In , Nazi anti-Jewish policy became more radical. Jews were marked with a Star of David badge. The first deportations of Jews from Germany to ghettos and camps in the east began. In January , some , Jews by religious definition lived in Germany.
Over half of these individuals, approximately , Jews, emigrated during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship, leaving only approximately , Jews in Germany proper borders on the eve of World War II. In the years between and , the Nazi regime had brought radical and daunting social, economic, and communal change to the German Jewish community. Six years of Nazi-sponsored legislation had marginalized and disenfranchised Germany's Jewish citizenry and had expelled Jews from the professions and from commercial life.
Thousands of Jews remained interned in concentration camps following the mass arrests in the aftermath of Kristallnacht Night of the Broken Glass in November In the early war years, the newly transformed Reich Association of Jews in Germany Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland , led by prominent Jewish theologian Leo Baeck but subject to the demands of Nazi German authorities, worked to organize further Jewish emigration, to support Jewish schools and self-help organizations, and to help the German Jewish community contend with an ever-growing mass of discriminatory legislation.
Following the outbreak of war on September 1, , the government imposed new restrictions on Jews remaining in Germany. One of the first wartime ordinances imposed a strict curfew on Jewish individuals and prohibited Jews from entering designated areas in many German cities.
Once a general food rationing began, Jews received reduced rations; further decrees limited the time periods in which Jews could purchase food and other supplies and restricted access to certain stores, with the result that Jewish households often faced shortages of the most basic essentials. In September , a decree prohibited Jews from using public transportation. Some speak of their childhood memories, such as having to leave their homes in Germany to travel to England on the Kindertransport.
Jack Kagan describes occupation and the arrival of the Einatzkommando in his town, as violence towards the Jews escalates. During the early s, at the time of the Nazi rise to power, Germany was experiencing great economic and social hardship. The country:. Hitler used the Jews as a scapegoat, blaming them for Germany's economic and social problems. The persecution of the Jews began systematically, shortly after Hitler came to power.
The Nazis introduced anti-Jewish decrees, which gradually eliminated the rights of Jewish citizens. Jews were regularly persecuted and humiliated. During Kristallnacht, synagogues and 7, shops were destroyed.
Jews were then made to clear up the destruction on their hands and knees and pay a fine of one billion marks to the government. The remaining Jewish property was then confiscated. In March, there were mass arrests. Many of the Jews of eastern Europe lived in predominantly Jewish towns or villages, called shtetls.
Eastern European Jews lived a separate life as a minority within the culture of the majority. They spoke their own language, Yiddish, which combines elements of German and Hebrew. They read Yiddish books, and attended Yiddish theater and movies. Although many younger Jews in larger towns were beginning to adopt modern ways and dress, older people often dressed traditionally, the men wearing hats or caps, and the women modestly covering their hair with wigs or kerchiefs.
In comparison, the Jews in western Europe—Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium—made up much less of the population and tended to adopt the culture of their non-Jewish neighbors. They dressed and talked like their countrymen, and traditional religious practices and Yiddish culture played a less important part in their lives.
They tended to have had more formal education than eastern European Jews and to live in towns or cities. Jews could be found in all walks of life, as farmers, tailors, seamstresses, factory hands, accountants, doctors, teachers, and small-business owners. Some families were wealthy; many more were poor.
Many children ended their schooling early to work in a craft or trade; others looked forward to continuing their education at the university level.
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