History of The Jews in Laupheim - From 1933 To 1938

From 1933 To 1938

After the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933 and the subsequent seizure of power by his party, the National Socialist German Workers Party, Jewish life in Laupheim began to change for the worse. During the previous decades, Jews had been influential and prominent members in all ways of life, not only in the economic life but also in the cultural sphere. Numerous non-Jews had been employed by Jewish-run businesses and by Jewish households. Jews had been participating in all spheres of public and commercial life. The local craftsmen had been able to rely on Jewish customers to sell their products to. Jews were members in several cultural, political and social societies. All these relations began to loosen or even abruptly break down after January 1933. On 1 April 1933, the nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses, organised by Julius Streicher, also took place in Laupheim. Members of the local SA positioned themselves in front of Jewish shops in order to intimidate potential customers and prevent them from entering. The windows of one shop were smashed. In the year following the Nazis' rise to power, in the course of so-called Gleichschaltung, the Laupheim Jews were deprived of membership of all non-Jewish organisations, be it political or cultural. On 6 November 1935, a non-local party group leader of the NSDAP took photographs of customers entering a shoe shop, which happened to be owned by a Jew. This caused such a commotion that the police had to be called in to disperse the crowd, which was shouting abuse at entering customers by calling them Volksverräter (people's traitors) and Judenknecht (Jews' servant). The propaganda of the ruling party had its effects in that the turnover of Jewish businesses decreased dramatically; one shop's revenue declined even by 80 percent. Many customers went for their purchases to Ulm and Biberach instead. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, reduced the Jews in Germany to the status of second class citizens and prohibited the Jews to employ female Aryans under the age of 45. On 8 April 1938, the Jewish cattle traders were allocated a separate part on the weekly cattle market and as of 1 January 1939 the licences for Jewish cattle trader were permanently revoked. From June onwards, all Jewish businesses had to be visibly marked. In July, Jewish physicians were struck off the medical register. In September, the permission of Jewish members of the legal profession to practice law was cancelled. There were further restrictions and harassment in the same year such as the adding of Sara and Israel respectively to non-Jewish first names, the confiscating and re-issuing of passports after a large J was added. However, many Jews clang to the businesses their ancestors had established and hoped that by keeping a low profile they could weather the storm. A record from July 1938, shows that there still existed 45 businesses run by Jews in Laupheim.

The assassination of Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, by Herschel Grynszpan served as a pretext for a nationwide pogrom against Jews throughout Germany and Austria on the night of 9–10 November 1938, colloquially known as Kristallnacht. In Laupheim, Jewish shops were vandalised and the synagogue was burnt to the ground. The fire-brigade was prevented by locals from extinguishing the fire. A number of Jewish inhabitants were arrested and transported to the town hall. From there, they were marched to the burning synagogue, escorted by members of the Nazi-party, where they had to listen to a diatribe by a SA-leader, after which they were forced to carry out physical exercises in front of the burning building during which several of them were physically assaulted and injured. Afterwards, some of them were released, whereas the more prominent Jews were transported to the concentration camp Dachau where 16 of them had been released by February 1939.

The main perpetrators, were never brought to justice as they were either killed during the war or missing in action. 16 locals, however, were tried in 1948. All of them claimed that they were acting under orders. Four of them were acquitted whereas the twelve others were sentenced to prison terms ranging between two months and one year for crimes against humanity and being accessory to arson.