Regensburg – The “Shame March” of 10 November 1938

On 10 November 1938, the morning after Kristallnacht, a shocking and humiliating event took place in the Bavarian city of Regensburg.
Nazi authorities forced all Jewish men from the city into a public march through the streets to the railway station.
This march was also known as the ‘Schandmarsch’ (Shame March).
This forced procession was mockingly referred to by the Nazis as the “Auszug der Juden”  literally “the exodus of the Jews” a cynical reference to the biblical story of the Exodus.

This photograph shows the procession being led by a man carrying a large banner with this slogan, flanked by Nazi officials and members of the SA and NSKK.
Behind the banner walk the arrested Jewish men, some in civilian clothing, visibly surrounded by armed escorts.

The march was designed as both a propaganda tool and a means of public humiliation.
The Nazis sought not only to physically remove the Jewish residents of Regensburg, but also to break them socially and morally in full view of their non-Jewish fellow citizens.
Such parades were often documented by propaganda photographers and served to reinforce and spread antisemitic stereotypes.

For most of those forced to take part in this march, the day did not end with release, but with deportation to prisons or concentration camps. The event in Regensburg illustrates how, even before the large-scale deportations and mass murder, the Nazis created a climate of fear, humiliation, and isolation, the first steps on the road to the Holocaust.