Violence Against the Jews in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume XXXI

The Nazi Party and its Violence Against the Jews, 1933-1939: Violence as a Historiographical Concept

This article analyzes forms and functions of the Nazi Party’s anti-Jewish violence, 1933-1939. The author shows that it included physical mistreatment of Jews and “non-Aryans,” damage to Jewish property, boycott of Jewish enterprises and appropriation of Jewish possessions. The author argues that the Nazi Party’s violence against the Jews was well calculated and intended to break their personality. By exercising violence against Jews, inactive party members could be integrated into the party apparatus. Anti-Jewish violence formed an integral part of the Nazi Party’s cadre politics. It has to be kept in mind that, from 1936, the Nazi Party, together with all sub-divisions, was a mass movement in which approximately half of the population was active. Thus, analyzing the Nazi Party’s violence against Jews could shed new light on the everyday antisemitism of “ordinary Germans.”