Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany
Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany comprised several laws that segregated the Jews from German society and restricted Jewish people's political, legal and civil rights.
The Enabling Act of 1933 established the power of the Nazi-led government to pass law by decree, bypassing the approval of parliament.
[3] This Law created the basis for the years to come, the Nazi party saw "racial purity [as a] condition of superior cultural creation and of the construction of a powerful state".
This law specifically attacked judges and public prosecutors, and forbade any Jews from taking the Bar examination which was necessary to become a lawyer.
[11] For example, the film chamber could dismiss any Jews involved in any stages of the film-making process including the "producer, actors and ticket collectors in the theater".
[11] As a supplement to the Chambers of Culture, a journalism law went into effect on October 4, 1933, stating that to produce work for the press, journalists and editors would also need specific legal permission.
[11] At their annual party rally held in Nuremberg, 10 to 16 September 1935, the Nazi leaders announced a set of three new laws to further regulate and exclude Jews from German society.
Per Hitler, this law was stated to "re-pay a debt of gratitude to the movement, under whose symbol Germany regained its freedom, in that they fulfill a significant item on the program of the National Socialist Party".
[16] The third law forbade marriage and any intimate extramarital relations between Jews and non-Jewish German citizens (the latter denigrated as race disgrace).
[18] Mischlinge or the German legal term for those who had "Aryan" and Jewish blood, were also clarified to determine who would be considered a Jew.
[19] After the Nuremberg Legislations and during 1938, "worse than total expropriation was to follow: Economic harassment and even violence would henceforward be used to force the Jews to flee the Reich or the newly annexed Austria.
"[20] De-certification of all Jewish physicians, who were no longer allowed to treat German patients and forced to refer to themselves as "sick-treaters", a degrading term.
[21] In this second wave of legislation, Jews were ostracized even further from society, with strict restrictions living under "a German regime that practiced terror and arbitrariness through the judicial system".
The German government placed full blame on the Jews for the destructions and imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmark on the Jewish community.
[23] Kristallnacht and the events that followed it showed the Nazi regime that they could count on the nationwide support of anti-Semitism from the general public.
[24] During the pre-war Nazi Germany period (1933-1939) there were more than 400 laws, decrees and other type of regulations whose goal was to restrict Jews.
Hitler's plan started with stripping all Jews of their basic rights, before moving into the mass murdering of the Jewish people.
[26] For sake of completeness, this timeline includes selected decrees that directly follow-up on pre-war legislation, which were issued after the start of World War II on September 1, 1939.
