and concen tration (of Jews into specific geographical areas), by means of expulsion and/or deportation from the Reich, at first to destina tions the Jews could choose but gradually into Nazi-controlled areas (Hilberg vii, et passim). Safely ghettoized, the Jews could be rounded up and murdered more efficiently.
The Nuremberg Laws were loaded with implication, the Reich Citizenship Act depriving Jews of citizenship and making them subjects with alien status, and the German Blood Protection Act depriving them of contact with fellow Aryan citizens. The effect of these laws was to strip Jews of their membership in the polit ical system on one hand and of membership in the human community on the other. Krausnick comments on "Hitler's real intentions" with the Nuremberg laws, quoting transcribed Nazi notes made after the announcement: "Out with them from all the professions and into the ghetto with them; fence them in somewhere where they can perish as they deserve while the German people look on, the way people stare at wild animals" (Krausnick 34). Once the legal abstraction was achieved, the stage was set for virtually any implementation that reflected the abstraction. In due course, Jews were denied education, the right to practice the profes sions, the right to "Christian" names, access to the public streets, communication with the non-Jewish population (Hilberg 5). At the same time they were compelled to call attention to their "Jewishness" by carrying specially marked ID cards, marking their addresses with a star of David, and wearing armbands, belts, and badges with the star on them.
What could be called the preliminary administrative phase of the Holocaust took place from 1933 to late 1938, culminating in Kristallnacht in November of that year, when Nazi storm troopers looted and burned Jewish businesses and synagogues and terror ized, arrested, or killed Jews across Germany. Afterward, Jews were levied fines to cover damage d...