The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) were antisemitic laws in Nazi Germany. They were introduced on 15 September 1935 by the Reichstag at a special meeting convened at the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenship Law, which declared that only those of German or related blood were eligible to be Reich citizens; the remainder were classed as state subjects, without citizenship rights. A supplementary decree outlining the definition of who was Jewish was passed on 14 November, and the Reich Citizenship Law officially came into force on that date. The laws were expanded on 26 November 1935 to include Romani people and Afro-Germans. This supplementary decree defined Gypsies as “enemies of the race-based state,” the same category as Jews.
Out of foreign policy concerns, prosecutions under the two laws did not commence until after the 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin. After they seized power in 1933, the Nazis began to implement their policies, which included the formation of a Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community) based on race. Chancellor and Führer (leader) Adolf Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses on 1 April 1933, and the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April, excluded non-Aryans from the legal profession and civil service. Books considered un-German, including those by Jewish authors, were destroyed in a nationwide book burning on 10 May. Jewish citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. They were actively suppressed, stripped of their citizenship and civil rights, and eventually completely removed from German society.
The Nuremberg laws had a crippling economic and social impact on the Jewish community. Persons convicted of violating the marriage laws were imprisoned, and (subsequent to 8 March 1938) upon completing their sentences were re-arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Non-Jews gradually stopped socialising with Jews or shopping in Jewish-owned stores, many of which closed due to lack of customers. As Jews were no longer permitted to work in the civil service or government-regulated professions such as medicine and education, many middle class, business owners, and professionals were forced to take menial employment. Emigration was problematic, as Jews were required to remit up to 90 per cent of their wealth as a tax upon leaving the country. By 1938 it was almost impossible for potential Jewish emigrants to find a country willing to take them. Mass deportation schemes such as the Madagascar Plan proved to be impossible for the Nazis to carry out, and starting in mid-1941, the German government started mass exterminations of the Jews of Europe.
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Keywords: Holocaust, Shoah, Nazi concentration camps, Nuremberg Laws, Extermination camp, Final Solution, Jewish question, Auschwitz concentration camp, Auschwitz, Nazi Germany, Jews destroyed, Genocide, Concentration camps, Jewish genocide, Jews genocide, Holocaust of the Jewish people, How many Jews died in the Holocaust, Two thirds, Six million, Six million Jews, Six million Jews died, 6 million, 6 million Jews, 6 million Jews died, 9 million, Nine million, 9 million Jews, Nine Million Jews, Jews Holocaust, World War II, World War 2, ethnic cleansing, racial extermination, extermination, Oscar Schindler, Oskar Schindler, Schindler, Wallenberg, Raoul Wallenberg, Raul Wallenberg, Hitler, Adolf Hitler, Adolph Hitler, German Nazis, Schindler's List, Third Reich
Bible reference(s): Esther 3:6, Esther 3:8-9, Esther 3:11, Esther 3:13, Esther 4:8, Esther 7:3-4, Esther 8:6, Psalm 83:4, Psalm 137:7, Isaiah 43:2, Jeremiah 5:18, Jeremiah 30:11, Jeremiah 30:7, Jeremiah 31:36, Jeremiah 46:28, Jeremiah 48:2, Zechariah 13:7-8, Matthew 27:25
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