Question

Explain why the Jews were specifically humiliated by the Nazis and describe their systematic persecution. (5 MARKS) Please post relevant answers!!!

Answer 1

During the twelve years of the Third Reich (1933-1945), Nazi officials and organizations perpetrated public humiliations of individuals in Germany and Nazi-occupied countries. The Nazis singled out Jews and other victims who violated racial laws as targets for humiliation. For example, Jewish men often had their beards forcibly shaved and endured physical punishment.

KEY FACTS

1

Degrading episodes were carried out by ordinary citizens, the police, the military, and SS officers or soldiers. Men, women, and children were all targets for humiliation.

2

Humiliating incidents were intended to embarrass individuals as well as to deliver or reinforce lessons about Nazi racial ideology and power.

3

Humiliation was incorporated into day-to-day life under the Nazis, and it was also a significant component of major events, such as the Anschluss and Kristallnacht.

Answer 2

Answer:

1. Jews remained the worst sufferers in Nazi Germany. Nazi hatred of Jews had a precursor in the traditional Christian hostility towards Jews. They had been stereotyped as killers of Christ and usurers. Until medieval times Jews were barred from owning land. They survived mainly through trade and moneylending. They lived in separately marked areas called ghettos.  
2. They were often persecuted through periodic organized violence, and expulsion from the land. However, Hitler’s hatred of Jews was based on pseudoscientific theories of race, which held that conversion was no solution to ‘the Jewish problem’. It could be solved only through their total elimination.
3. From 1933 to 1938 the Nazis terrorized, pauperized and segregated the Jews, compelling them to leave the country. The next phase, 1939-1945, aimed at concentrating them in certain areas and eventually killing them in gas chambers in Poland.