to appear for several weeks. No other story about the persecution of the Jews received such widespread and sustained attention from the American press at any other time during the Nazi era.

German censors sought to block images of Kristallnacht from reaching newspapers in the United States. However, magazine was able to publish some images in its November 28, 1938, issue.

Perhaps no headline so aptly summarized the danger for the Jews under the Nazi regime than that published on the front page of the Los Angeles Examiner on November 23, 1938: "Nazis Warn World Jews Will Be Wiped Out Unless Evacuated By Democracies."

US President Denounces the Nazis

At his press conference on November 15, 1938, one week after Kristallnacht, President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced Nazi Germany's terror attack on Jews, saying, "I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization." FDR made an exception to his practice of off-the-record press conferences by allowing newspapers to quote this statement from his meeting with reporters that day.

The president also announced that he had recalled the US ambassador to Germany, Hugh Wilson. The United States was the only nation to recall its ambassador and would not replace him until after the end of the war in 1945.

In response to the news of Nazi terror against Jews, Americans protested in cities including New York and Los Angeles. Other Americans called for an increase in the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country.

Pressure on the US Immigration System

Despite the increasing threat faced by Jews living under Nazi rule in Germany and Austria, President Roosevelt knew that he would not be able to persuade Congress to reconsider immigration regulations. At the same November 15 press conference, a reporter asked the president if he would recommend relaxing the restrictions on immigration in order to admit the Jewish refugees from Europe. Roosevelt replied, "That is not in contemplation; we have the quota system."

Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, whose department oversaw the Immigration and Naturalization Service, persuaded President Roosevelt to allow approximately 12,000 Germans, most of whom were Jews and already in the United States on visitor visas, to remain in the country indefinitely. Although he knew extending the visas could raise congressional objection, the president made his position clear. "I cannot," he said, "in any decent humanity, throw them out." Indeed, no Jews were forced to leave the United States to return to Nazi-occupied Europe for the duration of the war.

Some lawmakers who hoped to change the country's restrictive immigration quota laws saw an opportunity in the wave of sympathy among Americans for refugees after Kristallnacht. On February 9, 1939, Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-NY) and Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R-MA) introduced identical bills into Congress to offer refuge to 20,000 children under 14 from the Greater German Reich. Despite widespread support, the Wagner-Rogers Bill died in Congress. The quota system remained unchanged throughout the war and into the 1960s.

A Turning Point

The events of Kristallnacht represented one of the most important turning points in National Socialist antisemitic policy. Historians have noted that after the pogrom, anti-Jewish policy was concentrated more and more concretely into the hands of the SS. Moreover, the passivity with which most German civilians responded to the violence signaled to the Nazi regime that the German public was prepared for more radical measures.

The Nazi regime expanded and radicalized measures aimed at removing Jews entirely from German economic and social life in the forthcoming years. The regime moved eventually toward policies of forced emigration, and finally toward the realization of a Germany "free of Jews" ( judenrein) by deportation of the Jewish population "to the East."

Thus, Kristallnacht figures as an essential turning point in Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, which culminated in the attempt to annihilate the European Jews.

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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 pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938. This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.

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Definition: Hostility to prejudice against Jews.  In 1879 a German Journalist Wilhelm Marr originated the term anti-semitism.
By: Asher

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In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr originated the term antisemitism, denoting the hatred of Jews, and also hatred of various liberal, cosmopolitan, and international political trends of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries often associated with Jews. The trends under attack included equal civil rights, constitutional democracy, free trade, socialism, finance capitalism, and pacifism.

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Mikel Forrer
Asher Frye
Austin Waggoner
Kyle Moore
Greta Pieleszek
Bijaya Manandhar