Sign excluding Jews from a property

Enameled, metal sign prohibiting the presence of Jews. Such signs were often present in shops, restaurants, and other public buildings during the Nazi regime. While there was no singular law requiring the physical segregation of Jews from other Germans, a series of over 400 laws enacted throughout the 1930s increased restrictions for Jews in every aspect of their lives. On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. The German government began instituting laws the following April, which began negatively defining and segregating Jews from society. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws codified the exclusion of Jews from German citizenship, and banned “race defiling” marriage and sexual relations between pure Germans and Jews. The Nuremberg Laws defined a person as Jewish if they had three or four Jewish grandparents, regardless of their religious practices, which encompassed tens of thousands of people who had no Jewish cultural affiliations. These policies also had a significant amount of popular support, and much of the national legislation was influenced or foreshadowed by local actions. In areas where the legislation was unpopular, Nazis suppressed dissent by targeting non-Jews who spoke out. By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the social, cultural, and economic exclusion of Jews was virtually complete in Germany.