The Nuremberg Laws and the dispossession of the Jews of Germany

The Nuremberg Laws, promulgated by the Nazi regime in September 1935, constituted the legal foundation for the exclusion of Jews from German society. The 'Law on Reich Citizenship' stripped them of German citizenship, reducing them to the status of 'subjects,' while the 'Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor' prohibited marriages and relations between Jews and 'Aryans.' Implementing decrees defined who was Jewish according to pseudo-racial criteria based on ancestry, extending persecution to persons sometimes far removed from any religious practice. This legal exclusion was accompanied and followed by systematic spoliation: exclusion from professions, forced 'Aryanization' of Jewish businesses and property in favor of non-Jewish owners, confiscations, and discriminatory taxes. Expropriation accelerated brutally after the pogrom of Kristallnacht in November 1938. This process of legal exclusion and economic dispossession prepared the ground for deportation and extermination.

Sources & resources

• Encyclopaedia Judaica — 2e éd., Keter/Macmillan
• Jewish Virtual Library ↗