Although individual actions against Jews were forbidden, the participants in a training evening of the NSDAP local group Solingen-Dorp let themselves be carried away to a pogrom in the night from July 12 to 13, 1941. After a subsequent drinking bout, some of the men, heavily intoxicated, moved on to the “Judenhaus” (Jewish house) at Pfaffenberger Weg 190.
The windowpanes were smashed with stones, accompanied by threats and shouts of abuse. Walter and Herta Brauer were brutally beaten and finally managed to escape from the house. Vera Stock and Gisela Freireich were beaten and bloodied with sticks in their beds and then dragged down the stairs. Two other women were luckily able to find a hiding place in the house just in time.
On his own initiative, the responsible constable Hubert Küpper saw to the transport of Vera Stock, who had suffered life-threatening head injuries and broken bones, to the hospital. Although the affair made waves as far as Berlin, the perpetrators were not legally prosecuted.
The prosecution of the Pfaffenberger Weg pogrom was one of the first trials after the war. Although it could not be proven that the accused acted intentionally, the court nevertheless emphasized the particular brutality of the mistreatment. The perpetrators were sentenced to prison terms ranging from ten months to two and a half years.
Timeline Solingen
- ↑ Deportation from Solingen to Theresienstadt – July 21, 1942
- ↓ The Pogrom Night in Solingen – November 9, 1938