Just a week after the Enabling Act made Hitler dictator of Germany,
a national boycott of Jewish shops and department stores was organized
by Nazis under the direction of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
The boycott was claimed to be in reaction to unflattering newspaper
stories appearing in Britain and America concerning Hitler's new regime.
The Nazis assumed most journalists were either Jewish or sympathetic to
Jews and thus they labeled the bad publicity as "atrocity propaganda"
spread by "international Jewry."
boycott began at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 1st, 1933, and lasted only a
day. Nazi Brownshirts, the SA storm troopers, stood at entrances to Jewish
shops, department stores, professional offices and various places of business.
They held poster signs saying: "Germans, defend yourselves against
the Jewish atrocity propaganda, buy only at German shops!"
Most Germans ignored them. They were more interested in a bargain or
in getting their Saturday shopping chores out of the way. And since it
was Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, most of the smaller neighborhood shops
owned by observant Jews were already closed.
In addition to the SA activities, Propaganda Minister Goebbels appeared
before several thousand persons gathered in the Berlin Lustgarten and delivered
a tirade "against the atrocities of world Jewry." His speech
was broadcast nationally on all German radio stations. Goebbels asserted
that if the Jews of Germany could not stop their fellow Jews around the
world from dishing out anti-Nazi propaganda, then the Nazis would be forced
to deal out justice to Germany's Jews.
Goebbels, the little man (five feet tall) with a big voice would become
the most influential anti-Semite in the Nazi hierarchy, second only to
Hitler, in calling for continued persecution and eventual extermination
of the Jews. This propaganda genius, who had sometimes been teased in his
youth about his own Jewish looks, would subject the people of Germany to
a never-ending barrage of anti-Jewish slander on the radio, in the cinema,
and in newspapers.
"Propaganda," Goebbels once wrote, "has absolutely nothing
to do with truth."
In contrast to the Nazi caricature of them, most Jews in Germany were
actually quite cosmopolitan in nature and considered themselves to be Germans
by nationality and Jews only by religion. They had lived in Germany for
centuries but constituted only about one percent of the overall population.
Before Hitler, over half of the Jews in big German cities married non-Jewish
Politically, Jews in pre-Hitler Germany occupied the entire spectrum.
Some were radicals on the left who would have welcomed a Russian-style
revolution on the streets of Munich or Berlin. Others had been staunch
supporters of Kaiser Wilhelm and the old German monarchy dating back to
the days before World War I. Some of these conservatives might have even
supported the Nazis were it not for the anti-Semitism so avowed by Hitler.
Most Jews were middle-of-the-road politically. They wanted the same things
for themselves and their families that everyone else wanted – a good place
to live, a good job, quality education for their children and so forth.
During World War I, German Jews by the tens of thousands fought bravely
for the Fatherland, earning numerous medals and serving as officers. One
of the Army officers in command of Hitler during the war was a Jewish lieutenant
who recommended young Corporal Hitler for the Iron Cross 1st Class, a
rarity for a common foot soldier. To his dying day, Hitler wore that Iron
Cross, passing on all other Nazi decorations and paraphernalia with the
exception of his gold Party membership pin.
However, for the new dictator, Adolf Hitler, no amount of patriotism
or love of country by the Jews could overcome the very fact that they were
Jews, and thus in Hitler's mind, the "eternal enemies" of the
German Volk (racial community).
The boycott of Jewish stores in April 1933 marked the beginning of a
downward spiral for Jews that would eventually end in the gas chambers
at Auschwitz. The boycott was followed by a series of laws and decrees
which robbed the Jews of one right after another. There would be, in the
twelve years of Hitler's Reich, over 400 laws and decrees targeting Jews
Six days after the boycott, "The Law of the Restoration of the
Civil Service" was introduced which made "Aryanism" a necessary
requirement to hold a civil service position. All Jews holding such positions
were dismissed or forced into early retirement. On April 22nd, Jews were
prohibited from serving as patent lawyers and from serving as doctors in
State-run insurance institutions. On April 25th, a law against the overcrowding
of German schools limited the number of Jewish children allowed to enroll
in public schools. On June 2nd, Jewish dentists and dental technicians were
prohibited from working with State-run insurance institutions. On May 6th,
the Civil Service Law was amended to close loopholes in order to keep out
honorary university professors, lecturers and notaries. On September 28th,
all non-Aryans and their spouses were prohibited from government employment.
On September 29th, Jews were banned from all cultural and entertainment activities
including literature, art, film and theater. In early October, Jews were
prohibited from being journalists and all German newspapers were either
shut down or placed under Nazi control.
In better times, the creative spark of the Jewish community in Germany
had helped propel the country to unprecedented heights of scientific achievement,
academic scholarship and artistic vision. Under Hitler, the vitality of
the once-thriving Jewish academic and artistic communities in Berlin, Frankfurt
and other cities was quickly snuffed out via endless rules, regulations,
restrictions, prohibitions, and outright bans. The time was coming when
a Jew would be forbidden even to share a park bench with a non-Jew, let
alone marry one.
Seemingly within days of Hitler's coming to power in 1933, Germany began
a rapid evolution into a police state where individual freedoms were permanently
lost for everyone. Jews and Germans alike were living under what would
become one of the most violent and repressive regimes ever known. The principle
terror mechanism would be a new secret organization, whose name to this
day can still send a shudder through anyone who remembers Hitler's Germany
– the Gestapo.