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  • Hitler introduced laws that limited the freedoms of Jews.

  • They were banned from going to public places like cinemas and shops and from travelling on public transport.

  • When out in public, Jews were ordered to wear a yellow star, a Jewish religious symbol, so that they could be easily told apart from non-Jews.

  • The Nazis told Germans that those wearing the star were enemies.

  • By 1938, Hitler had developed a more extreme policy and the Nazis planned a night of violence against Jews called Kristallnacht.

  • Attacks were made on shops and properties owned by Jewish people.

  • Synagogues were burnt down and some Jewish people were murdered.

  • During World War II, Nazi Germany invaded and conquered much of Europe, which gave Hitler the chance to impose his racist plans on European Jews.

  • Hitler ordered the rounding up of Jews, as well as other groups he hated, including gay people, Roma gypsies and people with disabilities.

  • They were arrested, sent from their homes and imprisoned in concentration camps, where they were forced into slave labour in inhuman conditions.

  • The deaths of millions were caused by starvation and disease.

  • The Nazis designed everything so that concentration camps would be places of immense suffering.

  • Inmates were faced with horrendous overcrowding and were made to share tiered wooden bunk beds.

  • Up to 12 of them were crammed into each bunk, with hundreds of people in each room.

  • Conditions were so dirty that infestations of rats were the norm.

  • Washing and toilet facilities were limited or non-existent, so in these overcrowded, squalid conditions, disease spread easily amongst the prisoners.

  • Hunger was an even greater problem.

  • The Nazis fed inmates barely enough food to keep them alive.

  • Meals would be a piece of bread or perhaps a watery soup made from vegetable peelings.

  • Those fit enough to survive these conditions were forced into hard manual labour.

  • Those not fit enough to work would be killed.

  • Millions died because of the brutality of life in concentration camps.

  • But the Nazis built other camps, known as exterminational death camps.

  • In these, they deliberately murdered millions of people.

Hitler introduced laws that limited the freedoms of Jews.

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