Maeme Nkgabutle

Grade 11.
Mrs Andrade.
Pseudoscientific ideas of race led to policies in Nazi Germany that caused the killing
of six million Jews and made it legal for Nazi Germany to take away all the human
rights of the Jewish population. Pseudoscience is made up of theories, assumptions
and methods that are incorrectly presented as based on scientific facts when they
are not. The beliefs in pseudoscientific ideas were common in different historical
periods all over the world. Even today, they still exist even though they have clearly
been proven to have dangerous consequences.
From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany with Adolf Hitler as prime minister of the
government focused and promoted nationalism and claims that there existed an
“Aryan master race” that was superior to all the other races. This racist idea based
on Eugenics was then supported with German scientists’ theories and assumptions.
Which included the idea that all of the social ills in the country such as poverty,
mental illness, alcoholism, criminality and even physical disability were as a result of
hereditary factors. These scientists and medically trained professionals played a role
in supporting these theories and implementing them. Due them many people, Jews
and others considered to be part of an inferior group suffered persecution and death
at the hands of the state of Nazi Germany.
Therefore, even though Eugenics is today seen as a pseudoscience, in those times it
was seen as cutting-edge science. Eugenicists believed that human diseases as well
as all social ills could be bred out of humans by mating only people with particular
desirable hereditary traits. Which in Nazi Germany was made possible with laws
such as the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring. This law
allowed thousands of forced sterilizations on Jews, Germans considered inferior due
to mental or physical disabilities and all other races such as Black people.
From 1941 the mass murder of Jewish people became the official policy of Nazi
Germany and many more Jewish people died during this period. This was the “Final
Solution to the Jewish Question” which was organized mass killings of Jewish people
by gas chambers and shootings. However, the focus of our essay also include the
Nuremberg Race laws which came into effect in September 1935.The Reich
Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.
These two laws made antisemitic prejudices and attacks lawful and would allow Nazi
Germany to classify Jews as subjects not citizens taking away all the legal rights.
Non-Jewish German citizens were not allowed to have relationships or marry Jewish
subjects.

Our focus will be how the pseudoscientific ideas on race specifically in relation to the
Jewish community was made into legal policy in Nazi Germany against the Jews,
how it was implemented during this period of 1933 to 1945 and its consequences for
these communities and their future generations for decades to come.
The Holocaust was a system sponsored by the state of Nazi Germany where there
was persecution of European Jews, leading to six million of them being murdered.
It was an evolving process that took place between 1933 and 1946, that began when
Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came into power. Anti-Semitism which is
discrimination against the Jewish race purely based on their race and religious
beliefs, was rampant in Nazi Germany during this period. The Nazis blamed the
Jews for all the problems in their country. They also felt that the German race was
more superior as it belonged to the “Aryan” race and was unfairly having to exist with
other so-called inferior races.
After Adolf Hiltler was appointed German Chancellor in January 1933, Nazi Germany
was no longer a democratic state. By April 1933 after the Enabling Act was passed
that allowed Adolf Hitler to ignore the constitution, the Nazis started to chase out
Jews, democrats, communists and socialists from the public and legal service and
from universities through the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil
Service. Hitler also announced the boycotting of Jewish businesses
After the president of Germany, President Hindenburg passed away in August of
1934 Adolf Hitler took over his presidential powers, combining them with his own as
Vice Chancellor. The initial goal of the Nazi revolution was to grow a pure German
race separate from the Jews, who were seen as evil and undesirable. Then establish
a Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community).
Laws such as the Law for the Protection of Hereditary Health (July 14, 1933), which
allowed mass sterilizations of people seen as inferior. Which led to two million
people who were seen as not suitable for having children being sterilized by force.
The Marriage Subsidy Law of July 1933 also came into effect to encourage desirable
German couples to have more children by encouraging women to stay home and
raise children, with money being loaned with the birth of each child.
These were followed by the Nuremberg Laws of September 1935. The Reich
Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.
These laws made sexual relations and marriage between Jews and Germans
unlawful. Jews were no longer citizens with rights but subjects and according to the
Reich Citizenship Law only Germans or related blood could be Reich citizens. This
was soon followed by a nationwide book burning of un-German literature and many
towns not allowing Jews to enter or Jewish businesses operating.
Organized attacks and public humiliations, as well as forced removals of Jewish
people from homes and communities followed. Most Jewish families lost all of their
assets. All this violence and economic pressures were being used to encourage
Jews to leave the country voluntarily. But doing so would also mean giving up ninety
percent of their wealth to the state as tax. A large number of Jews did leave the
country and by 1938 it was almost impossible for Jewish people to find a country
willing to accept them. By 1939 about 250 000 Jews from Germany’s 437 000 had
moved to different countries such as the United States, Great Britain and Argentina.
Nazi Germanys policies under Adolf Hitler placed all people who had lived within
German territory for centuries, but were not ethnic Germans as inferior non-Aryan
sub humans. This included non-Nordic Europeans such as Slavs, (the Polish,
Serbians,Russians), Romani’s who were also known as gypsies and at the lowest
Jewish people. Nazis believed in eugenics also known as racial hygiene which put
forward that only blonde, blue-eyed and tall Europeans also known as the Aryan
race were suited for Nazi Germany. The Aryan race was according to eugenicists far
more developed than other races and was at the top of the racial hierarchy, the
“master race”.
This pseudoscientific concept was supported by scientists and largely implemented
by medically trained experts. When this was done the categories of people who were
regarded as undesirable grew and included the unemployed, political opponents,
criminals, immigrants, homosexuals, black people, the mentally ill and people with
disabilities. Many were experimented on and given horrible diseases, the disabled
were put in institutions away from society and were put to death mostly after being
experimented on. From 1939 to 1945 more than 5000 children were killed for birth
defects in clinics and state hospitals.
In November of 1938 after a Jewish man killed a German diplomat in Paris, the
Nazis retaliated by attacking Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues in
Germany killing 91 German Jews. This was called Kristallnacht (“night of broken
glass), because of the pieces of broken glass in the streets. Jewish people were
fined one billion marks for the damage and were told any money from insurance
claims would be taken away. Thereafter large numbers of Jewish people were then
forced into hard labour at concentration camps.
In October 1939 Operation T-4, the killing of adults in state hospitals and institutions
started. People who were seen as having incurable diseases or were regarded as
unproductive such as the unemployed, were taken to be killed by gas poisoning in
gas chambers. When public awareness was raised the patients’, deaths would then
be caused via starvation or overdosing on medication. An estimated 250 000 people
were killed by Euthanasia between 1939 and 1945 in Germany. In German-occupied
Poland members of the SS led by Heinrich Himmler were busy with mass killings of
political opponents and Polish Jews.
What took place in Nazi Germany between 1933 to 1946 did leave an entire nation
destroyed. Of the nine million Jews living in Germany six million of them were killed.
Many had to leave the country due to the violence and those who were
experimented on were left disabled. Children were separated from parents, with
many never to see their parents or family again after being taken to the
concentration camps. A whole nation lost businesses, homes, loved ones and their
rights in their own country because they were declared to be an inferior race. Due to
the forced medical procedures performed on those who were in state hospitals and
institutions some lost limbs, their lives and parents lost their new-born babies. The
Holocaust affected Jews all over Europe who were all forced into overpopulated
ghettos. Many of the medical professionals that were part of the killings in state
hospitals were put on trial and sentenced to prison or death.
Publisher for National Literature), Stuttgart, Germany, ca. 1935.

What I have learnt from all the research is that people can be hated based on their
race and religion. The Jews were judged based on their race and religion and the
Nazis felt that they were more superior than them. The Nazis didn’t take the time to
learn and get to know the Jews but instead they decided that it was best to
discriminate them and not treat them like human beings. Some Jews even joined
Christianity, but they were still discriminated because of their race. People tend to
forget that even though we are a different race and have different religions, we are
all human beings and all of us deserve equal rights. No human being deserves to be
treated differently. Unfortunately, till today there are people around the world that are
still discriminated and killed because of their race and religion.
I realized that its good to read about the past so that we do not repeat the same
mistakes. It is better to get to learn about everyone’s differences as you get to see
things from a different point of view. What is also important is to choose the right
leader. A leader is supposed to unite people instead of separating them.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Anon., 2021. Holocaust Encyclopedia. [Online]
Available at: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust
[Accessed 1 May 2022].

Anon., n.d. Britannica. [Online]

Available at: https://www.britannica.com/
[Accessed 1 May 2022].

Anon., n.d. gettyimages. [Online]

Available at:
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/holocaust?msclkid=f720d2d8ca0611ec8c59f647ac064e8a
[Accessed 1 May 2022].
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Background
Page 3: Body
Page 4: Conclusion.
Page 5: Reflection.
Page 6: Illustrations
Page 7: Bibliography.