Blood Palm Sunday

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As blood palm Sunday is pogrom on March 25, 1934 in Gunzenhausen , a city in what is now Central Franconia district of Weissenburg-Gunzenhausen ( Bavaria ), respectively.

pogrom

The pogrom began when a group of SA men, headed by Obersturmführer Kurt Bär, entered the local Jewish café to fetch a non-Jewish guest they had seen drinking coffee there. When they met the Jew Jakob Rosenfelder there, who was known as an opponent of National Socialism even before 1933, they decided to come back and arrest him. When they returned a little later they did not find Rosenfelder. Instead of him, they forcibly dragged out the owner's son, Julius Strauss. In the meantime a crowd had gathered on the street that shouted: “Cut him! Skin him! ”The young Strauss was beaten until he passed out on the floor. His parents, who came to his aid, were also beaten by Bär and threatened with a gun. Bär then asked the spectators to come along to arrest more Jews in the village. The members of the Strauss family were dragged to Gunzenhausen prison, whereupon the agitated crowd shouted: “Away with the Jews!” Other involved broke into the café and devastated it.

The rioters moved on to Jakob Rosenfelder's house. They scared his sister to death, so she told them that she had seen the brother go to a neighboring house. There the persecutors found him in a shed; afterwards it was said that he had hanged himself from a beam and was already dead. The mob then broke into other Jewish houses, where they beat and arrested the residents.

In search of the businessman Max Rosenau, whom they could not find in his apartment, they stormed into the apartment of his Jewish neighbor Lehmann. His daughter pleaded that they would arrest her instead of her father with heart disease. The daughter was beaten and her father and brother dragged along. Max Rosenau was later found dead in a room in Lehmann's apartment, with five knife wounds in his body.

On that day, 35 Jews in Gunzenhausen were arrested and mistreated by the National Socialists. The women were released after a short time and the men remained in custody until the evening of the following day. Only after the worst was over did a police force come into town to put an end to the violence. An estimated 1,000 to 1,500 people were involved in the riots out of a total population of around 5,600 at the time.

process

The Reich Ministry of the Interior was concerned about the reaction of the world public to the pogrom in Gunzenhausen and therefore demanded that the authorities in Munich investigate the case and bring the guilty to justice. In a letter from the Minister of the Interior of April 5, 1934, it is said that the version of the police report of the suicide of the two Gunzenhausen Jews did not convince him. In the trial, which took place in Ansbach on June 11, 1934 , the judges confirmed the suicide version, citing the statement by Lehmann's daughter that Rosenau picked up a kitchen knife a few minutes before his death and announced: "I'm already dead, you don't need to kill me anymore! "

Kurt Bär and 24 other men were charged in court with rioting against the Jews in Gunzenhausen, mistreating them and damaging their property. Kurt Bär received a prison sentence of one and a half years, and another twenty accused were sentenced to four to twelve months in prison. A few days later, the sentence was reduced: Bär received ten months, another eighteen defendants between three and seven months in prison and the others were acquitted.

In the meantime there had been further riots in Gunzenhausen. On April 12, the windows of Jewish shops and homes were broken. SA men often sang the Horst Wessel song .

On July 15, 1934, Kurt Bär, who was at large although he should have been in prison, broke into the Strauss family's apartment. He attacked Simon Strauss and his son Julius, who had testified against him and the other defendants in court. He shot Simon Strauss with his pistol and seriously injured Julius Strauss.

After this murder, the Interior Ministry in Berlin ordered the Bavarian State Ministry in a letter dated July 25, 1934, to use police force to prevent the SA in Gunzenhausen from singing the Horst Wessel song.

On August 11, 1934, the trial of Kurt Bär for the murder of Simon Strauss and of Joseph Kaiser and Hans Hermann for aiding and abetting murder took place in Ansbach. Bär received life sentences, Kaiser four years in prison and Hermann was acquitted.

In the appeal proceedings on August 21, 1934 against those involved in the riots of March 25, 1934, Kurt Bär was found guilty of having initiated and led the riots. All other defendants were acquitted. Kurt Bär was released in 1938 after only four years.

reception

On April 5, 1934, the Viennese weekly newspaper Die Neue Welt published a detailed report about the pogrom in Gunzenhausen.

In his narrative non-fiction book Heimat. A search , Thomas Medicus describes the events on Blood Palm Sunday .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The pogrom of March 25, 1934 in Gunzenhausen ( Memento of the original of March 23, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. - A school project of the Nuremberg Institute for Nazi Research and Jewish History of the 20th Century  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.nurinst.org
  2. ↑ Document VEJ 1/113 in: Wolf Gruner (Ed.): The persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 , Volume 1: German Empire from 1933 to 1937 (source book). Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58480-6 , pp. 321-323