Half-Jew
derogatory term for people with a non-Jewish and a Jewish parent
The term half-Jew (German: Halbjude) is a derogatory term for people with a non-Jewish and a Jewish parent. The overwhelming majority of the so-called half-Jews were legally classified as "first-degree Jewish hybrids" during the era of Nazi Germany. Occasionally, the term was used even before the Nazi era. Within Judaism, the term half-Jew is unusual since it does not recognize any partial degrees of Judaism; one is either Jewish or not.
Situation within Nazi Germany
During the Nazi era, half-Jews was not a legal term. The term was not used in the Nuremberg Race Laws and the related ordinances. In 1941, the term half-Jew was included in the Duden for the first time: the group of "Jewish half-breeds" was further divided into "Jewish half-breeds of the first degree" with two Jewish grandparents and "Jewish half-breeds of the second degree" with one Jewish grandparent. However, first-degree hybrids were classified in different categories, despite the assumption of the same "biological-racial ancestry". They were not regarded as "hybrids" but as "full Jews" if they belonged to the Jewish religious community, were married to a Jew, or married a Jew after 1935. The term "Geltungsjude" was later coined for this group of "half-Jews".
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Half-Jew” as derogatory term for people with a non-Jewish and a Jewish parent. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as derogatory term for people with a non-Jewish and a Jewish parent. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q20825920. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1941 and 1935.
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This entry incorporates text from “Half-Jew” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.