Curio Cabinet

Who said court documents had to be boring? Researchers recently translated writings on a 1,900-year-old piece of papyrus, and it has proven to be one of the oldest true crime documents in existence. The papyrus was originally found in the Judean Desert along with the Dead Sea Scrolls, and was recently rediscovered by researchers in a storeroom, after going overlooked for quite some time. It was originally marked as being written in Nabataean, an ancient Aramaic language, but when sifting through the piles of papyrus, researcher Hannah Cotton immediately recognized the labeling as erroneous. Indeed, the papyrus actually contained 133 lines of ancient Greek text, used by Romans to document court cases. One of the researchers said in a statement from the university, “This is the best-documented Roman court case from Judaea, apart from the trial of Jesus.” However, the document isn’t anything as grandiose as a religious text or a murder trial. Instead, it describes a Roman court case against Gadalias and Saulos, two would-be tax dodgers who allegedly tried to circumvent Roman laws. The case took place around 130 C.E., after the two forged documentation regarding the buying and selling of slaves. Tax laws aren’t fun regardless of what century you live in, but in ancient Rome, they could be a matter of life or death. The Roman Empire punished tax cheats with years of hard labor and even executed them on occasion. Interestingly, the papyrus was written by the prosecuting lawyer in the case, and the detailed document is giving historians insight into what legal proceedings looked like in ancient Rome and Roman-occupied territories. Unfortunately, much of the document is incomplete since portions of the papyrus were degraded over time. This case seems to have gone from solved to unsolved. If only true-crime podcasters had existed in ancient Rome.

Throughout the centuries, history reminds us of a sobering fact: prejudice can make ordinary people do terrible things. Last week was the 80-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. But even before that particular concentration camp was built, the Nazi regime carried out a series of escalating, violent attacks against minorities in Germany and other occupied territories, often with the help of ordinary citizens. These attacks were spurred on by violent Nazi rhetoric, and were meant to terrorize Jewish people, LGBTQ people, political dissidents, and anyone else that the regime considered an “enemy.” Perhaps the most infamous of these attacks came to be known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass.
 
On November 7, 1938, 17-year-old Polish-German Jew Herschel Grynszpan shot German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris, France. Grynszpan’s attack on the previously-obscure diplomat was motivated by the deportation of Polish Jews into “relocation camps” just weeks prior. Grynszpan’s family were among those taken to the camps. Vom Rath died a few days after he was shot, on November 9, when a Nazi gathering in Munich happened to be celebrating the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler’s 1923 failed coup attempt. Chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels seized the opportunity to rile up outrage, using the news of Vom Rath’s death as a rallying cry for Nazi supporters. Goebbels called for violent action against the Jewish population of Germany and Austria, and Nazi officials spread the orders across their territories. Over the course of two nights, countless homes and businesses owned by Jewish families were vandalized or destroyed, leaving the streets littered with shards of broken glass and rubble. 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps at Sachsenhausen, Dachau, and Buchenwald, while around 100 Jews were murdered in the outbreak of violence. When news of the events reached the U.S., President Franklin D. Roosevelt condemned the violence and cut diplomatic ties with Germany, though the move wasn’t widely supported, as many in the U.S. favored a policy of appeasement. Kristallnacht was one of the Nazi Party’s first major steps toward the planned eradication of Jews and other minorities in Europe, and further legislative measures restricting their rights were passed in the following days and months. For the Nazis, propaganda was just another weapon to be put to violent use.

Some historical events are like explosions—they happen in an instant. But others, even some of the most impactful, happen like a series of falling dominos. With events like these, it’s easier to see their true impact in hindsight. This month in 1933, one such event happened in Germany, when Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. The political occurrences leading up to Hitler’s appointment, as well as those directly following it, fell perfectly in place to allow the Nazis to seize control of the country.
 
The end of WWI saw the end of the German Empire, and its successor, the Weimar Republic, was forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles in June of 1919. The fledgling nation was made to accept responsibility and pay reparations to the parties involved in the war. Between the reparation payments and the debt accrued during the war, the Weimar Republic was in dire economic straits by the early 1920s. There was also plenty of social unrest in the wake of WWI, which gave rise to political extremism on both ends of the spectrum. On one side was the German Communist Party, which quickly gained popularity, while another emergent group was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, soon to be referred to as the “Nazis.” At first, the Nazis struggled to gain political ground or capture the public’s attention, though they had the support of their own paramilitary group, the Sturmabteilung SA (storm troopers), consisting mostly of WWI veterans. Then, in 1923, Adolf Hitler, a rising figure in the Nazi Party, along with WWI general Erich Ludendorff, made a failed attempt to overthrow the government in what would come to be known as the Beer Hall Putsch. Ludendorff was already a renowned war hero popular with many Germans, but the failed coup was Hitler’s first step toward political fame. Using the sudden burst of notoriety as a springboard, Hitler wrote his autobiography, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) by dictation while spending a year in prison.
 
When the Great Depression hit global markets at the end of the 1920s, the Nazi Party capitalized on the severe economic hardships facing everyday Germans. They blamed an ineffectual government, the communist movement, Jewish financiers, and modernist cultural movements for the decline of Germany. The party promoted the idea that minority groups, including Jews, immigrants, disabled people, and LGBTQ+ people were draining the nation’s wealth. By 1933, the Nazi Party had the largest single share of votes in parliamentary elections, and they began to throw sand into the governments’ gears, stymying any efforts by parliament to pass meaningful legislation. At the same time, they decried the passivity of parliament and the inefficiencies of democracy.
 
Then, in 1933, in a vain attempt to court Nazi support, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hindenburg hoped that it would lead to the Nazi party’s cooperation in governance. Unfortunately, no such cooperation emerged. When Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler declared himself Führer (leader) of Germany and began the systematic dismantling of the country’s democratic apparatus. He then cemented his power by attacking or imprisoning his critics and rivals, including the Sturmabteilung SA, which he began to consider a liability due to their violent activities on the street. The systematic purge of Hitler’s enemies, including his former supporters from June 30 to July 2, 1934, came to be known as the Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the Long Knives). It was met with widespread support by the greater German populace. Throughout the rest of the 1930s, Hitler and the Nazi Party expanded their military in direct opposition to the Treaty of Versailles and began claiming neighboring territories based on the supposed populations of ethnic Germans living there. To avoid conflict, European leaders opted for a policy of appeasement in 1938, allowing Germany to claim Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland in exchange for a pledge not to seek further territory.
 
Of course, Nazi Germany didn’t stop at Czechoslovakia, which they invaded the following year. Soon came Poland and before long Nazi crosshairs were aimed at the rest of Europe. It took the Nazi Party almost 20 years, but they eventually came to hold absolute power by undermining the principles of democracy and eroding the safeguards that held it in place. While most see the Nazis’ rise to power as a cautionary tale, some modern dictators have used it as a playbook to be copied, making Nazi ideology a threat to this day.