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• In 1933, there were communities of Jewish people living in every European country.

• Before 1933, German Jews were largely assimilated into German society.

• There was huge diversity across European Jewish communities in terms of culture, political views, language and religious practices.

Jewish people had lived in Europe since the ancient period, during which their communities lived mainly in Greece and the Mediterranean. Over time, for a range of different reasons, Jewish people had settled all over Europe. As these communities were located all over the continent, there was lots of diversity in terms of culture, language and history.

Jewish people suffered antisemitic persecution throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. Antisemitism did not emerge for the first time when the Nazis took power in 1933. Jewish communities were always a minority of the population, which made them a target for persecution.

The Jewish community in England was expelled in 1290, and the persecution of European Jews got worse during the medieval period. Jewish communities in eastern Europe also suffered extreme violence and persecution in the last decades of the rule of the Russian Tsars, whose time in power came to an end in 1917. This led many to leave Europe altogether, with large numbers of Jewish people moving to the USA. Others moved to western European countries, including Britain, Germany and France.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, there were communities of Jewish people living in every European country. These communities were very diverse, with people having lots of different political opinions, cultures and differences in how they practiced their religion.

In total, there were approximately 9.5 million Jewish people living in Europe.

The largest Jewish communities were in eastern Europe, with more than 3 million Jews living in Poland, more than 2.5 million in the Soviet Union and 980,000 in Romania.

In Poland, Jewish people represented more than 10% of the total population. Many Polish Jewish communities, particularly in more rural areas, were very religious. Many were very poor.

As the Jewish population of Poland was so large, its communities made a huge contribution to Polish life and culture.

There were thriving Jewish political parties, newspapers, magazines and theatres. Many Polish Jews, particularly in Warsaw, spoke Yiddish, a language that combined elements of German and Hebrew. Poland was home to 15 Yiddish theatre troupes, and a number of Yiddish-language films and newspapers were produced. The Main Judaic Library, which collected materials on the history of Jewish communities, was located in Warsaw. Jewish writers, such as Bruno Schulz, had a significant impact upon Polish culture.

Before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, many Jews were assimilated into German life.

There were approximately 500,000 Jews living in Germany by 1933, representing just 1% of the total population. Jewish people worked in a range of different professions and came from all sorts of backgrounds. Some had married non-Jews, and some had prominent roles in their communities, such as doctors, lawyers, business owners and politicians.

During World War One, 100,000 Jewish people had fought for the German army. 12,000 lost their lives.

The Nazis tried to categorise all Jewish people as the same, but this wasn’t the reality. Many Jews identified themselves as German first and foremost. Lots of Jewish people were secular, which meant that they were not actively practicing their religious faith.

Many German Jews had achieved great success and held prominent positions in Germany before 1933:

• Richard Martin Willstätter won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1915.

• Walther Rathenau worked for the German government during World War One and played a key role in managing the supply of raw materials. He became German foreign minister in 1922. He was assassinated by an antisemitic terrorist organisation after signing the Treaty of Rapallo.

• Albert Einstein, who won the Nobel prize for Physics in 1921. James Franck also won this prize, in 1925.

• Victoria Wolff was a journalist and successful novelist.

Jewish Germans made a significant contribution to the cultural life of pre-war Germany. In 1925, Julius Goldstein founded Der Morgen, a literary magazine that published articles on a very varied range of topics, including philosophy, history, politics and religion. The magazine also featured writing by important Jewish authors, such as Franz Kafka.

Though Jewish people were largely assimilated in Germany in 1933, there had been cases of antisemitism in the years before the Nazis came to power. As the Jewish community was such a small minority of the German population, it was a target for persecution.

At the end of World War One, some in Germany, seeking a scapegoat for their nation’s military loss, wrongly blamed Jews for the defeat. They falsely claimed that the army had been ‘stabbed in the back’ by a government that was being controlled by Jews. They called the government the ‘November Criminals’ for their unconditional surrender on 11 November 1918. This feeling was made worse following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which heavily punished Germany for their defeat in the war.

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