The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'xenophobia' as "the fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign." These fears led to the Holocaust, which then led to the extermination of over 11 million Jews known as the Final Solution by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The exact number of Jews may never be known but millions were slaughtered due to xenophobia leading to two-thirds of the Jewish population being eradicated during World War II.

After the defeat of Germany in World War I, anti-Semitism grew against the Jewish people. Germany began an economic tailspin and blame needed to be placed on someone. Due to this economic crisis, Jewish bankers were to be blamed, according to many Germans. The Jews were used as scapegoats and Germany passed the Nuremberg Laws, which removed citizenship from Jews in Germany.

The Nuremberg Laws gave Jews the official title "subject of the state," forbidding mixed sexual relations and marriage between Aryans and Jews. Later, these laws would be extended to Negros and Gypsies and made mixed marriages a criminal offense known as "race pollution." The Jews were seen as evil and exploiting capitalists, feeding off the hard-working German people. As nationalism continued to grow the belief in one state, one nation, German philosopher Paul de Lagarde was moved to write "I have long been convinced that Jewry constitutes the cancer in all of our life, as Jews, they are strangers in any European state, and as such they are nothing, but spreaders of decay."

Text by Christopher Ortiz