We Must NEVER FORGET
We must NEVER FORGET and we must ALWAYS RISE UP AGAINST acts of hate, even the smallest of seeds. Understanding who the Nazi's targeted is critical to understanding how history repeats itself. Who you are today is who you would have been then.
From the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:
“ENEMIES OF THE STATE”
During the 1930s, the Nazis singled out various groups for persecution. Jews became their main target, but hundreds of thousands of others were oppressed at “enemies of the state.”
Communists, Social Democrats, trade unionists, liberals, and pacifists were arrested for their political view or activities. Dissenting clergy faced imprisonment if they spoke out against the regime, while Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted for their refusal to swear allegiance to the state.
Others were oppressed because the Nazis viewed them as sources of social, racial, or biological “degeneration.” Homosexuals were targeted because of the sexual orientation. Roma (Gypsies) and after 1939, Czechs, Poles, and Slavic people from the Soviet Union were stigmatized as racially “inferior” and deemed threats to the German nation. The Nazis regarded mentally and physically disabled persons as “lives unworthy of life.”
POLITICAL OPPONENTS
The Nazi regime characterized almost any act of opposition as a political crime. Until the “Night of the Broken Glass,” most victims of political persecution were Communists and Social Democrats. Wave after wave of mass arrests, trials, and executions effectively disrupted these parties. By 1938, the regime had crushed virtually all organized opposition, although some Communists and Social Democrats continued to operate underground.
Nazi persecution of political opponents exacted a terrible price in human suffering. Between 1933 and 1939, the criminal courts sentenced tens of thousands of Germans for “political crimes.” On the even of the war, concentration camps held about 25,000 inmates, most of them political prisoners.
HOMOSEXUAL
As part of their attempt to “purify” German society and propagate a “master race,” the Nazis condemned homosexual men and lesbians as “socially aberrant.” Soon after taking office, Hitler banned all homosexual and lesbian organizations. Meanwhile, storm troopers raided the institutions and gathering places of the homosexual and lesbian community.
In 1934, the SS chief, Heinrich Himmler, created a special police bureaucracy to combat male homosexuality. As early as December of that year, homosexual men were subjected to systematic criminal prosecution. Many of them were imprisoned in concentration camps. Their uniforms sometimes bore an identifying mark, such as a black dot. Later, this was replaced by a pink triangle.
The vast majority of homosexual victims were males, lesbians were persecuted to a far lesser extent.
JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES
Nazi harassment of Jehovah’s Witnesses began in 1933. Because they refused military service and would not swear allegiance to the regime. Witnesses were often accused of espionage and conspiracy against the state. The Nazis interpreted the Witness’ predictions of future anarchy as revolutionary threats, and their prophecies about the return of the Jews to Palestine, as Zionist statements.
Nevertheless, the Witnesses continued to meet, preach, and distribute literature. They lost their jobs, pensions, and all civil rights, and beginning in 1937 they were sent to concentration camps. There, the Nazis designated them as “voluntary prisoners.” Jehovah’s Witnesses who renounced their beliefs could be freed. Not one of them recanted.
FREEMASONS
Freemasons as well were considered ideological foes by the Nazis. In 1935, all Masonic lodges were abolished. Like the Jews, the Freemasons were dismissed from the civil service. During the “Night of Broken Glass,” SA men were encouraged to paint anti-Masonic slogans on damaged shops and synagogues.
Beginning in 1938, the persecution slackened. In April of that year, Hitler declared a partial amnesty for Freemasons, and in September, low-ranking Freemasons were readmitted to the civil service. Nevertheless, harassment of Freemasons who remained active continued, and “obstante” Freemasons were imprisoned in concentration camps.
