Jewish Persecution

     The Jewish Persecution began during 1933. The Jews were faced with the

terrorist group called the National Socialist German Workers party (Nazi) hate this

happened when Hitler came into power. He devised labor camps where he would send

individuals who opposed his ideas, and Jews. The conditions in these camps were so

bad that it is hard to describe them. The prisoners were treated very badly. In this time,

the Nazi government continued to deprive Jews of their rights and possessions.

      In 1938 Jewish homes and schools are looted or destroyed. Jews could not sit

on park benches or swim in public pools. The government seized Jewish businesses as

well as personal property. Jews were beaten, more than 90 are killed, and 30,000

Jewish people were sent to concentration camps. They beat Jews in the streets and

attacked them in their homes. Jews had to sell their businesses and other property to

the government at unnaturally low prices. The night became known as Kristallnacht, a

German word meaning Crystal Night.      
     
     In 1939, 300,000 Jews had been eliminated from the German community.

Millions more Jews came under German control. Jews in Poland are forced to wear a

yellow Star of David on their chests or a blue-and-white Star of David armband. By the

end of the war, the Nazis had killed about 6 million Jewish men, women, and children

that’s more than two-thirds of the Jews in Europe. Many of the Holocaust victims were

killed in specially constructed gas chambers, and their bodies were then burned. The

Nazis also moved many Jews from towns and villages into city ghettos.

     During 1942-1943 German government officials discuss the "Final Solution,"

their plan to kill all Jews in Europe. This policy called for the murder of every Jewish

man, woman, and child under German rule. Jews are deported from Nazi-occupied

countries throughout Europe to ghettos, concentration camps and killing centers in

Poland. In the early 1940's, several new camps were established, with specially

constructed gas chambers disguised as showers.
     
     The Nazis herded the Jews into railroad freight cars to be taken to the camps. As

many as 2,000 prisoners were sent into the gas chambers at one time. The guards shaved

the heads of the corpses and removed any gold teeth from their mouths. Then they burned

the bodies in crematoriums or open pits. The well prisoners had their heads shaved and

their belongings detained. Camp personnel tattooed a number on the arm of each person.

From then on, the prisoners were identified by number instead of by name.

     There were six death camps, all in German-occupied Poland, Auschwitz, Belzec,

Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. Auschwitz was the largest and most

dishonorable. It was a slave labor camp as well as a killing center. In the fall of 1943,

Allied leaders declared their determination to bring the Nazi leaders to justice for their

wartime behavior. In May 1948, the state of Israel officially came into existence and

opened its borders to receive the Jews.