Because of increasing anti-Semitism in the United States and the world, an awful anniversary must be remembered today. “The idea of a pogrom against the Jews of Germany was in the air” in the late 1930’s in Germany. Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” was a major turning point, November 9-10, 1938.
From the report “Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,” released in Washington D.C. in 1946: “In all districts as many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing jails. For the time being only healthy men not too old should be arrested. Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as fast as possible. Special care should be taken that the Jews arrested in accordance with these instructions are not mistreated.”
Here’s a report dated November 13, 1938, from the Swiss consul in Cologne. “Organized partiers moved through Cologne from one Jewish apartment to another. The families were either ordered to leave the apartment or they had to stand in a corner of a room while the contents were hurled from the windows. Gramophones, sewing machines, and typewriters tumbled down into the streets. One of my colleagues even saw a piano being thrown out of a second-floor window. Even today (November 13) one can still see bedding hanging from trees and bushes.”
From Heinz Lauber’s 1981 history of Kristallnacht: “Apart from the 267 synagogues destroyed and the 7,500 businesses vandalized, some ninety-one Jews had been killed all over Germany and hundreds more had committed suicide or died as a result of mistreatment in the camps.”
When I write something, I usually like to finish with a nice ending, but we can’t tie this Minute up, put a bow on it, and mindlessly move on to other things. Quotations are from Saul Friedländer, “Nazi Germany and the Jews,” Volume I, 270, 274, 277, and 276.
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