Resumé This thesis titled "Legal aspects of persecuting Jewisch citizens in Nazi Germany" discusses a fairly brief period in history in relation to a specific group of individuals. It provides the viewpoint of the persecution of the Jewish citizens by the Nazi State from a predominantly legal aspect, focusing on specific laws and regulations accepted in relation to the Nazis' anti-Semitic policy. The goal of this work was the endeavour to summarise this brief period of Jewish history, point out the most important legal aspects of separation of German Jews from society and prove that assumption of power by the Nazis and implementation of the anti-Semitic policy had a legal basis. This work is divided (not counting the introduction and conclusion) into six chapters, which are further divided into sub-chapters, possibly into additional parts. The first chapter is an excursion into the general concept of human races, racism and racist ideology, essential for understanding the reasoning of society at the beginning of the 20th century. The Nazis were convinced of the existence of higher and lower races and the danger of their mixing, on which they based their anti-Semitic policy, chiefly directed in the interests of maintaining "racial purity". The second chapter focuses on defining the concepts of anti-Semitism...

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / In 2001, Home Box Office aired Conspiracy, a dramatization of the infamous Wannsee Conference organized by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The Conference took place in Berlin on 20 January 1942 and was intended to coordinate the Final Solution by asserting the dominance of Heydrich and the SS over other governmental departments. The surviving Wannsee Protocol stands as one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the Third Reich’s genocidal intent and emblematic of its shift from mass shootings in the occupied East to industrial-scale murder. Conspiracy, written by Loring Mandel and directed by Frank Pierson, is an unusual historical film because it reenacts the Wannsee Conference in real time, devoid of the usual clichés prevalent throughout Holocaust films. It also engages with historiographical arguments and makes a few of its own. This thesis argues that dramatic film has been relatively ignored by the public history field and uses Conspiracy as a case study for how dramatic film and television can be used to further the goals of public history, especially that of making complex and difficult histories accessible to wide audiences. Grounded in a thorough reading of script drafts, production notes, HBO meeting minutes, and correspondence, this thesis examines Conspiracy from the vantage point of scholarship in public history, film studies, and Holocaust studies. It details the film’s production history, the sources used for the film, the claims it makes, and advocates for dramatic film as a powerful public history outlet. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Conspiracy is exactly the type of historical film that historians should be making themselves.

This study examines how historiography has portraited the planning of the Holocaust. This has benn carried out with the support of a qualitative text alalysis as a method. The study has its starting point in how different historians have attributed the role of the Wannsee Conference. The reasearch's theoretical approach is based on concepts about modernity and conceptual analyzers about rationality, bureaucracy and industrialization. These concepts have been used as analysis tools in order to contrast historians' conlusions.  The result shows that there are several intrepretations about the significance of the Wannsee Conference. Several histrians agree that the Wannsee Conference can be considered a clear turning point. This is because the violent persecution of the legal population will increase after the conference takes place. However, other historians belive that there were several decisive fators in the war that led to what became the Holocaust. Much indicates that it was a bureaucratic mess within the Nazi elite, while several historians point out that the Holocaust will grow out of the war. The reulst clearly has shown how historians have problematized structures as casual axplanations, rather than discussing the role of Adolf Hitler, as previous reasearch has stated was one of the main areas in early historiography. The Holocaust became a means of how the Nazis feared to be defeated in the war, Finally, a discussion regarding didactics has also been held about how this subject ahould be utilized in a teaching context.

Since unification the memorial landscape of Berlin and its surrounding territories has shifted and expanded exponentially. The majority of this change has occurred within the past ten years, as commemoration of the Holocaust and educational programmes on the National Socialist period have become not only prevalent, but a necessary and expected contribution to the shaping of German identity and memorial culture. In the past decade memorial museums and sites of remembrance, such as the House of the Wannsee Conference, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the former Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps, have contributed to and been impacted by the formation of a globalised memory of the Holocaust. As major and internationally renowned institutions, these sites offer unique insight into the nature of current memorial culture and recent approaches to memorialising and commemorating the past. Through an analysis of their exhibition spaces (online, permanent, temporary) and educational programmes (guided tours, seminars, and workshops), this dissertation will attempt to identify how these sites contribute to the formation of a globalised memory. Though each of these four sites possesses a different connection to the history of the Holocaust, and their own alternative approach to presenting and commemorating this history; this variation will provide insight into the divergent landscape of memorialisation within Germany, while also highlighting the common approaches, and practical issues that are of concern to these institutions. Overall the main aim of this thesis will be to demonstrate how memorialisation of the Holocaust, at sites within Berlin and Brandenburg, is no longer defined and shaped solely by the nation state, but rather is influenced by and contributes to international trends of remembrance and a globalised memory of the Holocaust.