Question

The following statement was taken from a contemporary account of Germany in 1939:

"Though the Fuhrer's anti-Semitic program furnished the National Socialist party in the first instances with a nucleus and a rallying-cry, it was swept into office by two things with which the "Jewish Problem" did not have the slightest connection. On the one side was economic distress and the revulsion against Versailles: on the other, chicanery and intrigue...Hitler and his party promised the unhappy Germans a new heaven and a new earth, coupled with the persecution of the Jews. Unfortunately a new heaven and earth cannot be manufactured to order. But a persecution of the Jews can..."

How do you interpret this contemporary account of the persecution of people who are Jewish? Elaborate.

Answer 1

From the statement in the Contemporary account, it can be interpreted that the Germans has persecuted the jews out of anger and in transfer of their aggression, which the country was facing. This made them to attribute the Jews to be the source of all evils happening in their country. The Jews were growing rapidly in Germany, and are becoming more prosperous than the Germans, the Germans became more jealous and felt like they are taking away their own prosperity. And this is why they developed strong hatred for them. The anti-semitic program does not have any base point, but it was just a political movement that the government felt will make the Germans happy, that's why the genocide which was known as Holocaust was signed into German law at that era.

The mass slaughter of the jews made many Jewish in Germany to flew to Poland. The persecution of the jews continued in Germany until after the second world war. Today the Jews have their civil right in Germany as such law has been abolished and any person seen commiting anti-Semitic will be jailed five years in prison.