Status of and Attitudes towards Jews Attitudes towards other minorities
attitudes towards,
ethnic minorities
1918-32
Weimar - 1/3rd lived in Berlin, ‘Jew Berlin’ - Prussia + Bavaria passed laws to
- Five Jews held cabinet posts in the Weimar Republic, try and control the Gypsies. E.g.,
Rathenau foreign minister - led to a criticism of the 1927, Bavaria said all Gypsies
government for appointing Jews should carry identity cards.
- German peoples offensive had 25,000 members 1919 and - Hostility to Poles because they
170,000 when disbanded 1923 had fought Germany in the war,
- Reich Federation of Jewish Front Soldiers were set up to between 1925 and 1933 about
fight anti-semitism 30,000 left the country.
- Jews + communist given a lot of the blame for misfortune - Ruhr 1923, 500 mixed children
denounced as ‘Germanys
shame’
- National boycott April 1933, SA members stood outside - 1934 Nazis began a compulsory
Nazi urging people not to go in. sterilisation programme,
- April 1933, series of laws restricted the number of Jewish doctors + hospitals had to report
university students, banned Jews from athletic and those ‘unfit to breed’ – extended
sporting groups and stopped people with ‘Jewish names’ to Jews, Gypsies, criminals, black
from sending telegrams. and mixed-race people.
- Nuremberg race laws 1935, anyone with 3/4 Jewish - 400,000 people sterilized 1934-
grandparents. 45, almost all against their will
- Law for the restoration of the professional civil service - Poles rounded up in Ghettos,
1933 deliberately badly overcrowded +
- Yellow star displayed on Jewish-owned shops encouraging food + medical supplies kept to a
random violence. min
- Separate yellow park benches, tram cars, restaurants, - Strength through joy ran bus
swimming pools trips through the Lodz ghetto, so
- KRISTALLNACHT – over 260 synagogues burned, Jewish people could see how depraved
homes and shops looted. the race were.
- Dehumanise, gave jobs such as scrubbing the streets on
their knee, 1938 flight tax for emigration was everything
but a suitcase.
- SS units – Einsatzgruppen, 2 mil of 6 mil murdered in
holocaust were E victims. Dig the grave, strip, stand on
edge and shoot them.
- Final solution decided in Wannsee 1942, 5 death camps.
- Gov guaranteed Germans + non-
FRG Germans the same wages + a
preference to German workers
when hiring.
- 1960 more female workers were
recruited (43,000 1960, over
700,000 1973)
- Foreign workers arrived taking
the worst jobs possible for very
low wages
- Known as ‘guest workers’ didn’t
have the rights of German
citizens
- 1973 government put a stop to
hiring and banned permits for
families of workers already in the
country.
- 1975 government gave guest
worker’s children the same
benefit as other children
- 1977 ban was removed
