After Hitler took office, Jewish jurists became the particularly hated targets of violent attacks. For example, on March 11, 1933, SA men stormed into the Breslau [Wroclaw] courthouse and assaulted Jewish lawyers and judges. Three days later, Breslau’s court president announced that henceforth only seventeen of a total of 364 Jewish lawyers would have access to the court. Similar episodes of violence and intimidation occurred throughout the country, and Jewish jurists and public servants were subject to arbitrary exclusions from professional activity in other places as well. On April 7, 1933, the Reich Ministry of the Interior under Wilhelm Frick coordinated these spontaneous measures by adopting the “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service” and the “Law Regarding Admission to the Bar.” From that point on, civil servants and lawyers who were considered politically unreliable or of “non-Aryan descent” were dismissed or forced into retirement.

On June 9, 1933, the President of the District Court in Tilsit, East Prussia, sent the following notice to a Jewish lawyer named Finkelstein. It relayed the news that Mr. Finkelstein’s name had been removed from the list of lawyers licensed at the local court in Tilsit on June 7, 1933, and from the list of lawyers licensed at the Tilsit district court on June 9, 1933.