The Nuremberg Laws were two anti-Semitic (anti-Jewish) laws promulgated in 1935 by the Reichstag (the German parliament) in Nazi Germany. The laws were so named because they were passed in connection with a Nazi Party rally in the German city of Nuremberg, where that year the Reichstag met for the first time since 1543. The first of the laws, dated September 15, 1935, was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. The second, with the same date, was the Reich Citizenship Law. A third piece of legislation, called the First Supplementary Decree, was dated November 14, 1935. The purpose of these laws was to address on a national level the so-called Jewish problem in Germany. Although Jews made up only about 1 percent of the German population, they had long been targeted as scapegoats for the economic and social problems that devastated Germany in the wake of World War I. Indeed, Europe as a whole had a long history of anti-Semitism, dating back at least to Spain’s expulsion of the Jews in 1492. The effect of the Nuremberg Laws was to forbid “pure” Germans from intermarrying with Jews. The laws also excluded Jews from public office and denied them citizenship in the German Reich, or state. These laws were an early step toward the concentration camps of World War II, where millions of Europe’s Jews died in a systematic genocide generally referred to as the Holocaust.