The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in 1933, had promised for years in their speeches, leaflets, and in their published program that they would persecute the Jews as soon as they had the opportunity to do so. When attainment of power provided them with that opportunity, they proceeded rapidly with a long sequence of measures designed to deprive the Jewish population of the country of their rights as citizens, to hound them in all sorts of ways, and then to boast in public of all the steps they were taking to carry out the promises they had made on this subject. In a country where fully equal legal rights for Jews were as recent as the 1919 constitution and where anti-Semitism had a long and highly respected tradition, these actions actually helped the Nazis in their consolidation of power.

During the years 1933–39, as Germany prepared for a series of wars designed to provide its people with what was referred to as Lebemraum, “living space,” ever harsher measures were taken against the less than 1 percent of the population which was Jewish. About half the approximately 550,000 Jews left Germany. However, many were reluctant to leave a place their ancestors had lived in for generations, and others who wanted to leave found the doors of possible lands of refuge closed at a time of worldwide economic depression, when countries were reluctant to accept refugees whose property had been confiscated by the land of their birth. The dramatic escalation of persecution in November 1938, when most Jewish houses of worship in Germany were deliberately destroyed and over 20,000 Jews were taken to concentration camps, both led more Jews to try to emigrate and induced some countries to relax their tight restrictions on immigration.