Sturmabteilung

The Sturmabteilung (SA) is presented as a Nazi paramilitary force implicated in two episodes of persecution: the 1933 roundup of residents in Köpenick and the removal of Roma and Sinti from Berlin before the 1936 Olympics. In both, its actions are connected to the regime’s use of coercion and, in 1936, to the concealment of persecution from foreign visitors.

Identification and Role

The account refers to the organization as the Sturmabteilung and describes its members as SA storm troopers. It places them alongside the police in the Berlin arrests of Roma and Sinti, and identifies SA storm troopers as agents in the earlier violence in Köpenick. The evidence does not detail the organization’s internal structure or leadership; its role here is defined by these actions.

The 1933 Violence in Köpenick

In June 1933, SA storm troopers rounded up hundreds of Köpenick’s Jews, Social Democrats, and Catholics. Ninety-one people were tortured to death. Their bodies were disposed of in the Spree and the Langer See, waters that would later seem tranquil to visitors. The account sets this persecution against the pleasant surface of the town, showing how violence could be concealed by an apparently ordinary landscape.

Arrests Before the 1936 Olympics

In the hours before dawn on the day described, police and SA storm troopers entered the homes of Roma and Sinti families living in Berlin’s shanties and wagons and arrested them. The families were marched to a detention camp at a sewage-disposal site in Marzahn, away from the foreign visitors arriving for the Olympics. The account states that they would later be sent east to death camps and murdered.

Persecution and Public Appearance

The two episodes place the SA within a broader pattern of persecution under Nazi rule: the 1933 operation targeted several groups in Köpenick, while the 1936 arrests targeted Roma and Sinti as Berlin prepared to receive Olympic visitors. In the latter episode, removing the families from view was part of a wider effort to present the city as welcoming while hiding the reality of Nazi persecution. The contrast makes the organization’s significance in the narrative concrete: its coercive actions helped enforce that hidden reality.