Judenfrei was a Nazi term to designate an area free of Jewish presence during The Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

.

While Judenfrei referred merely to "freeing" an area of all of its Jewish citizens, the term Judenrein (literally "clean of Jews") was also used. This had the stronger connotation that any trace of Jewish blood had been removed as an impurity.

Locations declared Judenfrei

Establishments, villages, cities, and regions were declared Judenfrei after they were ethnically cleansed

Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....

 of Jews.

• Gelnhausen
  Gelnhausen
  Gelnhausen is a town and the capital of the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, in Hesse, Germany. It is located approx. 40 kilometers east of Frankfurt am Main, between the Vogelsberg mountains and the Spessart range at the river Kinzig...
  
  , Germany – reported Judenfrei on November 1, 1938 by propaganda newspaper Kinzigwacht after its synagogue was closed and remaining local Jews forced to leave the town.
• German-occupied Bydgoszcz (Poland
  Poland
  Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
  
  ) – reported Judenfrei in December 1939
• German-occupied Luxembourg
  Luxembourg
  Luxembourg , officially the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg , is a landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. It has two principal regions: the Oesling in the North as part of the Ardennes massif, and the Gutland in the south...
  
   – reported Judenfrei by the press on October 17, 1941.
• German-occupied Estonia
  Estonia
  Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
  
   – December 1941. Reported as Judenfrei at the Wannsee Conference
  Wannsee Conference
  The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the conference was to inform administrative leaders of Departments responsible for various policies relating to Jews, that Reinhard Heydrich...
  
   on January 20, 1942.
• German-occupied Serbia
  Serbia
  Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
  
  /Belgrade
  Belgrade
  Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
  
   – August 1942
• Vienna
  Vienna
  Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
  
   – reported Judenfrei by Alois Brunner
  Alois Brunner
  Alois Brunner is an Austrian Nazi war criminal. Brunner was Adolf Eichmann's assistant, and Eichmann referred to Brunner as his "best man." As commander of the Drancy internment camp outside Paris from June 1943 to August 1944, Brunner is held responsible for sending some 140,000 European Jews to...
  
   on October 9, 1942
• Berlin
  Berlin
  Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
  
  , Germany – May 19, 1943

Usage in Israeli–Palestinian conflict

In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a fear among many Israelis which has been reflected by Israeli government officials such as Benjamin Netanyahu is that the proposed removal of Israeli Jewish settlements in the West Bank according to the wishes of Palestinian officials is tantamount to rendering areas of the West Bank "Judenfrei", or clean of cultural Jewish residents. The term, in this context, is controversial among both Palestinians and Israelis, and also alludes to the question of the prospective status of settlers who refuse to be withdrawn by the Israeli military.

On July 9th 2009 Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin Netanyahu

Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is the current Prime Minister of Israel. He serves also as the Chairman of the Likud Party, as a Knesset member, as the Health Minister of Israel, as the Pensioner Affairs Minister of Israel and as the Economic Strategy Minister of Israel.Netanyahu is the first and, to...

, discussing with the German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Frank-Walter Steinmeier is a German politician of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , and currently the leader of the opposition in the Bundestag. Steinmeier was a close aide of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, serving as Chief of Staff in the German Chancellery from 1999 to 2005...

, is reported to have said "Judea and Samaria cannot be Judenrein."