ABSTRACT
On January 30, 1933, Adolph Hitler became the chancellor of the German Reich, marking the first step in the transformation of Germany into a brutal police state. During the next six and a half years many thousands of Hitler’s Aryan opponents fled from Germany or were tortured and often murdered by the Nazis. For the Jews of Germany, Hitler’s accession to power had even more sinister implications: the long era of Germ an-Jewish history was drawing to a tragic end, and those of Jewish origin and religion were confronted with the choice of leaving their homeland or facing economic and political persecution.
