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• Many groups of people were persecuted in different ways and for different reasons by the Nazis.

• The Nazis wanted to create a so-called ‘Aryan race’. They persecuted and murdered people that they believed did not fit in with this.

• Different ethnic groups, political opponents, gay men and people with disabilities were all persecuted by the Nazis.

Jewish people were the single biggest group who were persecuted by the Nazis. Other groups of people were targeted for different reasons:

• Non-Jewish Slavic peoples, Roma and Sinti, Black people and mixed race people were targeted because they did not fit within the Nazis’ racist idea of a master ‘Aryan race’, and were seen as so-called ‘racial enemies’.

• Communists, trade unionists, Soviet prisoners of war and Jehovah’s Witnesses suffered persecution because they were political opponents of the Nazi regime.

• People with disabilities were persecuted because the Nazis believed that they were genetically ‘inferior’, and posed a threat to Germany’s ‘racial health’.

• Gay men were targeted for persecution because the Nazis believed that they were ‘failing to contribute’ to the creation of a so-called ‘Aryan race’ by supposedly not having children.

While these groups were all targeted for different reasons, their persecution was rooted in the Nazis’ racist, unscientific and prejudiced beliefs.

The Nazis’ racist ideas meant that they saw the Slavic peoples who lived in eastern Europe, including Polish people, Russians and Czech people, as ‘inferior’ to Germans. Hitler wanted to follow a policy of ‘Lebensraum’, which meant taking over land in eastern Europe as ‘living space’ for the German people.

When Germany invaded and occupied Poland in September 1939, Polish soldiers and civilians suffered terrible violence at the hands of the Nazis. When Auschwitz concentration camp was set up in 1940, it was intended to hold Polish prisoners who opposed Nazi occupation. 70,000 non-Jewish Polish people eventually died at Auschwitz.

The Nazis particularly targeted the intelligentsia and education in Poland. In October 1939, 183 professors who were working at universities in Kraków were arrested and sent to concentration camps in Germany. The Nazis closed all of the universities and secondary schools in Poland, so that people couldn’t be educated to become leaders.

In an attempt to achieve the ‘Lebensraum’ policy aim, around 400,000 Polish people were expelled from the west of Poland between 1939 and 1941. After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis planned to expel even more people from their homes in eastern Europe. These plans were not carried out in full because of military setbacks during the war. However, the Nazis expelled 110,000 people from 287 villages in the Zamość region of Poland. Adults and older children were sent to work as forced labourers in Germany, or to the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps. The majority of younger children, elderly people and those who were ill or disabled were expelled and left to starve.

More than 2 million Polish people were sent to Germany as forced labourers, where they had to work for very low wages and were made to follow discriminatory laws, such as not being allowed to eat in restaurants.

The Nazis’ response to anyone who resisted their policies in Poland was to use extreme violence. Huge numbers of civilians were executed, and many villages were destroyed.

Historians estimate that between 1.5 and 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish people died during Nazi occupation. In the Soviet Union, millions of Soviet civilians died as a result of the Nazis’ policies.

When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, they treated captured Soviet troops terribly. The Nazis saw Soviet prisoners of war as their enemies for political reasons, and also because they wrongly believed that they were racially ‘inferior’.

Conditions in prisoner of war camps for Soviet prisoners were horrendous. There was a deliberate policy of starvation and inmates were forced to do hard labour.

Of the 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war who were captured during the invasion of the Soviet Union, 3.3 million were killed.

The Roma and Sinti had migrated from Asia to countries across Europe since the Middle Ages. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, there were approximately 30,000 Roma and Sinti in Germany. They were wrongly considered to be racially ‘inferior’ by the Nazis.

From 1933, laws were introduced to persecute Roma and Sinti. They were sterilised and had their civil rights taken away following the 1935 Nuremberg Laws. This meant they lost their right to be German citizens and marriages between Roma and non-Roma people was banned. In the summer of 1936, before the Berlin Olympics took place, around 800 Roma were arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp just outside Berlin. Like Jewish children, Roma children were barred from going to school in 1941.

Following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen moved into occupied land taken by the German army. They rounded up Roma and Sinti and shot them dead. 23,000 Roma and Sinti were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where many died due to the terrible conditions, with others sent to the gas chambers when they became too ill or weak to work. Historians estimate that around 21,000 of the 23,000 Roma and Sinti who were sent to Auschwitz were murdered there.

The Nazis’ collaborators also enabled the persecution of Roma and Sinti. For example, in France, the Vichy government rounded up 30,000 Roma and Sinti and imprisoned them. The majority were then sent to concentration camps. In Croatia, which was an ally of Nazi Germany, fascists killed thousands of Roma and Sinti, as well as Jews and Serbs.

Historians estimate that around 220,000 Roma and Sinti were murdered by the Nazis.

By 1933, the Black community in Germany numbered around 25,000 people. Before Hitler came to power, there was already racism against Black and mixed race citizens.

Mixed race children were sterilised and some Black German citizens were sent to camps to carry out hard labour. The Nazis saw mixed race children as a threat to the purity of the unscientific ‘Aryan race’ that they wanted to create.

There is evidence to suggest that Black prisoners of war from the USA, France and Britain were treated worse than their white peers. Some Black prisoners of war were singled out by the guards at the camps and mistreated, or even murdered.

To try and accelerate the creation of the so-called ‘Aryan race’, the Nazis persecuted people with disabilities in Germany.

Some scientists believed in eugenics. This was an incorrect idea that, through selective reproduction, they could create their ‘master race’.

The Nazis had already started teaching children in schools about the cost of looking after people with physical and mental disabilities. This was part of a propaganda campaign to persuade people that the persecution of people with disabilities was justified.

In July 1933, the Nazis introduced a law that allowed the sterilisation of people with disabilities. It is estimated that approximately 300,000 people had been sterilised by the end of World War Two.

In October 1939, Karl Brandt, who was Hitler’s personal doctor, was put in charge of a new programme. It was designed to murder children who had severe disabilities. It is estimated that up to 5,000 children were murdered between 1939 and 1941.

Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, a similar policy was introduced for adults with disabilities. It was known as the T4 programme, named after its headquarters in Berlin. A panel of doctors decided which patients should be killed, and the victims were murdered in gas chambers at killing centres, hospitals or care homes. Families of victims were sent a letter telling them that their relative had died of natural causes.

The T4 programme officially ended in 1941, after criticism from the Church in Germany and questions from victims’ relatives. By the time the programme ended, 70,000 people had been murdered. The murder of people with disabilities was carried out by other means, including deliberate policies of starvation, until the very end of the war. It is estimated that around 200,000 people with disabilities were murdered during the Nazi regime.

Hitler had been appointed Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

Following the Reichstag fire in February 1933, an Emergency Decree was passed. This gave Hitler the power to arrest political opponents. Communist Party members were sent to concentration camps. Nazis hated communists. They also made links between communists and Jews, claiming that they were conspiring against Germany, which was completely untrue. The Communist Party had picked up a lot of support following the Great Depression, as had the Nazi Party. This meant that the Nazis saw them as a threat to their power.

By the end of 1933, there were around 100,000 people imprisoned in concentration camps. Around three quarters of these people were Communist Party members.

Sexual relationships between men were already outlawed in Germany before the Nazis took power, under a law known as ‘Paragraph 175’. However, a more liberal attitude towards gay relationships had been developing in the 1920s. This changed under Nazi rule. The Nazis closed gay bars, nightclubs and newspapers. They wrongly believed that gay people were not making a ‘positive contribution’ to society as they were supposedly unlikely to have children.

From June 1935, Paragraph 175 was amended to increase punishments for homosexual relationships. This change led to an increase in men arrested for being gay, from 4,000 in 1933 - 34 to 22,000 in 1936 - 38. Fearing persecution, many gay men fled Germany when the Nazis took power in 1933.

The Paragraph 175 law applied only to gay men, so lesbians were not specifically targeted by the Nazis, but a small number were arrested. However, many lesbians lived in fear as there was societal pressure to ‘conform’ to the Nazis’ ideas.

50,000 men were arrested for being gay. Many of the men who were arrested were given prison sentences, but from 1937 onwards, gay men were sent to concentration camps. Up to 15,000 were sent to the camps, where they were forced to wear badges in the shape of a pink triangle. The majority, though not all, of those who were forced to wear this badge identified as gay.

Many of those imprisoned died from exhaustion. Gay men were also subjected to cruel medical experiments.

Even after the war, Paragraph 175 remained in place in German law, despite the occupation of Germany by Allied forces.

The gave advice and guidance during the production of this guide.