Due to anti-Semitism and persecution in the 1920s and 1930s , Königsberg 's Jewish population was in decline by the time of the Nazi Party took control through the '' Machtergreifung '' in 1933 . In that year there were only 3,500 Jews living in the city . Anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany , enforced by Erich Koch , restricted business and led many Königsberg Jews to emigrate , mostly to the United States and Great Britain . Michael Wieck wrote of the discrimination he suffered from the Hitler Youth . At the opening of the 1935 Ostmesse , Hjalmar Schacht criticized the persecution to no avail . Persecution led the Jewish community to create a separate Jewish school for 82 students in April 1935 ; it grew to encompass 180 students in 6 classes with 4 teachers by October 1935 . In February 1938 the propaganda paper '' Der Student der Ostmark '' published the names of 201 Jewish business , 38 doctors , and 22 lawyers remaining in the city , which was used by the Sturmabteilung during the Night of Broken Glass in November 1938 . The New Synagogue was burned down , the Orthodox Adass Jisroel synagogue and two cemeteries were vandalized ; the Jewish school was attacked but reopened afterwards , as was the Orthodox synagogue , where Michael Wieck became Bar Mitzva in mid-1941 . Many of the Jewish residents were shipped to Nazi concentration camps within Germany
Night of Broken Glass
Kristallnacht
History of the Jews in Königsberg