Holocaust - The Destruction Process essays

Holocaust - The Destruction Process essays During the period from the early 1930's to the mid 40's, the Jews in Germany, Poland, and throughout Europe faced intense discrimination from the Nazis. Starting with boycotts and pogroms, the Nazis proceeded to institute legislation against the Jews with the Nuremberg Laws. Institution of ghettos began in the late 1930's. A climate of hostility against Jews had been methodically and relentlessly established. The Holocaust was a systematic destruction process, which, in a very rational, bureaucratic and almost scientific fashion, developed the way for expropriation of property, suppression of rights, and ultimately for extermination camps. From a legal point of view, the first years of the Nazis in power were very important. Nazi propaganda started with the first phase of the destruction process: defamation. Nazis began to erase the rights of Jews and other party enemies soon after Hitler became Chancellor in January of 1933. To be more specific, on March 23, 1933, the Enabling Act was passed, a law authorizing the government to issue legislation, even if that legislation deviated from the Reich Constitution. One example of this legislation is a series of laws that were created for banning "non-Aryans" from civil service, the legal, medical, and dental professions, teaching positions, cultural and entertainment enterprises, and the press. (The Law for the restoration of the Professional Civil Service, A Holocaust Reader, Dawidowicz, p. 35). On September 15, 1935, at the party rally, the Nuremberg Laws were announced. "A Reich citizen is only that subject of German or kindred blood" (Reich Citizen Law of 1935). Therefore, Jews no longer were German citizens; they were subjects. To protect the "German Blood and German Honor," they were forbidden to marry "Aryans" and forbidden to fly the Reich and national flags (Protection of German Blood and German Honor of 1935). The testimonies of Ruth Kent, a Holocaust survivor, show how the...