![]() |
Jewish Studies |
The Nuremberg Laws
Supported by Zionists who opposed Assimilation in Germany
In Germany, on 15 September 1935 the Reichstag adopted two laws, the first, The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, prohibited marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews (the name was now officially used in place of non-Aryans) and Germans and also the employment of German females under forty-five in Jewish households. The second law, The Nuremberg Law on Citizenship stripped persons not considered of German blood of their German citizenship and introduced a new distinction between Reich citizens and nationals.
Article 5 of the supplementary decree of Novmber 14, 1935 defined (1) A Jew is an individual who is descended from at least three grandparents who were, racially, full Jews...(2) A Jew is also an individual who is descended from two full-Jewish grandparents if (a) he was a member of the Jewish religious community when this law was issued, or joined the community later; (b) when the law was issued, he was married to a person who was a Jew, or was subsequently married to a Jew; ...
The commission that drafted the laws included two outstanding young rabbis, Leo Baeck, and a young Berlin rabbi, Joachim Prinz. Both later emigrated to the United States where Prinz became head of the American Jewish Congress. He wrote in his 1934 book, Wir Juden (We Jews), that the National Socialist revolution in Germany meant "Jewry for the Jews". He explained: "No subterfuge can save us now. In place of assimilation we desire a new concept: recognition of the Jewish nation and Jewish race."
The Jüdische Rundschau 17 Sept. 1935 editorially welcomed the new measures:
Germany ... is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry. The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own schools, its own theatre, and its own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of national life.
Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry's process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.