5 October 1938: German Jews have their passports marked with the letter ‘J’

On 5 October 1938, after a meeting between Heinrich Rothmund, the Head of the Swiss Police, and Nazi leaders in Berlin, it was agreed that all German Jewish citizens should have their passports stamped with an identifying letter ‘J’.

Identity card issued displaying the imposed middle name of ‘Sara’ and stamped with the letter J for ‘Jude’ (Jew) © USHMM

The marking of their passports alienated the Jewish community and constituted an important part of the campaign of persecution. It led to the November Pogrom (Kristallnacht), a state-sponsored campaign of violence against the German Jewish population just one month later, and ended in the systematic murder of 6 million Jewish men, women and children.

Classification and symbolisation are the two initial steps on the path to genocide.

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The Holocaust

he Holocaust (The Shoah in Hebrew) was the attempt by the Nazis and their collaborators to murder all the Jews in Europe. From the time they assumed power in Germany in 1933, the Nazis used propaganda, persecution, and legislation to deny human and civil rights to German Jews. They used centuries of antisemitism as their foundation.

9 November 1938: Kristallnacht

On 9 and 10 November 1938, the Nazis initiated a campaign of hatred against the Jewish population in all Nazi territories.

The ten stages of genocide

Genocide never just happens. There is always a set of circumstances which occur or which are created to build the climate in which genocide can take place.