Munich SA parade a Jewish lawyer barefoot; Göring will not protect ‘Jewish stores’

Politics and power

Government, terror and persecution

1. Persecution Munich

   Michael Siegel marched barefoot through Munich

   The Munich lawyer Dr Michael Siegel went to police headquarters to complain about the arrest of his client Uhlfelder, owner of a well-known Munich department store. There SA men serving as auxiliary police beat him, knocking out teeth and perforating an eardrum, cut off the legs of his trousers, hung a placard round his neck and marched him barefoot through the streets to the railway station, where he escaped in a taxi. The placard probably read ‘I will never again complain to the police’. Siegel lived in Munich until 1940, then escaped via the Soviet Union and Japan to Peru, where he died in 1979.^1,2

   Sources disagree. Archive captions describe the guards as SS men or as SA auxiliary police; the placard’s wording is not fully legible in the photographs.

2. Propaganda Berlin

   Hitler’s appeal to the SA and SS

   In an appeal published in the Völkischer Beobachter, Hitler told party members, SA and SS that ‘unscrupulous elements’, mainly Communist informers, were trying to discredit the party by individual actions, especially by molesting foreigners and cars flying foreign flags. With the national government now holding executive power throughout Germany, the ‘national uprising’ would be carried on in a planned way, directed from above; harassment of individuals, obstruction of cars and disruption of business must stop, but any resistance was to be broken at once, and the watchword remained ‘destruction of Marxism’.^3,4

3. Persecution evening, Essen; Mönchengladbach-Rheydt; Berlin

   Göring: no police protection for ‘Jewish department stores’

   In a broadcast speech from the exhibition halls in Essen on the eve of the Prussian municipal elections, Göring said he would use the police ruthlessly wherever the German people were harmed, but refused to let the police be ‘a protective force for Jewish department stores’. That morning, as in the Ruhr two days earlier, uniformed SA detachments had drawn up before the department stores and chain stores in Mönchengladbach-Rheydt before opening time and forced them to close; shortly before 10:00 the police cleared the entrances, but SA groups stayed outside calling on customers not to buy from Jews. The same day the CV-Zeitung, paper of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith, reported that Göring had told its representatives there was no evidence linking the association with Communists, and that the life and property of Jewish citizens loyal to the government were guaranteed by law.^3,5

4. The states Dresden

   Saxony’s government resigns to the Reich commissioner

   In Dresden the Reich commissioner for the Saxon police, von Killinger, told three ministers, Mannsfeld, Hedrich and Richter, to resign because their continuing in office endangered public order, warning that he would otherwise suspend them. The whole cabinet, including Minister-President Schieck, whom Killinger had asked to stay, then resigned. Authorised by Hitler, Killinger took over the government of Saxony as Reich commissioner, announced that the ‘cleansing’ of the judiciary and administration of Marxists was imminent, and forbade citizens to interfere in the administration on their own initiative.³

5. Opposition Berlin

   The trade unions appeal to Hindenburg

   The executive of the General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB), signed by its chairman Leipart, appealed to Hindenburg on the eve of Remembrance Day to stop the lawlessness that threatened the lives and property of workers in many towns, and to prevent the gratitude of the fatherland to the workers from taking the form of the destruction of union property and the persecution of union members.⁶