During the National Socialist regime, lawyers, judges and lawmakers helped deprive German and European Jews of their rights and send them to the concentration camps where they were murdered. One of the laws influenced by Nazi ideology was the Act to Restore the Professional Civil Service (Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums) of 7 April 1933, which barred Jews from working as civil servants or public employees, including in the justice system. The Ordinance to Protect the Public and the State (Verordnung zum Schutz von Volk und Staat), which entered into force on 28 February 1933, suspended fundamental rights and began dismantling the rule of law.

The Act to Protect German Blood and German Honour (Gesetz zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre) of 15 September 1935 not only prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jews, which it defined as racial defilement, but criminalised all relations between them. Largely on the basis of this law, one of the racist and antisemitic Nuremberg Laws, Jewish Germans were systematically marginalised and excluded from participating in society. The worst possible injustice became applicable law.

The Nuremberg Laws, enacted in September 1935, stood as the high-water mark of legal discrimination against the Jewish population until 1941, when people defined as Jews began to be transported to concentration camps and systematically murdered in the Holocaust.

Against this backdrop, it is extremely important for law students today to be aware of the mechanisms and abuse of the law under National Socialism. Some young people training at universities will later hold positions of responsibility as judges or employees in public administration. But lawyers in private practice are also important independent actors in the administration of justice. This is why all legal practitioners should have at least a basic knowledge of the legal system under National Socialism and the role of legal practitioners in it.

At the initiative of Dr. Klein, at its second meeting, held in Munich on 18 November 2019, the joint federal and state commission to fight antisemitism and protect Jewish life therefore agreed to ask the federal and state justice ministers to ensure that the issue of Nazi injustice is covered in universities’ law curriculum and to consider amending section 5a (2) of the German Judiciary Act (Deutsches Richtergesetz).

The Federal Agency for Civic Education offers more information on this topic here (in German): (Weiterführende Informationen zur Justiz im Dritten Reich auf der Homepage der BpB)