By April 1933 the NSDAP had organised a boycott of Jewish businesses in the town, whilst the 1938 November pogroms (the so-called "Reichskristallnacht") finally led to anti-Semitic acts of violence. The synagogue on the "Westpromenade" was devastated by mobs commanded by the SS and SA, Jews were arrested and Jewish businesses in the town were plundered and demolished. In March/April 1941 Jews all over Germany were evacuated from their homes and concentrated in so-called Jew houses ("Judenhäusern"), to which they were only permitted to take the absolute essentials from their property. In Erkelenz on 1 April 1941 the Nazis forced the remaining Jews in the town of Erkelenz to leave their homes and take up residence in the "Spiess Hof", a farmstead in Hetzerath, from where they were deported in 1942 via the Izbica Ghetto to the extermination camps.