History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust

Headline: Nazis Splash Yellow Paint on Jew Stores
Sub-Headline: Holiday Crowds Follow at Their Heels as Berlin Invokes Boycott

Publication Date: Saturday, April 1, 1933
Historical Event: Nazis Boycott Jewish Businesses
This database includes 4,061 articles about this event
Tags: Gannett full page downloadable; Early Acts of Persecution
Article Type: News Article
Newspaper: The State Journal/Lansing State Journal
Location: Lansing, Michigan
Page Section and Number: 1
Author/Byline: AP
Article Text: BERLIN, April 1 (AP) — Brown shirted nazis with buckets of paint tramped through Berlin's business section Saturday, stopping at each shop run by a Jew and splashing across the show window a sign identifying the place.

At their heels followed holiday crowds. The day of the boycott ordered by the national socialist party against all Germany's Jews, coinciding with "April fool's day" and Bismarck's birthday, brought more people downtown in the balmy sunny weather than had been seen for a long time.

Each time the brown shirts stopped to hang up a placard crowds clustered about them. "That's right," they said. "freeze them out, then we'lI take over their shops."

There had been no disorder anywhere up to the end of the afternoon. Few Jews were seen, but the rest of the populace seemed to accept the situation In a picnic spirit.

Nazi headquarters prescribed a black placard with a splash of yellow paint to designate Jewish shops, but the boycotters used their imagination.

"Quarantine" Sign Frequent
The black and yellow "quarantine" sign was frequently seen, but there were others reading: "Danger—Jew Store," and "Attention—Beware the Jew," with a red skull and crossbones scrawled below the warning.

On several Jewish shops the nazis hung placards reading: "If a traitor you would be, purchase from the Jewry."

The boycott began on schedule at 10 o'clock but at that hour many Jewish shops remained open despite the signs on their windows. The big department stores and the Jewish chain stores all over Germany did not open.

By government order the boycott ends Saturday night. Then, if the "atrocity propaganda" published abroad does not cease, the campaign will be renewed on Wednesday.

Thursday Joseph Goebbels, government propaganda chief, said there were indications that the reports abroad of persecution of the Jews were ebbing. The statement was taken as an indication that the government does not expect that resumption of the boycott on Wednesday will be necessary.

Pickets shuffled back and forth in front of Jewish stores which remained open, but they freely admitted foreigners who could identify themselves as such.

The stock exchange was picketed, too, but Jewish brokers did not go to their offices and most of the non-Jew members of the boerse wore their brown nazi shirts. They did a good day's business.

The boycott extended to the library of Berlin university and the national state library, where no Jews were admitted and foreigners only after they had been satisfactorily identified.

Ten big Berlin department stores and the Tietz chain stores, which alone employ 48,000 persons throughout Germany, remained closed, how-
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History Unfolded Contributor: Anne R.
Location of Research: Newspapers.com (https://www.newspapers.com)