Nuremberg Laws

On 15 September 1935 the Reichstag, summoned to Nuremberg during the annual Nazi Party rally, unanimously passed two laws that became known as the Nuremberg Laws. The Reich Citizenship Law made only people of "German or related blood" citizens, turning German Jews into subjects without political rights. The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour forbade marriages and sexual relations between Jews and other Germans and barred Jews from employing German women under 45 in their households. A decree of 14 November 1935 defined a Jew by descent: anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents, with lesser categories for those of "mixed blood". The laws were soon applied to Roma and Black people as well.

The Nuremberg Laws gave legal form to Nazi racial antisemitism. They stripped some half a million German Jews of equality won in the 19th century, set the definitions later used for deportation and murder across occupied Europe, and marked a decisive step on the road to the Shoah.