Pogrom of March 25, 1933 @museum.de

On January 31, 1933, the Nazis came to power. On March 24 1933, their Enabling Act came into force, and March 25 saw the first organized attacks on Jews. In Creglingen, these led to fatalities.

On the morning of March 25, SA and police units, assisted by local Nazi group leader Karl Stahl, entered the synagogue, interrupted the service, and drove the 16 men gathered there across the main street and into the town hall. Hours of physical abuse followed. Hermann Stern died the same day. Arnold Rosenfeld died from his injuries in a Würzburg hospital a week later.

Hermann Stern was a respected Creglingen resident, a councilman, and president of the supervisory board of the city’s Landwirtschafts- and Gewerbebank (the Agricultural and Commercial Bank). He was certainly an important figure in Creglingen. And yet not a single photograph of him had survived – until his US-born granddaughter Judith provided the museum with a photo of her murdered grandfather.

Like Hermann Stern, Arnold Rosenfeld was a wealthy livestock dealer. He was allowed to leave – badly injured after suffering hours of ill-treatment. But medical help came too late. Rosenfeld died on April 2. Two years after his violent death, the town acquired his house and turned it into a clubhouse for the Hitler Youth. After 1945, his relatives added another line to the inscription on his tombstone “Er fiel von Mörderhand.” – “He died at the hands of murderers.”

If you turn to your left, you’ll see a portrait of Rudolf Sinsheimer – who was also beaten and physically abused. His wife Peppi, who had a heart condition, went into cardiac arrest and died the same day.

So the Creglingen pogrom left three people dead.

If you’d like to know what happened to Rudolf Sinsheimer after these events, please select the next commentary.