Category:Holocaust Children, Germany (subject)

Holocaust Children, Germany (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

In January 1933, some 522,000 Jews lived in Germany. After the Nazis took power and implemented their antisemitic ideology and policies, the Jewish community was increasingly persecuted. In 1936, Jews were banned from all professional jobs, effectively preventing them from participating in education, politics, higher education and industry. The Schutzstaffel (SS) ordered what became during the night of November 9–10, 1938, as the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht). The storefronts of Jewish shops and offices were smashed and vandalized, and many synagogues were destroyed by fire.

About 60% of German Jews (numbering around 304,000) emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship. Only roughly 214,000 Jews were left in Germany proper (1937 borders) on the eve of World War II.

Beginning in late 1941, the remaining community was subjected to systematic deportations to ghettos and ultimately, to death camps in Eastern Europe. In May 1943, Germany was declared judenrein (clean of Jews; also judenfrei: free of Jews). By the end of the war, an estimated 160,000 to 180,000 German Jews had been killed by the Nazi regime and their collaborators. A total of about six million European Jews were murdered under the direction of the Nazis, in the genocide that later came to be known as the Holocaust.