While the Nuremberg Laws specifically mentioned only Jews, the laws eventually extended to Black people and Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) living in Germany.
Many Germans who had never practiced Judaism or who had not done so for years found themselves caught in the grip of Nazi terror. In Nazi Germany, no profession of belief and no act or statement could convert a Jew into a German. For the first time in history, Jews faced persecution not for what they believed, but for who they-or their parents-were by birth. More significantly they laid the foundation for future antisemitic measures by legally distinguishing between German and Jew.
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The Nuremberg Laws reversed the process of emancipation, whereby Jews in Germany were included as full members of society and equal citizens of the country. Thousands of people were convicted or simply disappeared into concentration camps for race defilement. The law also forbade Jews to employ female German maids under the age of 45, assuming that Jewish men would force such maids into committing race defilement. These relationships were labeled as “race defilement” ( Rassenschande). It also criminalized sexual relations between them. The second Nuremberg Law, the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, banned marriage between Jews and non-Jewish Germans. Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor They enjoyed the same rights as “racial” Germans, but these rights were continuously curtailed through subsequent legislation. These “mixed-raced” individuals were known as Mischlinge. To further complicate the definitions, there were also people living in Germany who were defined under the Nuremberg Laws as neither German nor Jew, that is, people having only one or two grandparents born into the Jewish religious community. The law stripped them all of their German citizenship and deprived them of basic rights. It also defined as Jews people born to parents or grandparents who had converted to Christianity. For example, it defined people who had converted to Christianity from Judaism as Jews. This legal definition of a Jew in Germany covered tens of thousands of people who did not think of themselves as Jews or who had neither religious nor cultural ties to the Jewish community. Under the law, Jews in Germany were not citizens but “subjects" of the state. Their “racial” status passed to their children and grandchildren. Grandparents born into a Jewish religious community were considered “racially” Jewish. People with three or more grandparents born into the Jewish religious community were Jews by law. Nazi legislators looked therefore to family genealogy to define race. They claimed instead that Jews were a race defined by birth and by blood.ĭespite the persistent claims of Nazi ideology, there was no scientifically valid basis to define Jews as a race.
The Nazis rejected the traditional view of Jews as members of a religious or cultural community. A supplementary decree published on November 14, the day the law went into force, defined who was and was not a Jew. Many more had married Christians or converted to Christianity.Īccording to the Reich Citizenship Law and many ancillary decrees on its implementation, only people of “German or kindred blood” could be citizens of Germany. Some no longer practiced Judaism and had even begun celebrating Christian holidays, especially Christmas, with their non-Jewish neighbors. Many had given up traditional practices and appearances and had integrated into the mainstream of society. Jews in Germany were not easy to identify by sight. The Nazis had long sought a legal definition that identified Jews not by religious affiliation but according to racial antisemitism.
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