Prelude to the Holocaust: Basics Quiz

Answer: 30 January 1933

Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Hindenburg and soon life began to get difficult for Jews in Germany.

(6 November 1932 was the date of the last free Reichstag elections in the Weimar Republic. The NSDAP obtained 33% of the vote, down from 37% in July 1932, but were still the largest party. 2 August 1934 is the date of Hindenburg's death, whereupon Hitler proclaimed himself Führer).

Answer: False

Germany was not seen as particularly antisemitic at the time, either by foreign or domestic observers, or by Jews, and it was not one of the countries that Zionists were worried about: they were much more concerned about the situation in Romania, Hungary and Poland. Germany was considered a safe country for Jews. When the Nazis came to power the German Jews were caught off guard - like many other people. Not many of them even had passports, for example.

In their election campaigns in 1930-32 some leading Nazis, acting on advice, made a point of not stressing their antisemitism. To some extent even Hitler followed this advice.

Answer: Most other countries had severe restrictions on immigration

During and after World War I most countries in Europe and North America, and also further afield, had introduced strict controls on immigration; and these restrictions were enforced. There was no such thing as a right to asylum. (Before 1914 restrictions had been much looser). Some countries that were initially willing to accept refugees tightened the criteria as the number of refugees increased (for example, Argentina and South Africa). It wasn't enough to leave Germany: one needed somewhere to go to.

There is some anecdotal evidence that some German Jews were so attached to Germany that they found emigration emotionally very hard, but such claims are difficult to evaluate, except in some individual cases.

Those who emigrated from Germany in 1933-34 were able to take some money with them, at disadvantageous exchange rates, and they were subject to an emigration tax - the 'Reichsfluchtsteuer' (literally 'tax on fleeing the Reich'). Later, exchange controls became more stringent and further taxes were added.

Jews were not forbidden to leave Germany altogether till August 1941, when there was a change in policy. However, the outbreak of war in 1939 severely disrupted international communications.

Answer: False

The Nazi view of the Jews was racial, not religious, though the religion of parents and grandparents was used in order to identify Jews.

Obviously, racial antisemitism built on earlier, already existing religion-based prejudices, and that is not in dispute.

(In many countries the Holocaust is widely taught in schools - and sometimes not very well. Some questions on Q&A sites reveal confusion on this: questions such as 'What did Hitler object to in the Jewish religion?' miss the key point completely).

Answer: That Germany had not been defeated in World War One but had been forced to surrender because of subversion on the home front

Sometimes the stab-in-the-back legend was openly and stridently antisemitic, and sometimes it was more a matter of 'nudge-nudge, wink-wink. We all know who the subversives are'. So, in addition to being accused of causing the inflation of the early 1920s and the Great Depression, the German Jews were accused of betraying Germany in World War I.

There was also the widely held view that most Jews were Communists. This view was common in many countries in the interwar period and later, but Nazi propaganda added the view that Marxism was a specifically Jewish ideology and that the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917 had been a Jewish coup d'état.

Answer: Marriage

Not surprisingly, the Nuremberg laws also made sexual relations between Jews and 'Aryans' a serious crime. (Before that there had been cases of stormtroopers simply taking the law into their own hands and beating up and publicly humiliating those in 'mixed' relationships).

In 1941 the German Jews lost even their residual 'membership' of Germany.

The Nuremberg Laws should not be confused with the Nuremberg Tribunal, at which the Allies tried many key Nazis after the war.

Answer: A massive pogrom organized by the regime

It was carried out by stormtroopers (the SA), some of them in civilian clothes in order to create the misleading impression that ordinary members of public were spontaneously beating up Jews and destroying Jewish property. Just about every synagogue in Greater Germany was vandalized, also many Jewish-owned businesses and some Jewish homes. Many Jews were killed and in some places the violence continued for a number of days. The expression 'Night of Broken Glass' (in German 'Kristallnacht') is based on the smashed shop windows and show-cases in central areas of Berlin. ('Kristall' refers to the high grade lead crystal glass used at the time for shop windows and show-cases).

The Jewish population was ordered to meet the cost of the damage to its own property.

In the days that followed an estimated 30,000 Jews were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, and by Christmas 1938 about 2,000 of them were dead. There was a sudden rush to leave Germany.

Answer: They denounced his work as 'Jewish Physics' and gave their backing to so-called 'German Physics'

The Nazi regime gave its backing to a cranky fringe-group that claimed that there was something inherently Jewish, un-German and 'false' about Einstein's physics. Incredible as it sounds, this 'German Physics' group was headed by Philipp Lenard, who had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1905 for his work on cathode rays.

Answer: Most of them were forced to move into designated Jewish apartment blocks

The designated apartment blocks had a large J over every entrance. In addition, the outbreak of war saw the imposition of curfews and restricted shopping hours for Jews. They had to hand over automobiles, bicycles, radios and, later, their woollen clothing and even their pets. Routine deportations from Berlin began in October 1941.

Incidentally, in Germany everyone had had to register their place of residence with the authorities since the 19th century. It was not a Nazi innovation.

Answer: Polish intellectuals, members of the Polish resistance and habitual criminals

In 1940 the Nazis had not yet invented the extermination camp. However, from October 1941 Auschwitz was expanded to include an extermination camp at Birkenau, and a private enterprise concentration camp at Monowitz (built for the chemicals conglomerate IG-Farben). In all, the Auschwitz camp expanded till it had three major camps and 45 sub-camps. (Himmler had all kinds of schemes for turning the area round Auschwitz into a vast German industrial region based on slave labour).

Some concentration camps changed function over time, a point that is often not made clear and is not widely known by non-specialists.