TIMEBASE 1937

1937 January 1 The Polish law banning Jewish ritual slaughter (Shechita) goes into effect.

1937 January 1 All Jewish-owned employment agencies in Germany are ordered closed.

1937 January 2 Britain and Italy sign Mediterranean agreement.

1937 January 6 The Zionist Organization in Poland votes to support the Polish Socialist parties in all future elections. (Edelheit)

1937 January 7 Heiress to the Dutch throne, Princess Juliana, marries Prince Bernhard.

1937 January 10 The Polish government dissolves the Warsaw Jewish kehilla.

1937 January 12 The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem testifies before the Peel Commission in Palestine.

1937 January 15 The Schuschnigg government proclaims amnesty for Austrian Nazis.

1937 January 16 The Gestapo orders all Jewish youth organization in Germany dissolved.

1937 January 17 Germany prohibits foreign warships from free passage through the Kiel Canal.

1937 January 20 President Roosevelt is inaugurated and begins his second term.

1937 January 22 German citizens are asked not to patronize Jewish doctors.

1937 January 23-30 The second Stalinist trial of "counterrevolutionaries" (treason trials) is held in Moscow. Thirteen of the fifteen defendents receive death sentences.

1937 January 24 Goering sorders Heydrich to organize emigration of Jews still residing in Germany.

1937 January 30 The Peel Commission returns to Britain.

1937 January 31 The Danzig Senate creates a secret police force modelled on the Gestapo.

1937 January Hitler formally abrogates the Treaty of Versailles.

1937 February 1 The Nazis issue a decree prohibiting Herman citizens from accepting any form of Nobel Prize.

1937 February 2 In reply to a question from the Reich Minister of Science, Education, and National Culture about the number of Jews and half-Jews supported by the DFG, its president reports: "None at all." (Science)

1937 February 4 President Roosevelt begins an effort to "pack" the Supreme court.

1937 February 10 Nazi officials close all Catholic schools in Bavaria.

1937 February 16-22 Hermann Goering visits Poland.

1937 February 18 Under a new German conscription law, half and quarter Jews will be eligible for military and labor service.

1937 February 18 Czechoslovakia signs an agreement with Sudeten Germans guaranteeing them broader minority rights.

1937 February 27 France establishes a ministry of defense.

1937 February 27 Anti-Jewish violence again breaks out in Romania.

1937 March The Duke of Windsor leaves the Rothschild's castle in Austria. (Cowles)

1937 March 5 German officials announce that the nation's film industry is completely cleansed of Jews.

1937 March 14 A papal encyclical, Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow) is published, dealing with the condition of the Catholic Church in Germany and condemning Nazi racism.

1937 March 21 Mit brennender Sorge, is read from the pulpits of all Catholic Churches in Germany on Palm Sunday. It has been smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messenger throughout the nation. "With deep anxiety and with ever-growing dismay" Pius XI says he has watched the tribulations of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Concordat of 1933 is now being openly violated, and the conscience of the faithful oppressed as never before. True belief in God, the Pope declares, is irreconcilable with the deification of earthly values such as race, people or the state. Important as these are in the natural order, they can never be the ultimate norm of all things. Belief in a national God or a national religion, similarly is a grave error. The God of Christianity cannot be imprisoned "within the frontiers of a single people, within the pedigree of one single race." (Lewy)

1937 March 21 The Polish Senate passes a law making it illegal for Jews to manufacture, distribute or sell Catholic religious materials.

1937 March 22 The Gestapo confiscates all copies of the Pope's encyclical it can find. Twelve print shops are soon closed and dispossessed without compensation for having printed the encyclical letter. Strong protests are lodged with the bishops and the Vatican. (Lewy)

1937 March 25 Italy and Yugoslavia sign a nonagression and neutrality pact.

1937 March 26 The Pope publishes an encyclical entitled Divini Redemptoris, condemning atheistic Communism.

1937 Spring A decision is made that all German colored children are to be illegally sterilized. After the prerequisite expert reports are provided by Dr. Abel, Dr. Schade, and Professor Fischer, the sterilizations are carried out. (Science)

1937 April The Duke of Windsor visits Germany at the invitation of Adolf Hitler. Windsor meets privately at least twice with Rudolf Hess. (Wolff Hess, Missing Years)

1937 April 6 Hitler orders the resumption of the immorality and foreign exchange trials against Catholic clergymen, which had been halted shortly before the Olympic Games in the summer of 1936.

1937 April 9 The Gestapo seizes all B'nai B'rith lodges in Germany.

1937 April 11 A new order from the German Ministry of the Interior deprives all Jews of municipal citizenship.

1937 April 12 The German Foreign Ministry sends a note of protest to Papal Secretary of State Pacelli describing the Pope's encyclical as a call to battle against the leadership of the German state and a grave violation of the Concordat (See March 21). (Lewy)

1937 April 13 The Gestapo prohibits all Jewish public meetings for 60 days with the exception of synagogue services.

1937 April 16 Swiss officials announce that they are refusing to grant permanent resident permits to German Jewish refugees to avoid flooding the labor market.

1937 April 20 General Franco declares Spain a totalitarian state and assumes dictatorial power.

1937 April 20 The International Order of B'nai B'rith is banned throughout Germany.

1937 April 26 German warplanes from the Luftwaffe's Condor Legion destroy the Spanish (Basque) town of Guernica during what is described as the first air bombardment of an undefended town in history. More than 1,600 civilians are killed.

1937 April 30 Pacelli replies to Germany's note of protest. "The Holy See," the Papal Secretary declares, "which has friendly, correct, or at least tolerable relations with states of one or another constitutional form and orientation, will never interfere in the question of what concrete form of government a certain people chooses to regard as best suited to its nature and requirements. With respect to Germany also, it has remained true to this principle and intends so to continue." (Lewy)

1937 May On his arrival in America, Walter Krivitsky, Stalin's chief of Military Intelligence, reveals to the U.S. State Department the full details of Stalin's purges. Krivitsky claims Stalin is determined to forge a pact with Hitler and has turned against the old Bolsheviks and officers of the Red Army because they are opposed to any alliance with Hitler. "Stalin, in the name of anti-fascism, destroyed the anti-fascists," Kivitsky says.

1937 May The curriculum vitae of Karl Maria Weisthor (Wiligut) is sealed after confidential scrutiny. Weisthor's psychiatric history remains a closely guarded secret. (Roots)

1937 May Anarchists and radical Marxists in Spain stage an abortive revolution in Barcelona that is opposed by the Socialists and Communists. The Communists, who as the conduit for Soviet aid had become increasingly influential on the Loyalist side, lead a drive to repress the ultra-leftist elements. Many are tortured and murdered.

1937 May 1 President Roosevelt signs the third U.S. Neutrality Act.

1937 May 6 The airship Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed while maneuvering to land at Lakehurst, N.J. Claims and speculation that it was sabotaged have never been supported by solid evidence.

1937 May 9 A Nazi decree bars Jews from receiving university degrees.

1937 May 14 German Jews are forbidden to play music by Beethoven or Mozart during Jewish cultural concerts.

1937 May 20 Professor von Verschuer, now at the University of Frankfurt, mentions in a letter to Professor Fischer his report for Rosenberg, "Proposals for the Registration of Jews and Part-Jews". (Science)

1937 May 28 Neville Chamberlain, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is elected leader of the Conservative Party of Britain, forms a new cabinet and becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain, replacing Stanley Baldwin.

1937 May 30 Anti-Franco Spanish forces bomb the German battleship Deutschland off Ibizia, killing 26 and injuring 71.

1937 May 31 The German fleet shells the Spanish city of Almeira in retaliation for the attack on the Deutschland.

1937 June 3 Duke of Windsor marries Wallis Simpson (Warfield) in Tours, France.

1937 June 8-9 Air raids on Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao and Valencia cause heavy damage and loss of life.

1937 June 11 The Soviet "Generals' Trials," the third Stalinist purge trial, opens in Moscow.

1937 June 12 Soviet Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski and seven other Soviet military leaders are executed in Moscow. It is said that Tukhachevski had confided his plan for a coup against the Communist regime to military officials while visiting London and Paris and that Moscow was immediately informed by its agents. (Sturdza)

(Note: Others claim Tukhachevski was set up by Reinhard Heydrich who used forged documents from WWI to frame Tukhachevski in an effort to disrupt the Soviet military and weaken its leadership.) (Secrets)

1937 June 12 Heydrich issues a secret directive ordering Jewish "race-violators" into "protective custody" after they have served their prison sentences.

1937 June 13 The Swiss state of Geneva bans the Communist Party.

1937 June 16 General Lucjan Zieligowski in a speech to the Polish Senate declares, " there is no place in Poland for the Jews."

1937 June 16 The German People's Church (Deutsche Volkskirche) is accredited as the official Nazi church.

1937 June 16 New Stalinists purges are held in Belorussia.

1937 June 20 The Czech government institutes compulsory military training for all citizens from six to sixty. Actual military call-up is from seventeen to thirty.

1937 June 21 Leon Blum resigns as premier of France. Camille Chautemps forms a radical Socialist government, with Blum as vice premier.

1937 June 28 The Ninth Congress of the International Chamber of Commerce opens in Berlin.

1937 June 30 The French legislature votes to give emergency powers to the Chautemps government.

1937 Summer Otto Rahn makes a second expedition to Montsegur.

1937 July 1 The Gestapo again arrests Pastor Martin Niemoeller, leader of the German Confessional Church in Berlin.

1937 July 2 Severe limitations are put on the number of Jewish pupils (already partially restricted in 1933) allowed to attend German schools. (Persecution)

1937 July 2 Aviatrix Amelia Earhart and her copilot Fred Noonan disappear over the Pacific Ocean during the last leg of an attempted flight around the world.

1937 July 6 A German decree forbids Jews from studying medicine.

1937 July 7 A Chinese-Japanese military conflict at Marco Polo Bridge near Peking provides the pretext for an all-out Japanese campaign of conquest in China.

1937 July 7-8 The Peel Commission publishes its plan for the partitioning of Palestine into two separate states: one Arab and the other Jewish.

1937 July 15 The German-Polish Convention of May1922 expires along with its protection of Jewish minority rights in Upper Silesia. The Jews of Upper Silesia are now exposed to the full rigors of Nazi rule. (Atlas)

1937 July 19 Ettersberg, a new concentration camp, originally designed for professional criminals, is opened in central Germany. Its name is changed to Buchenwald on July 28. (Edelheit)

(Note: Other sources say it was opened on July 16.)

1937 July 24 An order segregating Jews from "Aryans" in German health resorts and public baths is issued.

1937 July 27 The trial of five German Jews accused of a 1929 ritual murder (blood libel) opens in Bamburg.

1937 July 28 Japanese troops occupy the Chinese capital of Peking.

1937 July 30 The League of Nations Permanent Mandates Commission discusses the Peel Commission's plan for partitioning Palestine.

1937 August Jews are accused of sacrilege at Humenne in Czechoslovakia. (Atlas)

1937 August 3 Italy bars foreign Jews from universities and institutions of higher learning.

1937 August 3-16 The Twentieth World Zionist Congress meeting in Zurich debates the partitioning of Palestine as proposed by the Peel Commission.

1937 August 4 Most Jewish teachers are barred from teaching in Italian schools.

1937 August 5 The Nazi Propaganda Ministry forbids any further mention of Leo Schlageter or Horst Wessel in the Catholic press. This is another attempt by Goebbels and his staff to put an end to the Catholic practice of "borrowing" Nazi heroes.

1937 August 8 The World Zionist Congress debates the partitioning of Palestine. Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion defend the plan.

1937 August 8 The Romanian government prohibits the singing of Hatikvah (the Zionist national anthem) in Jewish schools.

1937 August 11 Hjalmar Schacht has a loud argument with Hitler at Obersalzberg. (Schacht was one of the few people who dared to shout at Hitler.) After a closed-door meeting, Schacht tenders his resignation. Hitler, obviously upset, insists he must reconsider.

1937 August 13 The German Ministry of Education orders all Germans knowing a foreign language to register with the government.

1937 August 18 The Romanian Orthodox Church urges the Romanian people to fight the "Jewish parasite."

1937 August 23 The Radical Peasants Party criticizes the antisemitism of the Romanian Orthodox Church. (Edelheit)

1937 August 29 China and the Soviet Union sign a treaty of nonagression.

1937 September Brothers of the Hungarian branch of the Order of the New Templars (ONT) found the small priory of Szent Kereszt below Vaskapu Hill at Pilisszentkereszt in northern Hungary. (Roots)

1937 September 4 Nazi officials order all Rotary Club chapters in Germany dissolved.

1937 September 5 Hjalmar Schacht takes a leave of absence from the Economics Ministry. That same month he tells Max Warburg he can no longer keep M.M. Warburg in the Reich Loan Consortium. (Warburgs)

1937 September 9 Sachsenburg concentration camp is closed.

1937 September 10 Opening of the conference at Nyon dealing with issues created by the Spanish Civil War.

1937 September 12 The Romanian National Soldiers Front calls on Romanian citizens to deal with the "Jewish Plot."

1937 September 13 An Anti-Jewish month is proclaimed by Polish antisemitic groups.

1937 September 25-28 Mussolini and Hitler meet in Berlin.

1937 September 27 The Romanian government prohibits Zionist fundraising nationwide.

1937 October 4 Amin al-Huseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, flees Palestine for Lebanon.

1937 October 5 President Roosevelt, in a major speech in Chicago, warns Americans against continued isolationism, speaking of the need to "quarantine the aggressors." A strong negative response to this call indicates the strength of isolationist sentiment in the U.S.

1937 October 13 Germany guarantees Belgian independence.

1937 October 14 Professor von Verschuer protests to Reich Minister of Justice Gürtner that his expert opinion incriminating the defendant in a "race dishonour trial," has not been accepted and that, as a result, the defendant has been set free. (Science)

1937 October 16 The Hungarian National Socialist Party is founded in Hungary.

1937 October 16 Police in Czechoslovakia disrupt a Sudeten German Party rally at Teplitz. Party leader Konrad Henlein demands that ethnic Germans receive autonomy.

1937 October 20 Felix Warburg, international banker, philanthropist and Jewish communal leader dies in the United States. (Edelheit)

1937 October 20 Jewish market stalls and shops are picketed by Nazi police.

1937 October 21 The Catholic Center Party is eliminated and the Nazis take absolute control of the city.

1937 October 23 Nazis and Nazi sympathizers in Danzig stage a massive pogrom.

1937 October 27 Jewish access to public bathhouses in Danzig is limited to specified hours, one day a week.

1937 October 28 The Spanish Loyalists (Socialists) government escapes to Barcelona.

1937 October 29 The League of Nations High Commission complains that he is powerless to act in the city's internal affairs.

1937 November General Kutiepov, chief of the former Nationalist Russian Army in exile, is kidnapped by Communist agents on the streets of Paris, taken to Moscow and executed.

1937 November 1 The Swiss Court of Criminal Appeal quashes the judment of the lower court's verdict on the authenticity of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in its entirety. (See May 14, 1935)

1937 November 3 The Danzig Senate isolates Jewish merchants and seizes their bank deposits, charging them with tax evasion.

1937 November 5 The Hossbach Memorandum: Hitler outlines secret plans and contingencies in the event of a future war, telling his generals that he intends to destroy Czechoslovakia. Some historians contend that this document's historical significance has been greatly exaggerated. Others, such as William Shirer, emphatically state that it was on this date that Hitler first imparted his decision to go to war to the Commanders-in-Chief of the three armed services. (Shirer I)

1937 November 5 Germany and Poland sign an agreement regarding treatment of each other's minorities.

1937 November 6 Italy joins the German-Japanese Anti-Comintern Pact.This grouping prefigures their later alliance structure in World War II.

1937 November 8 Goebbel's propaganda Ministry sponsors Der Ewige Jew (The Eternal Jew) an anti-Jewish exposition under the direction of Julius Streicher. It closes on February 4, 1938.

1937 November 9 Japanese troops occupy Shanghai.

1937 November 13 The Jewish Socialist Party (Bund) celebrates the 40th anniversary of its founding in Poland.

1937 November 16 Only in rare cases can Jews now obtain passports for foreign travel. (Persecution)

1937 November 17-21 A meeting between Lord Halifax and Hitler is said to mark the beginning of Britain's so-called "appeasement" policy toward Germany. They meet to discuss the deteriorating situation in Czechoslovakia.

1937 November 18 A catholic official refuses to allow permission for the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs to consult diocesan files on Jewish conversions and mixed marriages "on grounds of pastoral secrecy." (Up to this time, the Church had closely cooperated with the government in determining and sorting out those of Jewish descent. It was only when Catholics of Jewish descent were threatened that the Catholic church balked. Yet, even then, they continued disclosing the names of non-Catholics of Jewish extraction right through the war years, when the price of being Jewish was deportation and death.) (Lewy)

1937 November 24 Hjalmar Schacht is removed as German minister of the economy and is replaced by Walter Funk. Schacht remains president of the Reichsbank.

1937 November 26 Nazis begin "Aryanizing" Jewish business in Danzig.

1937 November 28 The Bar Association in Lublin (P) restricts the number of Jews in the legal profession to a percentage corresponding to the ratio of Jews in the total population.

1937 November 29 Pro-Nazi Sudeten German deputies resign en masse from the Czech parliament, precipitating a national crisis. (Edelheit)

1937 December 1-17 A French diplomatic mission visits Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia in an attempt to strengthen the French alliance system against Germany.

1937 December 5 Spanish Loyalists (Socialists) begin a last-ditch counteroffensive in the civil war. (Edelheit)

1937 December 6 The Dutch People's Party, a new antisemitic political party, is established in Holland.

1937 December 8 The Iron Guard (Legionairies) announces the opening of a chain of cooperative stores aimed at underselling Jewish stores and forcing them out of business.

1937 December 11 Italy withdraws friom the League of Nations.

1937 December 12 Japanese forces sink the U.S. gunboat Punay in China's Yangtze River. Japan apologizes and agrees to pay reparations.

1937 December 12 Communists receive 98% of the vote in the first elections to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

1937 December 13 Nanking, the Nationalist capital falls to the Japanese.

1937 December 14 Himmler orders all those "identified" as "asocial" incarcerated in concentration camps.

1937 December 15 Polish bishops call for segregation of all Jewish students in Polish elementary schools.

1937 December 20 General Ludendorff dies. Hitler attends his funeral.

1937 December 20 The Jewish Party in Romania fails to win a single seat during parliamentary elections.

1937 December 21 Britain officially repudiates the Peel Commission's Partition Plan.

1937 December 28 King Carol of Romania appoints Octavian Goga and Alexander Cuza to head a National Christian Party government. During its 44 days in power it issues numerous anti-Jewish decrees.

1937 December-January General Miller, General Ktiepov's successor, is kidnapped in Paris and later executed in Moscow.

1937 Otto Rahn's second book Luzifers Hofgesind. Eine Reise zu Europas guten Geisten (Lucifer's Court in Europe) is published in Leipzig.

1937 After four months service with the SS-Death's Head Division Oberbayern at Dachau, Otto Rahn is given leave to devote himself fully to writing until his resignation from the SS in February 1939. (Roots)

1937 John D. Rockefeller appoints William S. Farish president and CEO of Standard Oil of New Jersey.

1937 Nikolai Bukharin is arrested by the Soviet secret police..

1937 Joseph Kennedy, Sr., is named U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. His sons, Joe Jr. and John, both work as international reporters for their father.

1937 Leon Trotsky publishes The Revolution Betrayed, an expose of Joseph Stalin and his regime.

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