Democracy Destroyed The First 100 Days of Nazi Rule

Day 62, Saturday 1 April 1933: Nazi boycott of Jewish shops, doctors and lawyers: SA pickets stand across Germany

Day 62 of 100

Nazi boycott of Jewish shops, doctors and lawyers: SA pickets stand across Germany

At 10:00 SA and SS men took up posts outside Jewish-owned shops, department stores, surgeries and law offices throughout Germany, carrying placards reading ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!’. In Berlin some 60,000 to 70,000 SA men were deployed; Tietz, Wertheim and Israel shut their doors, and only a small quota of Jewish lawyers was readmitted to the courts. In Kiel the Jewish lawyer Friedrich Schumm was murdered in police custody. The flags also flew for Bismarck’s birthday, and Viktoria 89 won a football final.

A uniformed SA man stands beside a shop display case on which a six-pointed star is painted; a placard with the boycott slogan hangs from the case.
An SA man on guard outside a Tietz store in Berlin on 1 April 1933. A Star of David has been daubed on the display case, and the placard reads ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!’. Photographed on this day Unknown author. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The boycott of 1 April was organised nationwide by the Nazi party leadership against Germany’s Jews as a group. The Nazi party presented it as ‘defence’ against foreign ‘atrocity propaganda’ (Greuelpropaganda, its word for foreign reports of Nazi violence), but its targets were German citizens: shopkeepers, department-store owners, doctors and lawyers, and the employees who worked for them. Posters had gone up on Berlin’s advertising pillars the evening before. On Saturday morning shops opened as usual between 8 and 9; between half past nine and ten the picture changed, as cars full of SA men drove through the city centre chanting slogans and pickets with placards took up position at the doors.

In Berlin the reports name the places. Crowds gathered outside Wertheim on Leipziger Platz, where SA men guarded the entrances; Tietz on Dönhoffplatz lowered its iron doors; the N. Israel store on Spandauer Straße closed under its pickets. Clothing, cigar and jewellery shops owned by Jews pulled down their shutters, the big cafés on the Kurfürstendamm closed, and the garment district around Hausvogteiplatz and in the Jewish quarter near Alexanderplatz, which the press called the ‘ghetto’, almost every shop was shut. SA men checked papers at the entrances to the University, where posters announced that Jews were forbidden to enter. At the Schöneberg district court a crowd burned the court’s black-red-gold republican flag.

The professions were hit as hard as trade. That afternoon several hundred lawyers queued at the Berlin bar association for the passes now needed to enter the courts; non-Jewish lawyers received theirs at once, while the applications of Jewish lawyers were to be dealt with in writing. Only about 35 lawyers of Jewish descent were to be admitted to the Berlin courts, including the Kammergericht, in proportion to the Jewish share of the population. The same day the Prussian Academy of Sciences, through the official press service, denounced Albert Einstein, who had already resigned, and the political police blocked his Berlin bank account.

Violence was not the exception the regime claimed. In Kiel the Jewish lawyer Friedrich Schumm, visiting his parents, became involved in a scuffle with the SS men posted outside their furniture shop in which an SS man was shot; he gave himself up to the police and was murdered in his cell by a mob of SA and SS men. In Berlin several Jews were taken into ‘protective custody’ (Schutzhaft, imprisonment without trial). The Nazi-controlled press reported perfect order and a united public; Goebbels wrote of ‘exemplary discipline’. In fact many Jewish-owned shops stayed open and many Berliners went on shopping in them, and the boycott lasted only this one day.

Politics and power

Government, terror and persecution

  1. Persecution 10:00, Berlin and throughout Germany

    The boycott begins at 10:00

    Across the Reich SA, SS and party pickets stood outside Jewish-owned shops, department stores and one-price stores, doctors’ surgeries and law offices, with placards and leaflets urging the public not to buy from Jews. In Berlin, where between 60,000 and 70,000 SA men took part, cars flying black-white-red and swastika flags patrolled the boycott and newsreel crews filmed the scenes. Trams and buses carried black-white-red and swastika pennants.1,2,3

    Sources disagree. Agency reports differ on when Wertheim and Israel, which first stayed open, closed: one version says shortly after 10:00, another shortly after 13:00.

  2. Persecution Berlin

    Berlin courts admit only a quota of Jewish lawyers

    Only a small number of Jewish lawyers, in proportion to the Jewish share of the population, were to be allowed into the Berlin courts; the bar association put the figure at about 35, including the Kammergericht. Hundreds of lawyers queued for entry passes on Saturday afternoon. Outside the Schöneberg district court in Grunewaldstraße a crowd watched for Jewish judges and lawyers entering and burned the court’s black-red-gold flag while singing the Horst Wessel song.4,2

  3. Persecution Berlin

    All Jewish teachers in Berlin’s schools sent on leave

    Dr Meinshausen, state commissioner running Berlin’s municipal school administration, ordered all district offices to put every teacher ‘Jewish by blood’ at every Berlin school on leave at once and until further notice, ‘to keep all unrest away from the schools’, and to report the names within three days.3

  4. Terror late morning, Kiel

    Friedrich Schumm lynched in Kiel police prison

    Friedrich Schumm, a Jewish lawyer, had come to Kiel to visit his parents, who ran a furniture shop in Kehdenstraße. When he tried to enter the shop, guarded by SS men, a scuffle broke out and a shot wounded one of them. Schumm later gave himself up to the police; a mob of SA and SS men stormed the Kiel police prison and killed him in his cell with some thirty shots. No police officer protected him, no one stopped the killers, and no one was ever held to account. The same day a Frankfurt special court sentenced a man named Löwenstein to a year in prison under the decree against ‘malicious attacks’ for spreading reports of atrocities, among them that a Jewish lawyer in Kiel had been shot by SA men.5,3

    Sources disagree. The official statement claimed that Schumm shot the SS man Walter Asthalter ‘without good reason’; later accounts describe a scuffle in which a shot went off.

  5. Propaganda Berlin

    Prussian Academy denounces Einstein

    The official Prussian press service published a statement of the Prussian Academy of Sciences declaring its ‘indignation’ at Einstein’s alleged part in ‘atrocity agitation’ in America and France. It noted that he had resigned, saying he could no longer serve the Prussian state under its present government, and declared that the Academy had no reason to regret his departure. The same day the political police blocked Einstein’s account at a Berlin bank and seized 25,000 marks in securities and 5,000 marks in cash.6

  6. Government Berlin; Wilhelmshaven

    Hindenburg and Hitler made freemen of Berlin; a new warship launched

    By decision of the city council and the municipal executive, Reich President Hindenburg and Chancellor Hitler were made honorary citizens of Berlin. At Wilhelmshaven the new armoured ship (Panzerschiff) Deutschland was commissioned, and her sister ship Admiral Scheer was launched.3

Everyday life

What else was happening in Germany

  1. Society evening, Berlin, Müggelberge and Lustgarten

    Flags and bonfires for Bismarck’s birthday

    1 April was the anniversary of Bismarck’s birth in 1815, and black-white-red and swastika flags were hoisted for it. In the evening thousands marched with bands to the floodlit Bismarck tower in the Müggelberge in south-east Berlin, among them SA, SS and Stahlhelm men, students, police and youth groups, while young people gathered round a great bonfire in the Lustgarten.3,4

  2. Film Berlin

    The boycott on newsreel

    Cars carrying cameramen pushed slowly through the crowds in Friedrichstraße and the city centre, filming the pickets and the people outside the shops, and SA men with their own cameras photographed shoppers. The surviving newsreel shows a curious, wary crowd rather than one cheering the SA.1,2,7

  3. Sport

    Viktoria 89 win the first Brandenburg final

    In the first match of the final round for the Brandenburg football championship, Viktoria 89 beat Stettiner SC only narrowly, 2–1.10

Voices

The boycott against the world atrocity agitation has broken out in Berlin and throughout the Reich in full force. To get my bearings I drive along the Tauentzienstraße. All the Jewish shops are closed. SA posts stand at the entrances. The public has everywhere declared its solidarity. Exemplary discipline prevails.

Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda Diary entry for 1 April 1933 as published by the regime. The claim of universal closure and public solidarity was propaganda: many Jewish-owned shops in Berlin stayed open and many people went on shopping in them. Translated by this site.7

Elsewhere in the world

  • Vatican

    Pope Pius XI opens the Holy Year

    In bright sunshine Pius XI opened the Holy Year with the traditional ritual opening of the holy doors of the patriarchal basilicas; some 50,000 people attended the ceremony in St Peter’s.6

In Berlin today

A small square brass plate set into paving stones, engraved in capitals: Hier stand Kaufhaus Nathan Israel, gegründet 1815, arisiert 1939.
The Stolperstein for the N. Israel department store at the corner of Spandauer Straße and Rathausstraße, inscribed ‘Hier stand Kaufhaus Nathan Israel, gegründet 1815, arisiert 1939’ (here stood the N. Israel department store, founded 1815, ‘Aryanised’ 1939). Photograph of 2008. Axel Mauruszat / CC BY 3.0 de. CC BY 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Kaufhaus N. Israel (site)

Spandauer Straße 26–32, corner of Rathausstraße, 10178 Berlin-Mitte

Then
SA pickets with placards stood in front of the entrances of the N. Israel department store, which closed during the day.8,1
Today
Nothing of the store survives. A Stolperstein laid in October 2004 at Spandauer Straße 26–32 commemorates the department store itself.

Open in OpenStreetMap

Three tall, narrow mirrored steel panels stand on cobblestones, reflecting the surrounding buildings and parked cars; a U-Bahn station sign is visible behind.
Rainer Görß’s ‘Denkzeichen Modezentrum Hausvogteiplatz’ of 2000: three tall mirrored panels at the U-Bahn exit on Hausvogteiplatz, photographed in 2015. OTFW , Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hausvogteiplatz

Hausvogteiplatz, 10117 Berlin-Mitte

Then
The centre of Berlin’s garment industry, built up largely by Jewish manufacturers and merchants, fell silent as its Jewish-owned firms closed for the boycott.1,9
Today
Since July 2000 the ‘Denkzeichen Modezentrum Hausvogteiplatz’ by Rainer Görß, three tall mirrored panels at the U-Bahn exit, and the names of Jewish fashion firms on the steps of the station recall the owners and employees who were driven out.

Open in OpenStreetMap

More pictures

Two uniformed SA men at a large shop window displaying dresses; one presses a printed placard against the glass while a young woman with a handbag and other passers-by look on.
An SA man fixes a placard reading ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!’ to the window of a Berlin clothes shop on 1 April 1933, watched by a second SA man, a young woman and other passers-by. Photograph by Georg Pahl; the shop and the people are not named in the record. Photographed on this day Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14468 / Georg Pahl / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons
A dense crowd of men and women in hats fills the pavement in front of a modern shopfront with large letters spelling 'Hemdenmatz'; uniformed men stand in the entrance next to a boycott placard.
A crowd outside the Hemdenmatz shirt shop in Berlin on 1 April 1933, while SA men stand in its doorway beside the placard ‘Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t buy from Jews!’. Press photograph from the Robert Sennecke agency; nobody in the crowd is named. Photographed on this day Uncredited (unidentified, unknown or anonymous) photographer Photo agency: Robert Sennecke, Internationaler Illustrations-Verlag Berlin SW 11 / CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Four uniformed SA men stand in a row in front of a stone shopfront marked N. ISRAEL, each wearing a large placard reading 'Deutsche! Wehrt Euch! Kauft nicht bei Juden!'.
Four SA men with boycott placards outside the N. Israel department store in Berlin. Photograph by Georg Pahl. From these weeks Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-14469 / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons
Uniformed men stand outside the entrance of a large department store; one has a placard hung round his neck and a man with a film camera stands at the right.
SA and SS men outside the Wertheim department store in Berlin during the boycott; one wears a placard with the boycott slogan, and a cameraman films on the right. From these weeks Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-R70355 / Unknown Unknown / CC-BY-SA 3.0. CC BY-SA 3.0 de, via Wikimedia Commons

Sources

  1. Zwönitztaler Anzeiger, 3 April 1933: ‘Völlige Ruhe in Berlin’ (Berlin, 1 April) Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 2
  2. Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, 2 April 1933: ‘Der Boykott in Berlin’ (own wire report, Berlin, 1 April) Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 1
  3. Westfälische Zeitung (Bielefeld), 3 April 1933: ‘Der Verlauf des Boykotts’, ‘Kundgebung im Lustgarten’, Kiel official statement; ‘Ehrenbürger von Berlin’ Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, pp. 1–3
  4. Dortmunder Zeitung, 3 April 1933: ‘Nur 35 jüdische Anwälte an Berliner Gerichten’; Bismarck celebrations Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, pp. 1–3
  5. Den Opfern ein Gesicht geben: Friedrich Schumm (75 Jahre Landespolizei) Landespolizei Schleswig-Holstein (schleswig-holstein.de)
  6. Hamburger Fremdenblatt, 2 April 1933: ‘Die preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften zum Fall Einstein’; opening of the Holy Year Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, pp. 2–3
  7. Goebbels kündigt den Boykott jüdischer Geschäfte an (1. April 1933) German History in Documents and Images (German Historical Institute Washington)
  8. Kaufhaus Nathan Israel (Stolperstein, Spandauer Str. 26–32) Koordinierungsstelle Stolpersteine Berlin
  9. Denkzeichen Modezentrum Hausvogteiplatz Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung
  10. Morgen-Zeitung, 3 April 1933: ‘Hertha BSC spielt nur unentschieden’ (Brandenburg championship) Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, Zeitungsportal, p. 8

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