Kristallnacht must never be forgotten

Rabbi Ammos Chorny

Imagine one morning your family is awakened by shouts and screams. Suddenly, the police break into your house. They start breaking the china, destroying the furniture and shattering windows, while showing great satisfaction in their destruction. Then the family is told to get dressed and is taken to the police station for no apparent reason. On the way, you see your synagogue in flames and your neighbors throwing rocks at it.

This was the scene on Nov. 9, 1938 in Germany and Austria throughout that night and the following days as mobs burned synagogues; destroyed Jewish homes and businesses; vandalized Jewish hospitals, orphanages and cemeteries; and dragged thousands of Jews into the streets to be beaten and humiliated. The Germans later called this night “Kristallnacht” — The Night of Broken Glass — because of the tons of shattered glass scattered throughout German cities. Due to the tremendous violence, which started on that night and grew even more dreadful as time went on, Jews mark that date as the beginning of the Holocaust.

On Nov. 7, 1938, the Third Secretary of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst Von Rath, was murdered by Herschel Grynzpan, a 17-year-old German-Jewish refugee, who wanted to avenge his parent’s expulsion, together with 15,000 other Polish Jews to Zbonszym. The Nazis used the murder as an excuse to incite the mobs and riots that began the “final solution!” The German government hoped to disguise the violence of those two days as a spontaneous protest on the part of the “Aryan” population but, in reality, Kristallnacht was organized by Nazi chiefs with technical skill and precision. The Gestapo and storm troopers were ordered to incite mob riots throughout Germany and Austria. The week after Kristallnacht, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Berlin reporter called that night “The worst outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in modern German history.”

Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the plan to rob Jews of their possessions and forever erase them from the German scene. From this fateful date on, Jews had no standing in the German economy, and independent Jewish life, with the dismissal of cultural and communal bodes and the banning of the Jewish press, was all but obliterated.

During Kristallnacht, over 1,100 synagogues were destroyed, as well as 7,500 Jewish businesses and countless Jewish homes. Several hundred Jews were killed and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps where thousands more died.

Ronald Lauder, former U.S. Ambassador to Austria and head of a foundation that has spearheaded Kristallnacht commemorations said, “There is no date in the whole Holocaust like November 9, 1938. It showed, for the first time, the horror the Nazis were planning.” Many historians trace a pattern of events occurring before that night, suggesting that such an atrocity was inevitable. In 1933, when the Nazis took power, German antisemitism adopted quasi-legal forms. New forms of discrimination began with the introduction of the Nuremberg laws of 1935, mandating the alienation of the Jews throughout Germany. Systematically, Jews were stripped of their civil rights and began to be isolated through humiliating identification measures.

One may ask, how could the world stand by and allow such a disaster to occur? The Fascist regimes in Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Poland approved of this pogrom and used it to put forth their own antisemitic policies. The three Great Western powers — Great Britain, France and the United States — did nothing to save the Jews. Here, President Roosevelt and his administration expressed their shock over the terrible events but, when it came time to save any refugees, the U.S. government refused by asserting to have no intention to allow more immigrants into the country.

As we look back at the events that triggered the Shoah, every Jew should be cautious and alert. In a powerful speech before members of the New York Jewish Civil Service organization, Ambassador Ronald S. Lauder warned that the ignorance and fear that bred antisemitism in Hitler’s Third Reich is being evidenced once again.

“Today in America, we hear…those same charges,” he comments, “There are those who tell us that Jews control the banks and the press. There are those that would tell us Jews control Congress and the government. Kristallnacht teaches us many things, among them, that we must remain vigilant and not permit even the smallest seed of antisemitism to take root. We cannot be complacent in the face of antisemitism and its distortions. Quiet little lies grow to be big loud lies,” the Ambassador remarked.

Rabbi Ammos Chorny serves at Beth Tikvah.