Abstract
In addition to Nazi party members, SA stormtroopers, the SS, and the
Hitler Youth, the National Socialist Motor Corps
[Nationalsozialistische
Kraftfahrerkorps or NSKK] also participated in riots during the
Night of Broken Glass
[Kristallnacht]. On the night of
November 9, Sebastian Platzer, head of the NSKK driver training school
in Regensburg, was ordered by his superior, Wilhelm Müller-Seyfferth, to
set fire to the local synagogue together with the NSKK men under his
command. In characteristic fashion, the NSKK, the SA, and the SS fought
over who would get to carry out the arson attack. Arrests of Jewish
families began directly thereafter, and the next morning – under the
supervision of Müller-Seyfferth – the SA and the NSKK forced the Jewish
men to do degrading drills. Finally, all of the Jewish men in Regensburg
were led to the train station on a “march of shame”
[Schandmarsch] under a poster that
read “Exodus of Jews” [Auszug der
Juden]. Some were deported to the Dachau concentration camp; others
were taken to the Regensburg prison. A total of 224 Jewish men from the
entire administrative district of Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate
were sent to Dachau. The Nazis’ use of the phrase “Exodus of Jews” was
particularly cynical since it alluded to the exodus of Jews from Egypt,
a central liberation theme in Jewish tradition. This phrase was used in
later waves of persecution and killings.