Nevertheless, in the National Assembly (Reichstag) Election of March 1933, in the Berlin electoral district alone, the two principal left-wing parties, the SPD and the KPD (Communists), had between them mustered 1,377,000 votes.
One of those detained, 24-year-old carpenter and Reichsbanner member Anton Schmaus fatally shot two SA men in self-defense, with a third being killed by friendly fire, while being unlawfully arrested on the first day, which marked the outbreak of the violence.
After his successful escape from the persecutors that day, it was Anton's family who paid the price: his father, Johann Schmaus was first bestially tortured and then hanged in the shed behind the house in today's Schmausstraße 2 in Berlin-Köpenick to stage his suicide.
Anton Schmaus, who was an SPD party member and a trades union official, was eventually arrested, held in the police headquarters prison on Alexanderplatz, tortured, and then killed by a shot in the back during an alleged escape attempt in 1934.
[3] Government opponents risked their lives to try to expose the truth about the massacre, for instance using an illegal and ironically named underground Communist Party news sheet called "Luftschutz ist Selbstschutz".
[5] The scale and brutality of the events was at the time effectively covered up by government propaganda, while three SA men who had been killed were publicly mourned and posthumously promoted.
[1] On 25 July 1933, a wide-ranging General Pardon was issued by the Justice Minister Franz Gürtner in respect of this and other atrocities committed as part of the Nazi take-over of the country.
A large part of what remained of Germany, including East Berlin, now fell under Soviet administration: official interest in the "Köpenicker Blutwoche" resurfaced.
Between 5 June and 19 July 1950, a trial of 61 formally identified defendants took place in the Fourth Criminal Chamber at the District Court in East Berlin.