No sooner in power, the National Socialists began to persecute ideological opponents – such as Communists, Social Democrats and sometimes even Christians – as well as homosexuals, but above all Jews.
The new regime declared Jews to be "enemies of the people", who were excluded from participation in society – by occupational bans and boycotts of Jewish businesses, partly accompanied by open violence.
On 9th and 10th November 1938 the East Prussian synagogues burned, hundreds of Jews were arrested and five Jews from Heilsberg (today Lidzbark Warmiński) and Neidenburg (today Nidzica) were murdered. From then on everyday life of Jews was influenced by the obligation to wear a yellow star and do forced labour. Emigration became almost impossible. The Jewish community in Königsberg (today’s Kaliningrad) sank from 3,000 members in 1933 to almost 1,200 in the summer of 1942 when Jewish East Prussians were deported to Minsk in Belarus and murdered by the SS. The East Prussian Sinti were also captured as "gypsies", locked away and killed in camps such as at Contiener Weg in Königsberg.
As early as the spring of 1940, the SS had East Prussian sanatoriums and nursing homes evacuated and the patients taken to Soldau, where the "Sonderkommando (special unit) Lange" suffocated them in gas vans.
Quote:
Description of the Reichspogromnacht (Pogrom Night, the night the Nazis burnt down most of the synagogues in the German Reich) by the director of the Königsberg Jewish school, David Franz Kälter, when the Jewish orphanage was at the mercy of the mob.
Illustrations:
1.) Henry Wittenberg (1879-1952) and his wife Thekla, 1938.
Henry Wittenberg was abused by members of the Hitler Youth in 1935. The shop window of his leather shop in Osterode had been covered with stickers so he confronted the perpetrators. For this "atrocity" he was driven through the city with the sign "This dirty Jew has beaten a German boy". The couple was able to emigrate with their daughter to the USA in time and their son to Uruguay.
Photo: Private Archive
2.) The East Prussians celebrated the annexation of the Memel territory in March 1939, depriving the Jews living there of their livelihood. The picture shows Aron Puhn, his wife Ella and their daughters Civa and Aviva fleeing to Memel station. The family of the printing company owner was able to leave Memel, but died later in Schaulen, Lithuania.
Photo: Picture Archive, Prussian Cultural Heritage, Berlin