What happened to the Jews?
After Germany conquered Poland in 1939, the persecution reached terrifying new levels. Polish Jews were rounded up and forced to live in ghettoes, where disease and starvation were constant threats.
Why were the Jews persucuted ?
Also in 1933, the Nazis began to put into practice their racial ideology. The Nazis believed that the Germans were "racially superior" and that there was a struggle for survival between them and inferior races. They saw Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and the handicapped as a serious biological threat to the purity of the "German (Aryan) Race," what they called the master race.
Jews, who numbered about 525,000 in Germany were the principal target of Nazi hatred. The Nazis identified Jews as a race and defined this race as "inferior." They also spewed hateful propaganda that unfairly blamed Jews for Germany's economic depression and the country's defeat in World War I which was during (1914-1918). So the hate for the Jews started off from problems from the world war 1.
Here are few examples of what Hitler and the Nazi party actually did which clearly shows that the Jews got persucuted!
1933
The Boycott of Jewish businesses.
· Jewish civil servants, lawyers and teachers were sacked.
Race Science lessons were taught to people to teach that Jews are untermensch (meaning inferior)
1935
· 'Jews not wanted here' signs were put up at swimming pools etc.
· Nuremberg laws (15 September) Jews could not be citizens. They were not allowed to vote for anything
1938
· Jews could not be doctors.
· Jewish children forbidden to go to school.
· Attacks on Jewish peoples public places, homes and religious places such as the