How did the Nazis find out if the people were Jews?

Answer 1

Someone found out about their hiding place and betrayed them to the Nazis. The Nazis removed the bookcase and at first just saw Edith Frank, then they went to the next room and discovered everybody. They were all sent to Auschwitz.

Answer 2

in cattle cars and on trains

That's where they put them, but finding them wasn't difficult as they mostly lived in their own quarter of each town/city, and those who didn't were in many cases betrayed by their non-Jewish neighbours.

Answer 3

Hair features, eye color, skin tones, the way they looked. Jews were not terribly different in looks than others but there were often distinguishing features about them.
Other factors included how they acted around others and what they did alone. Sadly almost everyone was watched in some way when someone else gave the "authorities" a tip-off. I say that in quotes because they were Nazi police.
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The 'Nazi Police', the Gestapo (as opposed to other branches) were responsible for capturing criminals like Jews or Homosexuals, but their numbers were very small, they were not able to investigate everything that was given to them and most arrests were as a result of a tip-off from the public. Essentially they did not go 'Jew-hunting'.

As a general rule Jews were told to report to a place at a time and were taken from there. The proof of whether they were Jewish or not was generally in parish records or Synagogue records. Often it was up to the accused to prove their 'innocence'. This varied greatly in different regions.

With regards to physical or immediate identification; there was a guide, with pictures of nose and ears and the like, other tests included eating pork and, of course for men, to drop their trousers.

Answer 4

In Germany: with help of the Nürnberg (aka Nuremberg) laws the Jews (according to "degree":1/1, 1/2, 1/4 etc) were identified and classified, and they didn't resist in the beginning. Thus the National Socialist government had a rather clear view of them. When their situation grew more dire, many went into exile or went underground. Some hoped that it wouldn't be worse, but it became virtually impossible to run business or have any qualified profession in Germany, and their possessions could be confiscated.

When WWII started and the Nazi came to rule other nations, either by force or by national Nazi collaboration (e.g. Hungary) they depended on various methods to detect Jews.

Checking synagogue registers, checking people's family relations, looking at names (because of 19C German name laws, the Jews normally had distinctive surnames), but to a huge extent it was through local people who reported people they knew as Jews, even though many were Christian believers with Jewish ancestry. Large groups of Jews were kept together, locked-in in ghettos as they already had been living in some ghettos (compare medieval ghetto of Venice).

Those being hidden were often betrayed by local Nazi collaborators watching out for suspicious things, these could be rewarded or work just out of personal conviction. Neighbours could take over the Jews' houses when caught, as racism was widespread in Europe (as in America etc).

The Gestapo and SS worked with intelligence collection. These could often make morning or night raids to surprise people. One could make fake raids and retreat, leaving someone there afterwards to listen for any sounds when people thought everything was safe. Dogs and stetoscopes were used. Also to burn a house with suspected people inside wouldn't have been an issue for the SS; they used it as a common way to kill people saving bullets at the Eastern Front. Mostly it was the fanatic SS, e.g. the Einsatzgruppen, because most German army officers opposed to having their soldiers to do inhumane actions like war crimes, unworthy to a real soldier, and those that had been ordered to do such, often felt sickness about it.

Previous answer:

After the Germans rounded up all the known Jews from their homes and businesses they began to look for hidden Jews. They would do house to house searches and often tear up homes looking behind walls, furniture, floors and ceilings. They left the mess. They had spies who would report on the location of hidden Jews. They would search the forests, countryside and farms. They searched through automobiles, wagons, trucks, trains, boats and planes. The German soldiers and SS were ruthless about it.

Answer 5

snooping around, questioning people, possibly torturing a few. sometimes they didn't even get real Jews, they just used the excuse that they were Jews to get them out of the way. people didn't put up too much of a fight because Jews were somewhat despised in Europe at the time because they were wealthy and there was a depression at the time.

Answer 6

not difficult, most of the locals in Europe were happy to 'name a Jew' to save their own skin

Answer 7

The main sources for the Nazis were: the Jews themselves, parish records and informants.

Answer 8

They had a vast system of records based on birth certificates and going back for at least a century.