The Battle of Britain

Anti-Jewish Legislation

Antisemitism in Germany and the Occupied Territories, 1935; This photograph, taken in 1935, shows a banner reading 'Jews are not wanted here' hanging over the entrance to the village of Rosenheim in Bavaria.

Antisemitism in Germany and the Occupied Territories, 1935

photographs

This photograph, taken in 1935, shows a banner reading 'Jews are not wanted here' hanging over the entrance to the village of Rosenheim in Bavaria.

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The Nazis had made clear their hatred of Jews from as early as 1920. Their vision was of a German race cleansed of what they regarded as an alien species. After Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, the Nazis immediately began to enact laws which...

The Nazis had made clear their hatred of Jews from as early as 1920. Their vision was of a German race cleansed of what they regarded as an alien species. After Hitler became chancellor in January 1933, the Nazis immediately began to enact laws which deprived Jewish families in Germany of rights and opportunities.

German Jewish civil servants were dismissed from their posts and the number of Jewish pupils and students at German schools and universities was limited.

In 1935 the Nuremberg Laws, enacted at the Nuremberg Rally of that year, saw anti-Jewish measures intensified. The 'Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honour' banned marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans, and a deliberately offensive clause banned the employment by Jews of women under 45.

'The Reich Citizenship Law' defined a Jewish person as one who had three Jewish grandparents. With the definition of who was Jewish in place, thousands found they could not longer practise in their professions for which they had trained – medicine, law or journalism. Public parks, libraries and swimming pools were barred to Jews.

The Nazis were aware of the likely disquiet at these measures in other countries and carefully toned down their anti-Jewish activity during the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936.

Anti-Jewish laws were passed in other countries occupied by or allied to the Nazis. In 1940 the Vichy regime in France introduced the Statut des Juifs, which deprived French Jews of the same kinds of rights as the Nuremberg Laws had in Germany.

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  • Boycott of Jewish-owned businesses

    photographs

    Boycott of Jewish-owned businesses; Boycott of Jewish owned businesses in Nazi Germany, April 1933. This photograph shows a member of the Sturm Abteilung (SA) giving the Nazi salute whilst barring the entrance to a shop during the boycott of Jewish-owned businesses on Saturday 1 April 1933. The shop windows are covered with notices proclaiming Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauf nicht bei juden! ('Germans! Watch out! Don't buy from Jews!').

  • Tie-pin

    souvenirs and ephemera

    Tie-pin; Tie-pin deposited in a branch of Barclays Bank in 1939 by Marek Kellerman, a brush merchant from Bratislava, whose fate remains unknown. In the wake of increasingly anti-Jewish legislation, and in order to protect belongings and assets against confiscation, many Jews deposited personal valuables in banks or purchased securities, life policies or even works of art abroad. When war broke out in 1939 all assets in Britain owned by anyone resident in enemy territory were frozen. This is one of the last unclaimed items administered by the Enemy Property Compensation Scheme.

  • Jüdische Weltherrschaft [Jewish World Dominion]

    posters

    Jüdische Weltherrschaft [Jewish World Dominion]; Antisemitic poster produced in Germany during the 1930s by Der Aufbau, the official party magazine of National Socialist Craftsmen and Businessmen.

  • Aftermath of Kristallnacht

    photographs

    Aftermath of Kristallnacht; Aftermath of Kristallnacht, November 1938. A Berlin synagogue lies in ruins following the Nazi-instigated Kristallnacht, a pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria, which occurred on the night of 9-10 November 1938.

  • Toy dog

    souvenirs and ephemera

    Toy dog; Toy dog given to Evelyn Kaye by her father shortly before she left Austria on the Kindertransport in 1939. In 1938 and 1939, nearly 10,000 children, fleeing the persecution of Jews in Germany, Austria and in occupied Czechoslovakia, Moravia and Bohemia, were brought to Britain on the Kindertransporte (children’s transports). Upon arrival the children were placed in foster homes or lived in hostels or on farms. Most of the children who came to Britain never saw their parents again.