Throughout history and many centuries, people have been victims of discrimination due to their race, religion, age and gender. In Daniel’s Story written by Carol Matas, the Jewish community is being discriminated against because of their race and religion as they are victims of the Holocaust in World War Two. Due to Daniel and his family’s religion, their rights and privileges are stripped from them, allowing the Germans to treat them inhumanely. They are treated unfairly and unequally, abused immorally, and lost their identity.
The acts committed during the Holocaust were cruel, unacceptable and obscene. Unfair treatment towards the Jewish people prohibited them from doing activities they enjoyed doing in their daily lives. When Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, he changed laws that were not in favour of Jewish people. After these laws were official, they did not allow Jews to live life normally and fully like before. In September of 1935, the Nazi Party congress in Nuremberg passed laws which were intended to take away their rights and freedoms.
Still, it felt to me like everything was changing too fast – and for the worse. It seemed there was a law for everything, most of them forbidding Jews to do the things I most enjoyed” (Matas 14).
These laws were called the Nuremberg Laws, and there were two of them. The first law was named “The Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor”, which did not allow marriages and extra-marital intercourse between Jewish and German people. This law also prohibited Jews from having German maids who were under forty-five-years-old working in their homes.
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The second law was named “The Reich Citizenship Law”, which took away the rights of Jewish people in Germany, stripping their identity and citizenship. “We were separate now from everyone else in Frankfurt. Separate and somehow less important. Not as good as the ‘pure’, ‘real Germans’” (Matas 16).
Adolf Hitler wanted to build a Reich, or an empire. He believed that only Aryans, or Northern Europeans were the master race, who were superior to all. He also believed many other people, such as Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and people of colour were inferior, so he wanted to segregate and exterminate them.
By segregating Jewish people, they became ethnic minorities, making them easier to be targeted by discrimination. Not only were Jews verbally attacked by Germans saying harsh words such as, “‘Jews are not our equals’” (Matas 12), and “‘Jew. Filthy vermin’” (Matas 17), they were also physically abused. When the Jewish were in possession of the Germans they were abused unmercifully and cruelly. “We’ve had nothing but a slice of bread and a cup of water soup this morning” (Matas 80).
In the ghettos, Jews were forced to work long hours in order to earn ration coupons.
The coupons were used to buy a little bit of bread and some watery soup. The Nazis deliberately kept Jewish people at a specific starvation level; just enough to have a little bit of energy and be able to work. Usually, an active man requires about 2, 600 calories, but in the ghetto, they usually ate only 184 calories. The Nazis expected the Jews to live off on very little food even though they were worked to death daily. “Father worked in a carpentry workshop, I worked at a metal-works factory, and Erika worked at a sewing factory.
Everyone worked. That’s what the ghetto was for” (Matas 44).
Even children as young as seven years old were forced into labour. These children worked long, twelve hour shifts daily just so they would not be killed. If the workers looked like they were not working hard enough or were slacking off, the German officers would beat them. They would also get beaten for no reason because they were hated so much by the Germans. During the Holocaust, Jewish people’s identities were stripped from them.
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The Germans, in their search for ‘racial purity’, decreed all Jews had to add a Jewish name to their other one – Sara for girl, Israel for a boy” (Matas 22).
After this rule was declared, Daniel’s name became Daniel Israel, and his sister’s name became Erika Sara. Even though many Jewish people lived and were born in Germany, they were not seen as Germans, so their German last names were taken away. Their identity as being German was stripped from them because Hitler wanted only ‘pure’ and ‘real’ Aryans in their empire.
The yellow stars with the words Jew printed on them that we were all forced to wear on our clothes” (Matas 34).
Jewish people had to wear the Star of David on their clothes at all times so the Germans could classify who they were. Yet again, Jews had lost their identity because they were no longer seen as German citizens, they were seen as Jewish people who were to blame for Germany’s fall at the end of World War One. By wearing the Star, everyone was able to see who was Jewish and discriminate them even more.
Due to Daniel’s Jewish religion, he and every other Jew in Germany had their rights and privileges stripped from them, which allowed the Germans to treat them inhumanely. Jewish people faced multiple hardships such as being treated unfairly, unequally and segregated, abused illicitly, and lost their identities as rightful German citizens. For many years during World War Two, Jewish people were discriminated against because of their religion, which would not be tolerated in today’s society.
