what led up to the holocaust taking place

Family Life

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Everyday Life: Roles, Motives, and Choices During the Holocaust

Family unit Life During the Holocaust

The Holocaust radically reshaped the structures and functions of family life—for Jewish families too as not-Jewish families. The primary sources in this collection show how the upheavals caused by the Nazi regime, Earth War II, and the Holocaust forced many people in Europe to redefine the meaning of family life.

The Nazi authorities began to apply its ideas well-nigh race and national unity to German society shortly afterward Adolf Hitler was appointed German chancellor in January 1933. Nazi ideology focused on creating a politically unified German language lodge based on membership in the so-called "Aryan" race. As an of import building block of society, the family unit unit of measurement became a primal part of the regime's efforts to create this imagined "people's community."¹ During the years of Nazi rule, High german authorities tried to redefine German family unit dynamics through a diversity of racial policies. The racial policies of the Nazi regime excluded and persecuted those whom Nazi credo defined as "racial enemies"—particularly Jews.This frequently led to the disruption or breakdown of traditional family roles and relationships.

The Nazi authorities created legal distinctions between Jewish people then-called "Aryans" that heavily impacted German family life. On September 15, 1935, the authorities passed the Nuremberg Race Laws, which legally divers Jews every bit a separate race based on the faith of their parents and grandparents. Anyone with 3 or more grandparents born into the Jewish religious customs was classified as Jewish regardless of their religious behavior, cultural associations, or self-identification. The new laws non only excluded Jewish people from existence citizens of the Tertiary Reich, but they too banned marriages and sexual relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. Subsequent laws introduced another categorization for people who had both Jewish and non-Jewish ancestry. The Nazi regime classified these Germans as "Mischlinge"—an insulting and dehumanizing term meaning "mixed-race" that was oftentimes used to refer to livestock or other domesticated animals.ⁱⁱ

Nazi racial policies promoted the growth of so-chosen "Aryan" families, simply only if they were accounted "racially valuable." German citizens not but had to document their and then-called "racial purity"—they besides had to institute what Nazi theories of eugenics referred to as their "hereditary health."ⁱⁱⁱ This was based not only on an individual's health, but also on the medical histories of the individual's entire family unit tree. People with family members or ancestors who had been diagnosed with conditions such as alcoholism, epilepsy, or certain mental or physical disabilities were not considered to be what Nazi racial theorists called "skillful racial stock." Germans who wanted to get married had to establish their so-called "hereditary health" with official records such as birth and wedlock certificates. Publications such as the featured brochure "But Who Are You?" tried to promote these ideas and help people navigate the required genealogical research.

The Lebensborn program was another way that the Nazi regime tried to reshape German lodge according to Nazi concepts of race and heredity.⁴ Lebensborn maternity centers were created to encourage so-called "racially valuable" women to have children even if they were unmarried. These maternity homes were located away from the prying eyes of friends and family to reduce social stigma. Selected pregnant women were provided with medical care and comfortable conditions for the time of their pregnancy and labor. The Lebensborn brochure featured here shows how the program tried to appeal to prospective participants.

During the years of Nazi rule, anti-Jewish discrimination and violence challenged and disrupted Jewish family life in a number of ways. On the night of November nine to 10, 1938, Nazi leaders directed widespread violence against the Jewish population of the Tertiary Reich. These anti-Jewish pogroms are often referred to as Kristallnacht. According to the official figures of German government, 91 Jewish people were murdered. The bodily figure—including those who afterward died from their wounds—is probable in the hundreds. Roughly xxx,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps. As a outcome, countless numbers of Jewish families became fatherless while many women took over the traditionally male role of breadwinner.⁵ Mass arrests of Jewish men also put pressure on women to organize their release and pb family unit efforts to immigrate.

The Nov 1938 pogroms as well led to a big increase in Jewish emigration from the Third Reich.^six As permits and visas became difficult to obtain, some Jewish families decided to take the British authorities'south offer to send their children to the Uk. In the years 1938–1939, Great Uk admitted roughly 10,000 unaccompanied Jewish children under the age of 17 who left the Third Reich in the so-called Kindertransport. While the program promised reunification between parents, children, and siblings, the reality was oft far more than complicated—as this featured diary entry shows.

Nazi Deutschland's territorial expansion and the outbreak of World War 2 challenged the very nature of the family unit every bit a source of safety and stability. The German annexation of Austria in March 1938 and the annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia known equally the Sudetenland a twelvemonth later on caused many families in these regions to abscond Nazi rule. Weeks later on the German language invasion of Poland on September one, 1939, the Third Reich annexed parts of western Poland and transformed the residuum of German-occupied Poland into an admininistrative commune known as the Full general Government. Nazi authorities there shortly imposed multiple anti-Jewish laws, including the introduction of ghettos.^seven German government separated Jewish families from the rest of the population and forced them to alive in terrible weather inside these ghettos. The experiences of life inside these ghettos transformed family roles and dynamics. Children often had to smuggle food for their relatives, every bit shown in the featured source, "Food, Money, and Homo Life."⁸

On June 22, 1941, German forces and their allies attacked the Soviet Matrimony. Mobile killing units known equally Einsatzgruppenbegan murdering civilians in the occupied territories of the USSR.⁹ Members of the German ground forces, German police, and the SS all became involved in these campaigns. The German men in these units still played a role in the lives of their families far from home, and they oftentimes mailed letters and parcels home to Germany. The featured alphabetic character from Karl Kretschmer to his family unit shows how mass murder became another one of the everyday details that ane begetter shared with his family unit—as casually as he described playing cards or going to the movies.

Nazi concepts of race and national unity targeted Jews, Roma and Sinti, and people with disabilities equally biological threats to the so-called "people's customs." But Nazi policies also persecuted other members of German social club for not beingness politically or socially acceptable to the regime.^x Among them were Jehovah'southward Witnesses, a Christian religious minority that refused loyalty to the 3rd Reich due to their religious beliefs. Labeling members of this group as "antisocial," Nazi courts removed hundreds of children from their parents' custody. Authorities placed many of these children in reformatory schools.¹¹ The decision in the case of Franz Josef Seitz describes how 1 Jehovah'south Witness fought for custody of his teenage son.

The primary sources in this drove offer central insights into the upheaval of traditional family unit roles in Europe between 1933 and 1945. Showing the intersection of politics and daily life, the collection draws attention to the circuitous and apace changing circumstances facing both Jewish and non-Jewish families during this menses. These sources not only bear witness how Nazi policies and escalating persecution changed family life, but besides how the function of private selection shaped family dynamics.