World War II

Hitler persecuted the Jews in number of ways.

Firstly he thought that all of the Jewish people were communists.  He implied in his propaganda films that the Jewish people were part of the communist party and turned the German people against the Jews.

Secondly Hitler made the Jewish people inferior and weak by dehumanizing them.  For example, they determined that a person was a Jew by measuring the Jewish people’s noses to see how big the noses were; they also told by the lips.  The lips were supposed to look bigger than the German lips. They were also told to wear a yellow Star of David on their jacket where ever they went.  A letter J was stamped on their passports. When the German soldiers were transporting them to concentration camps by train, the Jewish people were put into cattle cars which were never cleaned.  These cars had little ventilation and the people tried very hard to get to the sides of the cars to gasp in as much air as possible from between the slats of the cars.  Due to these inhumane conditions, many hundreds of men, women and children died in the transportation from the embarkation stations to the camps.  

From the Nuremburg laws, the Jewish people were not allowed to marry or sleep with any German. This was another way of excluding them from the German race. They also made the Jews shovel snow from the road side and cut the grass with their teeth.  Hitler wanted a totally ‘Aryrian’ race, blond haired and blue eyed.  The majority of Jewish people did not meet this criterion.

Another group that made Hitler angry was the November criminals.  He hated them because they caused Germany to lose the First World War. A number of them were Jewish; this was another reason why Hitler was angry with the Jews.

Hitler called them Christ slayers because it was believed that the Jews killed Jesus Christ.  Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats by blaming everything on them.  He blamed the Great Depression on the Jews and Germany losing the First World War. He feared the Jews because they were different, they had different festivals, ate different food and some of them wore strange clothing.  He also persecuted them because he was jealous of their success during and after the Great Depression.  While the rest of Germany was suffering, the Jews became even more successful.  The Germans were borrowing from them and when the Jews wanted their money back, the debts couldn’t be paid because of what the Germans lost during the Depression.