46. What does it matter what religion we are?

Today was the day when, for the first time in recorded history, something happened that changed the course of history. Yes, on September 15, 1935, the Nazis introduced the Nuremberg Race Laws that were directed against the Jews in Germany and essentially stripped them of their civil rights. 

The Nuremberg Race Laws were antisemitic and racist and were introduced during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party. The legislation was divided into two parts - the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour and the Reich Citizenship Law.

The first one prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and Germans, and also the law barred Jewish households from employing German women under the age of 45. 

The Reich Citizenship Law restricted citizenship to only people of German or related blood. 

Those who defied were punished. Like a  Jewish boy and his German fiancée were paraded through the streets with signs saying “I defile the race” and “I am a German girl and I allowed a Jew to defile me”.

The drama, in fact, started two years back in 1933 when the government declared a boycott of Jewish businesses. Organisations associated with the party started book burnings of works by Jewish authors. But news related to these incidents was still unknown to a large part of the world.

In a real sense, the ideology was well accepted by the German people, right after World War I ended, and the main focus points were the removal of the Weimar Republic and rejection of the Treaty of Versailles. The theory got its proper shape in Mein Kampf, an autobiography and exposition of Hitler's ideology. In the book, Hitler had laid out his plans for transforming German society into one based on race. 

He successfully made the majority of Germans believe that Jews were the mortal enemy of the German people. 

But like what is happening today, the source of hatred was born in the US, where in March 1933, several prominent Jewish organisations and a former U.S. congressman urged a strict worldwide boycott of German goods. In response, on April 1, 1933, Hitler declared a national boycott of Jewish businesses.

Throughout 1933 and 1934, Jewish businesses were denied access to markets, and citizens were harassed and subjected to violent attacks. It was basically to encourage Jews to voluntarily leave the country.

Jews were no longer considered citizens and therefore could not claim certain civil rights, could no longer vote, and could not work for the government. And from 1941, the government began the Final Solution, the systematic extermination of Europe’s Jews. 

Let us not forget this day.

Let us not allow any country to have the guts to do such a heinous act.

Let us unite.

After all, there is no stopping the fact that one day we all will be rotten corpses.