Juni Aktion
June 1938 Nazi anti-Jewish arrest operation in Germany
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The Juni-Aktion (English: June Action) was a wave of arrests carried out in Nazi Germany in June 1938. It formed part of the wider police campaign known as Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich and is regarded as an important step in the radicalization of the persecution of Jews in 1938.[1][2]
Background
In 1938, Nazi persecution policy intensified markedly. The arrests carried out in the spring and summer of that year were new in their systematic and Reich-wide character. German memorial institutions describe the campaign as directed against a heterogeneous group of people stigmatized by the regime as "asocial, including poor and homeless people, the unemployed, previously convicted persons, as well as Jews and Sinti and Roma.[3][4]
Within this wider campaign, the Juni-Aktion referred specifically to the June 1938 arrests of Jews, especially men whom the authorities classified as criminal or asocial. Historiography treats the operation as a distinct stage in the anti-Jewish escalation before the November pogrom of 1938.[5][6]
Research on the broader June arrests has emphasized that the operation was driven less by an intention to punish allegedly "harmful elements" through exclusion than by the desire to exploit all available labor power as completely as possible. According to Hermann Kaienburg, the SS used the Juni-Aktion to obtain the labor force it considered necessary for profitable camp-based work.[7]
The campain was started with the Schnellbrief from Reinhard Heydrich at June 1st 1938.
Arrests and deportations
According to the Sachsenhausen Memorial, more than 10,000 people were arrested in the Reich-wide mass arrests of 1938 and sent to concentration camps. In June 1938 alone, more than 6,000 people were deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp under the accusation of asociality.[8][9]
The Buchenwald Memorial states that, in the April and June arrest waves combined, the police sent more than 4,000 men to Buchenwald. Under the cover of the operation, hundreds of Sinti and Roma and more than a thousand Jews were deported there for the first time.[10]
At the local level, the selection of those to be arrested as allegedly "work-shy" or "asocial" involved active participation by the mayors of towns and municipalities.[11] Jäckel also notes that many of those arrested in the context of the Juni-Aktion had never come into conflict with the law. Many had likewise not attracted attention through any special motivation to evade gainful employment, but were merely labelled "work-shy". Instead, some of those affected became victims of personal intrigues by regime-loyal National Socialists.[12]
Historical significance
The Juni-Aktion is considered significant because it linked the broader police campaign against people labelled asocial with a sharpened anti-Jewish policy. Scholarly work on the subject treats it as an important precursor to the more openly violent anti-Jewish measures of late 1938.[13][14]
At the same time, the June arrests have also been interpreted as part of the SS's attempt to secure a larger reservoir of forced labor for concentration camp enterprises and to increase their profitability.[15]
German memorial institutions also emphasize that many prisoners persecuted under the label asocial remained marginalized in public remembrance for decades after 1945.[16]