Tag: Nazis
The Long Path to Auschwitz – Part 3
Racial Hate Laws One Step at a Time, with Family Notes Part III: 1939 to 1941: Kristallnacht to the Final Solution Kristallnacht: A Nazi Pogrom On the night of November 9–10, 1938, a nationwide anti-Jewish riot swept across Germany. Twenty-four hours of state-sponsored terror ensued. Synagogues were burned while firefighters watched, Jewish-owned shops were vandalized…
The Long Path to Auschwitz – Part 2
Racial Hate Laws One Step at a Time, with Family Notes: An Article in Three Parts Part II: Summer 1935 to 1938: The Nuremberg Laws, Aryanization, Emigration, and the Anschluss. The Nuremberg Laws: A biological solution to assimilation. Less than a month after the closing ceremonies of the Berlin Olympics, the eighth annual Nuremberg Rally…
A Question of Suffering and Denial: Pre-war Germany
A FEW WEEKS AGO, I was having tea with a good friend when she said she had some questions about my new book, Ashes and Ruins. Always eager to talk about my work, I assured her that she could ask me anything. “How much of the book is true?” she said. Having been asked this…
Nazi Policy and the Intermarriage and Mischling Dilemma
THE NUREMBERG RACE LAWS OF 1935 (see post, “How German Jews Lost Their Citizenship,” May 16, 2026) continued to be amended and fine-tuned for the next four years. Ever stricter, these laws codified Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy and gave the Nazi regime deadly control over the Jews living in Germany and the occupied countries. One of…
How German Jews Lost Their Birthright Citizenship
Originally published as Loss of Citizenship the Nuremberg Way on May 29, 2015 on my personal blog, this article has been slightly modified to make it more current. Also published on kathrynslattery.substack.com on 05/09/2026 * In the second chapter of Immigrant Soldier, Herman speeds toward home on his motorcycle, his mind a swirl of thoughts.…
Policing a Police State
Some weeks ago, I wrote about the Nazi SA and promised to follow up with a discussion of the SS (the Schutzstaffel) and the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei). * AFTER HITLER CAME TO POWER, Germany became a totalitarian state that used a complex and brutal system of policing to enforce its policies. The SS was soon the…
Why Did Jews Stay So Long in Nazi Germany?
READERS OF MY HISTORICAL NOVEL, Immigrant Soldier, have asked me why the two main characters remained in Germany after Hitler came to power. Indeed, along with a few kind words, one reader wrote in a review, “I really didn’t like Clara, because she stayed too long in Germany. Why didn’t she leave earlier?” This is…