Nuremberg Laws
Created by Kevin H., Preston S., Cristian M. & Adam B.
The unfair laws created by the Nazi government in 1935 that took away Jewish people's rights as citizens and separated them from German society
Opposite Lives
Artist Statement
Our artifact is called Opposite Lives. We hope that our core message for our artifact is to show how the Nuremberg Laws made Jewish people and others targeted by the Nazis feel inferior and subservient. We made two paths, one for the Germans and Nazi Soldiers and one for the Jews and Undesirables. The one for the Jews was slanted upward to show how as time went on the Jews lives became harder and harder with all the new Nuremberg Laws being added. This shows separation because the Jews couldn’t take business from non-Jews, they couldn’t vote, and they couldn’t even walk on the same paths as non-Jess. While looking at our artifact, we want you to feel empathetic and just grasp how challenging the Nuremberg Laws made people who were being persecuted by the Nazis live.
The key event that our artifact talks about is the Nuremberg Laws. Inspired by the Jim Crow laws that separated people of color from white people in the U.S, The Nuremberg Laws were a set of Laws that separated mainly Jewish people and other groups that the Nazis deemed “Subhuman.” This artifact represents how the Nuremberg Laws changed those people’s lives. In this time of despair, resistance and humanity is always in play. Our main message of resistance and humanity is shown in the people. Many people you see on “The Undesirables” (the Nazi term for anyone who wasn’t German) side are struggling to go up the incline and trying to go down the incline. Many people wouldn’t just let others dehumanize them. Even when times are tough, resistance can always be found.
A symbol that our artifact uses to represent our main idea are opposite paths. The two paths that separate The Undesirables and the Germans show separation to how the Nuremberg laws not only made Jewish people inferior, but separated them from the Germans. Jews couldn’t use the same water fountains as Germans. Jews couldn’t go to the same schools as Germans. They couldn’t even walk on the same paths. The two separate paths mark how separate these two groups of people were, where one side can't see the other side’s struggle. The symbol of opposite paths shows importance to our research because of how Hitler’s main goal of creating the Nuremberg Laws was to separate The Undesirables from the Germans. Another symbol that our artifact uses to portray the main theme is the Undesirables. The German pathway is a simple hallway. As the people walked the floorboards of passing time, German life was no different. The people walking in the hallway are the same. They show no struggle in their step as they walk each floorboard of time. On the other side, there is no hallway. A sleep incline is where The Undesirables go. As each year passes, a new Nuremberg Law gets passed making walking harder for Non-Aryan groups on the incline. They started out in 1933 walking normally. However, as 1934 to 1938 passes, their body position starts to become more fatigue. Your name, occupation, and life is stripped from you and replaced by an insignia that identifies you as either Jew, Roma, Prisoner, Criminal, and so on. The symbol of the Undesirables also connects to our research as to say that each Nuremberg Law would take one more thing from The Undesirable’s lives.
We used spray paint to paint one side of our background black and one side of our background white. These both represent the light and the dark. The white side being the German side and the black side being The Undesirable side. The sign that is pointing to the left says Herrenvolk which means Master race in German. The sign pointing to the right says Unerwushte which means Undesirables in German. The ramp and the hallway were all made out of wood. We used something that was not see through so both sides couldn’t see each other. We used LED lights mainly on the German side to say that life was much easier. The people in our artifact were all made with a 3d printer, because we needed very specific detail with people walking and crawling on the ramps. Some difficult decisions that we had to make were what were the signs going to say (specifically on the Nazi side). At first we thought that we should use the word freedom in German. However, freedom wasn’t the true goal of the Nazi party. We needed to find a word that reflected through the goals of the Nazis. We decided between the word Supremacy in German or Master race in German. At the end, we would choose the master race. The Two elements of art that we utilized were Form because we used 3d printed people and Value because we used light for the German side and Dark for the Jews side.. We used the element of form in our hallway and our incline which both go in opposite directions at a 135˚angle. We used the element of Value to create two sides of our artifact just like two sides of a story. One side is painted white with LED lights and a simple hallway and the other side is filled with darkness and despair with a steep incline. The two principles of design we utilized were Contrast and Repetition. Our artifact shows contrast because one side has light and one has dark, the size of our ramps are similar and our dates are the same. We used repetition for our floorboards. Our dates on the floorboards are the same on both the hallway and the ramp because we wanted to show how during these years, all the Germans and Nazis' lives were easier, but the Jews and undesirables as time went on their lives got harder. These principles and elements would help us a lot to enhance the symbolic meaning and emotional impact towards our artifact. Contrast was mainly used to enhance the idea that these two groups lived very different lives. Value was another big element that we used. It really helps us depict the life for a German and the life of a group that was being persecuted by the Nazis.
Many people know the Holocaust for its brutal assault on Jewish people and the cruel concentration camps, where no animal on earth deserves to live there. However, not many people know about how the main reason why concentration camps were created were to separate the Jews from the Germans and to make Jews feel less than or non-human. All of this goes right into the Nuremberg Laws. This project is all about memory and remembering this horrible time in history. If you want to know something, you need to know where its roots are. In other words, you need to know how things are as they are. Concentration camps and death camps were all inspired by the Nuremberg Laws. A system where Jewish people are separated from Germans and are treated lesser than. Each topic in this museum brings a different context in this time. However, they connect in a way as well. When visitors are looking at our artifact, we want them to reflect on these questions: What does it feel like to be separated from someone else just because you are different? How would that make you feel? When we look at our project, we feel a sense of empathy. Even though we studied this for two weeks, we will never understand this topic from someone who experienced it. So when you are looking at our artifact, we hope you feel that same sense of empathy we felt.
