This photograph shows SA paramilitaries forcing Michael Siegel to march barefoot through the streets of Munich, and with his trouser legs slashed off. Siegel is pictured carrying a sign reading "I will never again complain to the police". This is one of the first images from the early 1930s to draw attention to the surge in antisemitic violence and discrimination in Germany at that time. It was instrumental in raising awareness about the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis. The words written on the sign occasionally vary as the photo has been repeatedly retouched in the intervening years.

Siegel had gone to lodge a complaint with the Munich Police on behalf of a client of his, Max Uhlfelder (more information on Max Uhlfelder). On the previous day, Nazi Storm Troopers, also known as Brownshirts, had smashed in the windows of Uhlfelder’s department store. After his arrival at the police station, Siegel was badly beaten by members of the SA, and suffered a burst ear drum and the loss of several teeth. He was then paraded through the streets of Munich by the Brownshirts as a warning to others.

Michael Siegel and his wife Mathilde managed to emigrate to Peru in 1940. Their two children, Hans-Peter (1921–2010) and Maria Beate (*1925), had already departed for England with the Kindertransport rescue effort in 1939, when Maria Beate (Bea) was 14 years old. The children stayed in England after the war. Michael Siegel died in Lima in 1979.