The Nuremberg Laws: Institutionalized Anti-Semitism

Prelude to a HolocaustThe Nuremberg Laws Institutionalized Anti-Semitism by Amy Newman San Diego-based writer Amy Newman has written a chillingly lucid and terrifying yet factual textbook for teenagers about Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of the mid-1930s. Don't be fooled by the cover photograph of the well-known post-war Nuremberg Trials, which is not the subject of her book. The lesser-known Nuremberg Laws were a direct precursor to one of this century's greatest catastrophes: the Shoah, the cold-blooded mass killing of European Jewry.Newman's book is part of a series of textbooks published by Lucent called "Words That Changed History." Other volumes in the series include The Declaration of Independence, The Emancipation Proclamation and The U.S. Constitution. Strangely, The Nuremberg Laws offers an antithesis to those immortal documents, each of which was created to uplift the spirit and dignity of man. In fact, these pitiless, racist laws had the exact opposite intention: to degrade the spirit and dignity of the Jews. But of course their effect was far more destructive than even their drafters could have anticipated, leading directly to the Holocaust, and ultimately to the utter defeat of Hitler's Third Reich.In a handful of spare and elegantly written pages, Newman leads the reader through the long history of the Jews in Europe, as well as the dark and evil story of the vicious anti-semitism that has followed and threatened them for 17 centuries. Reading her clear description of the sequence of events that led inexorably to the Holocaust, Newman's audience will agree with her thesis that intolerance is at the core of the great convulsions of history. In particular, judging by these laws and their effect, Newman believes that racism, a common mental illness still far from eradicated, is the engine of genocide. It is impossible to disagree.Strangely, I read this book in the aftermath of the carnage in Littleton, Colorado, and kept seeing parallels to the murders there. I couldn't help thinking that, had this little gem of a book been required reading at Columbine High, then perhaps that horror might have been averted. You should read this book and judge for yourself.