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Nuremberg Laws

I have heard about Nazi Germany racial laws, but I never actually knew of their details before. Overall, these were extremely racist and anti-Semitic. The fact that Jews had to hide their identity just for the sake of their lives reminds me of when I read Number the Stars by Lois Lowry, a story of a girl of about ten years old living in Nazi Germany. It's been years since I've read it, but I do remember a moment in the book when a young girl removed her Star of Nazareth necklace and hid in the closet from Nazi soldiers.

The reading goes into detail about the fake science and justification of scientific racism that motivated Nazi ideology: "Despite the persistent claims of Nazi ideology, there was no scientifically valid basis to define Jews as a race. Nazi legislators looked therefore to family genealogy to define race." This was unfair and dehumanizing. These laws lead to the rise of fascism because they were a form of political system. Hitler's destroying of the Jews was seen as the solution to fixing governmental problems. Fascism was authoritarian, and since he was in power and he held an anti-Semitic ideology, Hitler would justify mass killing to support Germany and bring it out of its problems.

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