Special Report
USHM M, cou r tesy o f Dr.
ON THE COVER
Left: On Nov. 10, 1938, Germans pass by the broken shop window of a Jewish-
owned business that was destroyed during Kristallnacht in Berlin.
Right: View of the destroyed interior of the Hechingen synagogue in Germany
the day after Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht
Recalling the horror of the 'Night of Broken Glass' 70 years ago.
Stories by Esther Allweiss Ingber
Special to the Jewish News
W
ith the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party in 1933, Jews became a focus of
restrictive and punishing edicts. Jews had fit comfortably within German society for
generations; within years, they were forbidden to work at their professions or attend
school and were excluded from associating with the "Aryan" Germans. The Nuremberg Laws of
Sept. 15, 1935, stripped Jews of their German citizenship.
Jewish security took a terrifying blow on Nov. 9-10, 1938 — 70 years ago — when anti-Jewish
pogroms broke out across Germany, Austria and occupied Sudetenland. On what became known
as Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), Nazi agents, some in plain clothes, met in pre-arranged
places to initiate destruction in Jewish communities. The police just watched, as instructed.
By Nov. 11, history records that nearly 100 Jews were dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses had been
looted and destroyed, 275 synagogues were burned, and 30,000 Jewish men had been arrested
and removed to the German concentration camps Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.
Josef Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, incited the riots to "express the indignation of
the German people" when diplomat Ernst vom Rath died Nov. 8 of gunshot wounds. Days earlier,
17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Jew living in Paris, learned that his parents,
sister and brother in Hanover were among the Jews forced from their homes and now miserable
refugees in Zbaszyn at the German-Polish border. Young Herschel shot vom Rath at the German
consulate.
"Grynszpan did that as a reaction to what had happened to his family," said Rabbi Charles
Rosenzweig, founder and CEO of the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. "He
saw a bad sign of what was about to happen to the Jews. To say that he caused what happened
[Kristallnacht] was an excuse'
Looking Back
Kristallnacht was condemned in many quarters. Many Germans stayed home during the pogroms,
but the London Daily Telegraph also reported on "fashionably dressed women clapping their hands
and screaming with glee, while respectable, middle-class mothers held up their babies to see the
fun'
"My take on Kristallnacht is that it backfired on the Nazis;' said Dr. Sidney Bolkosky, University
of Michigan-Dearborn history professor and director of the Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral
History Archive. "The Nazis showed they were a violent organization;' the Oak Park resident said.
Rosenzweig of Southfield noted, "The Jews in Russia and Poland who had heard something
thought [the German terror] would be a passing phenomena; a mere pogrom.
"We now know that Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the Holocaust — the attempted
murder of an entire people' ❑
Dr. Sidney Bolkosky
Rabbi Charles Rosenzweig
Five handicapped Jewish prisoners, photographed for propaganda purposes,
arrived at Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany after Kristallnacht.
November 6 2008
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