Holocaust Chronology of 1935
January 7
Benito Mussolini and Vichy Prime Minister Pierre Laval sign French-Italian agreement in Rome.
January 13
A plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the League of Nations brings the Saar region into Greater Germany.
February 10
Prohibition of gatherings urging Jews to remain in Germany.
March 1
Germany retakes the Saarland.
March 16
Military conscription in Germany renewed, violating the Treaty of Versailles. France, England, and the United States do not do anything to reverse the Reich’s decision.
April 1
The Jehovah’s Witness organization is banned because they refuse to swear allegiance to the state.
Anti-Jewish legislation in the Saar region is passed.
April 30
Jews may no longer display the German flag.
May 12
Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski dies. From here on Jews will experience more antisemitism in Poland. The government and most Polish political parties will call for discrimination, economic boycott, expulsion, and physical violence against Jews. The Polish Catholic Church, most priests, the Catholic press, and schools will sanction discrimination and/or violence against the Jews.
May 14
A court in Bern, Switzerland, pronounces the German edition of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a forgery.
May 21
Defense Law: “Aryan heritage” as a prerequisite for military duty. During the summer “Jews Not Wanted” posters start to appear on restaurants, shops, and village entrance signs.
May 31
Jews are banned from the German Armed Forces.
June 9
Anti-Jewish riots occur in Grodno, Poland.
June 18
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement permits the expansion of the German Navy.
June 22
“Jews Not Welcome” signs temporarily removed.
June 26
The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases is amended to provide for compulsory abortion of “unfit” fetuses up to six months in utero.
June 28
Paragraphs 175 and 175a of the criminal code are revised to criminalize all homosexual acts between men. The provision provided the police broader means for prosecuting homosexual men.
July 1
The antisemitic Ahnenerbe Forschungs- und Lehrgemeinschaft (Society for Research into the Teaching of Ancestral Heritage) is founded to study the racial history of the German people.
August 25
Pastor Martin Niemöller, the leading Protestant anti-Nazi, sermonizes that Jewish history is “dark and sinister” and that the Jewish people are forever “under a curse“ because they not only “brought the Christ of God to the cross” but they also bear the responsibility for the “blood of all the righteous men who were ever murdered.”
September 15
National Day of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers Party). The 1935 National Socialist Party rally marks the first display of the product of Germany’s illegal rearmament.
During a special session, Parliament passed the anti-Semitic “Nuremberg Laws,” the “National Citizens Law,” and the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor.” These laws were the basis for the exclusion of Jews (as well as Gypsies and black people) from all public business life and for the reclassification of the political rights of Jewish citizens. The Jews are returned to the legal position they had occupied in Germany before their emancipation in the 19th century. Jews can no longer exist as German citizens or marry non-Jews.
Another new Nuremberg Law, the Reich Flag Law, defines the official flag of Germany: a black swastika in a white circle on a red field.
October 3
October 18
The German government introduces the antisemitic Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People.
November 1
An addition to the Reich Citizenship Law disqualifies Jews from German citizenship.
November 14
First decree pertaining the “National Law of Citizenship”: Jews denied voting rights and forbidden to hold public office. Discharge of all Jewish civil service employees, including World War I front line veterans. Official definitions of “Jew” established for the first time (anyone who has two Jewish grandparents and is a member of the Jewish religious community, and anyone with three or more Jewish grandparents) and “Mischlinge” (mixed race; that is, part Jew). Anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 German citizens fall into the Mischlinge category. Marriages between Jews and second-generation Mischlinge are prohibited.
First decree pertaining to the “Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor”: Prohibition against the marriage of Jews to non?Jews. Work possibilities for Jews narrowed to just a few professions. Jewish children were prohibited from using the same playgrounds as other children and from utilizing the same locker rooms.
November 15
The German Churches begin to collaborate with the Nazis by supplying records to the government indicating who is a Christian and who is not; that is, who is a Jew.
December 1935
Anti-Jewish riots erupt in Polish universities. Jewish students restricted to special seats.
SS chief Heinrich Himmler orders the Race and Settlement Central Office (RuSHA) to establish the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) network of maternity homes. The purpose of the homes is “to accommodate and look after racially and genetically valuable expectant mothers.”
December 31
The last Jews remaining in Germany’s civil service are dismissed by the government.
1935-1938
Poland models its policy regarding Jews on that of Nazi Germany. Jews are attacked throughout Poland. Tens of thousands of Polish Jews emigrate to Holland, France, Belgium, and Palestine.
University quotas for Jews also exist at this time in United States universities. American discrimination restricts the Jewish presence in education, jobs, and housing just as it keeps Eastern European Jews out of the United States.
1935: Other imporant events
The Reichswehr (Reich military; the German force whose size was severely proscribed by the Treaty of Versailles) is renamed the Wehrmacht (Armed Forces) in brazen acknowledgment of Adolf Hitler’s military expansion and defiance of the treaty.
Hitler mandates the creation of the state-controlled Union of Protestant Churches.
German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, an epic documentary film of the 1934 Nazi Party Congress at Nuremberg and a deification of Hitler, is released.
The Sturmabteilung (SA) is incorporated into the Schutzstaffel (SS).
The first issue of the antisemitic Deutsche Wochenschau für Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur und Technik (German Weekly for Politics, Economy, Culture and Technology) is published in Germany.
he first issue of the pseudoscientific, antisemitic Zeitschrift für Rassenkunde (Journal for Racial Science) is published.
The American Jewish Congress joins with the Jewish Labor Committee to form the Joint Boycott Council, aimed at German purveyors of goods and services.
The Nazi government forces the closure of Masonic lodges across Germany.
Anti-Jewish riots occur across Romania.
Poland adopts a new constitution that abolishes parliamentary democracy.
America’s pro-Nazi Silver Shirts political group merges with the Christian Party.
In Britain, the first issue of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Fascist Quarterly is published.
The German government permits the publication of Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies, in which Luther advocates a program to arrest Jews, expropriate them, force them into the kind of labor the government determines, and, finally, to exile or murder them.
Sources: Various books and chronologies related to World War II and the Holocaust Memorial Center
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