Friday, June 1, 1934

Next week we have our final tests at school.

"Night of the Long Knives" - June 1, 1934

Also known as the "Röhm-Putsch", this was a purge that took place in Germany where
 the Nazi regime carried out a series of political executions. Most of those killed were
 members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary Brownshirts.

Friday, July 14, 1933

I went down swimming with Pauline to the Grove. Helen came down there with her mother and my mother.



Emanuel and Avram Rosenthal, killed at Majdanek

July 14, 1933: The Nazi Party is declared the only legal party in Germany.
The Nazis also pass a law stripping Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship. 



Wednesday, May 10, 1933

We played baseball outside today. Eilean and I walked home together down Monroe Avenue. Went out and played in evening.

In a symbolic act of ominous significance, on 10 May 1933, German students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of "un-German" books, presaging an era of state censorship and control of culture. On the night of 10 May, in most university towns, nationalist students marched in torchlight parades "against the un-German spirit." The scripted rituals called for high Nazi officials, professors, rectors, and student leaders to address the participants and spectators. At the meeting places, students threw the pillaged and unwanted books into the bonfires with great joyous ceremony, band-playing, songs, "fire oaths," and incantations. In Berlin, some 40,000 people gathered in the Opernplatz to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver a fiery address: "No to decadence and moral corruption!" Goebbels enjoined the crowd. “Yes to decency and morality in family and state! I consign to the flames the writings of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Gläser, Erich Kästner.”

Wednesday, April 26, 1933

Had the Civics test. I made 75 per cent on it. Took enrollment slips home for next year in Senior High (Central High School in Kansas City, Missouri).

April 26, 1933: The Gestapo was founded by Hermann Göring. 
A decree was issued creating the Secret Police Office (Geheime Polizei Amt)
which quickly became known as the GPA. But this abbreviation was far too
similar to the GPU abbreviation used by the Soviet Political Police in Russia. Thus,
the name was changed to Secret State Police (Geheime Staats Polizei). The actual
term 'Gestapo' was supposedly created by a Berlin postal official who wanted a name
 that would fit on a regulation-sized postal rubber stamp. Gestapo was derived from
seven letters within the full name Geheime Staats Polizei. Unknowingly, the postal
 official had invented one of the most notorious names in history.

Sunday, February 12, 1933

Went to Sunday School and church both. Went out and played. Slid down the hill on the sled some today.



*The Bloody Sunday Riot in Berlin was the very last left wing (and anti-Nazi) demonstration in Germany after the Nazis came to power. The police, acting on orders, fired on the demonstrators without warning, killing one Communist and wounding hundreds of citizens, including Jews.

Monday, January 30, 1933

Had swimming at school. Had that substitute yet. Ruth Ray didn't come by this a.m.

*Adolf Hitler, leader of the National Socialist Nazi Party, becomes chancellor of Germany.