The Nuremberg Laws
Overview
From the beginning of the reign of Adolf Hitler, Jews in Germany endured racial discrimination. Hitler passed many laws such as the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service Law in 1933 which restricted any non-Aryan or opponent of the Nazi party from working in a civil service position. However, due to the difficulty in determining who could be considered a "Jew", Hitler needed a set group of laws that determined whose rights could legally be restricted and what defined a Jew. The annual Nazi rally at Nuremberg seemed like the ideal place for such legislation to be passed.
1935 Nuremberg Rally
On September 15, 1935 the Reichstag unanimously adopted the Nuremberg laws which effectively legalized racist anti-Semitism. With the passage of the Nuremberg laws, "the purity of German blood" became a legal category. These laws forbade marriage or relations between Germans and Jews, and also defined exactly who could be considered a Jew. A Jew is typically considered someone who practices Judaism. However, under the Nuremberg definition, a Jew was anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents. The person could be a non-practicing Jew or even a Christian, but they were now considered a Jew. This opened up many converts to Nazi hostility and persecution. Anyone who was, under this definition, a Jew, was no longer granted Reich citizenship, meaning they were technically no longer a true German.
Supplements to the Nuremberg Laws
In November 1935 the first supplement to the Nuremberg Laws was passed which extended the prohibition of marriage between Germans and Jews to include anyone whose offspring could be considered "racially suspect". The German Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, interpreted this to refer to Roma, or Gypsies, and blacks. These race laws were the beginning of racial policies that would continue for the next 10 years.