Kristallnacht: 70 Years Later

Seventy years ago tonight, hundreds of groups of marauding Germans were tearing through Berlin and other cities in Germany vandalizing, looting, and in many cases burning to the ground Jewish synagogues, businesses, and private homes. Later, this horrible night of terror would be called Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass” because of the constant sound of the shattered storefront windows of the Jewish-owned businesses. German Jews had been suffering one indignity after another since the Nazis took power five years earlier, but Kristallnacht was a major turning point in what would soon lead to the expulsion and murder of millions of European Jews. During this well planned event, 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, hundreds of ancient synagogues were destroyed and burned down, and thousands of Jewish businesses and homes were attacked.

It boggles my mind whenever I hear people say that German citizens and the rest of the world didn’t know what was happening to the Jews until after the war. The events of November 9, 1938, were fully reported in every newspaper on the planet and the Nazi officials in 1938, well before the start of World War II, made no bones about their plans to get rid of the Jews.

Following increased restrictions placed on Jews, the Nazis had been looking for an excuse to ramp up their persecution in a more organized and violent way. On November 7, 1938, a 17-year-old German-Jewish kid named Herschel Grynszpan, distraught over his family’s expulsion from Germany, walked into the German Embassy in Paris, pulled out a gun, and fired at a junior diplomat, Ernst vom Rath. The diplomat died of his wounds two days later which gave Joseph Goebbels just the opportunity he was looking for to set into motion a country-wide attack on Germany’s Jews and their property, all under the pretense of making the Jews pay for vom Rath’s death.

I just spent several hours pouring through the American newspaper accounts of this ugly night. (Hey, it's a beautiful day in Los Angeles, what else should I be doing?) Here are a few observations that came to mind as I read the articles.

Many people spoke up, others were shockingly silent. Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, initially got credit in the American press for stopping the mayhem and sending in the police to protect the Jews even while he defended the brutal attacks. “The justified and understandable anger of the German people over the cowardly Jewish murder of a German diplomat in Paris found extensive expression last night,” Goebbels said. “A final answer to the Jewish assassination will be given to Jewry by way of legislation and ordinance.” Reports of the crowds of onlookers included many people laughing and applauding, some seeming quite upset about what was happening and trying to help the Jewish business owners, and others shouting “Kill the Jews! Why not hang the owner of the store in the window!” A young American woman on the streets of Berlin that night said she saw one Jewish man dragged from his shop, chased by a crowd of German boys, and viciously beaten to death. She then saw a second Jew beaten by a single man as the crowd looked on and did nothing. Looting soon began everywhere. In some cases, Nazis gathered up items from the smashed store windows and threw them into the crowd, shouting “Here are some cheap Christmas presents.”

The first notes of protest were sounded by the executive committee of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, who described the assassination of the German diplomat in Paris as a poor excuse for the Nazi campaign. In the U.S., there was no immediate comment on the incident from President Roosevelt. The first American officials to decry what happened were New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey and former Governor Alfred Smith who attacked Germany in a radio broadcast sponsored by the Anti-Nazi League to Champion Human Rights. Dewey said he wished to appeal to world opinion to rebuke a “dictatorship gone mad.”

“We stand appalled,” he said, “by the sight of what has happened in Nazi Germany. If you saw a gang of cowardly ruffians set upon a helpless man in the streets, and proceed to beat him, you would not long remain silent. If you saw a fanatical mob pillage and burn a church or synagogue, you would not long remain silent. If you saw a brutal band drive helpless families from their homes, you would speak out promptly. Multiply these incidents by thousands and you have the sickening spectable of Nazi Germany. No amount of lame explanation by the German Minister of Propaganda can make the picture any different.”

Other people who immediately spoke out included famous feminist Carrie Chapman Catt who sent telegrams to the State Department asking the government to protest the action. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Louis Bromfield wanted to help the fleeing Jews. He suggested that the Mexican peninsula of Baja California could be used as a haven for the persecuted people. Others proposed that up to a million Jews might seek refuge in Northern Rhodesia. The National Negro Congress asked President Roosevelt "to provide in America a free haven for the oppressed Jewish people." John P. Davis, national secretary of the congress, wired Mr. Roosevelt that "Negro people in America, representing a minority in our democracy, are deeply concerned over the inhuman barbarism being practiced on the Jewish minority in Nazi Germany."

Another public figure who spoke out about the events that November was former President Herbert Hoover. After expressing his outrage at the German government and reminding them how he worked so hard to save the German people from famine when he was President, Hoover said the current attacks endanger the whole world.

“It is still my belief,” he added, “that the German people if they could express themselves would not approve these acts against the Jews. But as they cannot so express themselves it is the duty of men everywhere to express our indignation not alone at the suffering these men are imposing on an innocent people but at the blow they are striking at civilization itself.”

President Roosevelt finally weighed in on November 16th with a slightly guarded statement:

“The news of the past few days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United States. Such news from any part of the world would inevitably produce a similar profound reaction among American people in every part of the nation. I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a 20th century civilization.”

And yet diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Germany were not severed. People like Dewey and Hoover (both Republicans, by the way) continued to speak out much more forcefully than Roosevelt or anyone in his administration.

 

World governments played right into Hitler’s hands, just as he predicted. In retrospect, Hitler and the Nazis seemed to be testing the waters in November 1938, and as they got away with one atrocity after another, their attacks on the Jewish population increased exponentially. In 1938, Hitler still claimed all of the Jews were free to leave and he encouraged the nations of the world to take them in if they cared about them so much. In the days following Kristallnacht, the Nazis continued to heap miseries on the remaining Jews of Germany. In addition to a boatload of new restrictions that affected all aspects of their lives, they fined them $400,000,000 for the vom Rath assassination and said the Jews had to pay for the repair all of their businesses and homes but that they were no longer allowed to own them. Oh, and any insurance settlements that were received as a result of the damages would go straight into Nazi coffers. Every day the Nazi government got bolder in stating exactly what they would do to the remaining Jews in Germany and German-controlled Austria. Jews across the country were desperate to get out, including the thousands of families whose homes were destroyed on November 9th and whose husbands and fathers were arrested. Daily, the refugees reached the borders of Germany and were systematically turned away by French, Belgian, Dutch, and Czech officials. American Jewish groups begged the U.S. government to let the Jews come to this country but American officials said that under no circumstances could they go beyond the current quota for German immigrants to this country. That quota was 30,000 people a year and by November 1938 it had already been reached.

Many people worked desperately to find a solution. In addition to negotiations to buy Baja California from Mexico for $10 million as a haven for the Jews, plans were drawn up for saving the imperiled people by shipping them to Alaska, Madagascar, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Australia, and several different countries in Africa. A wealthy woman in San Francisco actually offered 1500 acres of land she owned in Oregon for the refugees. Of course, none of these rescue plans ever got off the ground and despite some well-known exceptions here and there, the world basically turned its back on the Jews of Europe. Hitler rightfully blasted the United States and the other world powers for their hypocrisy.

Even Joseph P. Kennedy, the future President's father who was then the U.S. Ambassador to Britain and was not known for his love of Jewish people, tried to get the British government to help the Jews in the days following Kristallnacht. His pleas fell on deaf ears. The most he got out of them was a promise that the government would gladly give temporary shelter to German Jewish refugees providing the United States and other countries would provide permanent homes for them at a later date (which the U.S. refused to do and Kennedy didn’t push). Meanwhile, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was still trying to avoid war through appeasement with Nazi Germany and maintaining a cordial relationship with Adolf Hitler.

On November 14, a bunch of Jews ousted from their homes during Kristallnacht, reached the border of Holland and actually begged on their knees to be allowed into the country. They were turned away. Similar scenes occurred at the French and Belgian borders. The Czech government let a group of refugees in and then shipped them back to the Reich two days later. Throughout this crisis, Jewish leaders appealed to Britain to relax their restrictions for allowing Jews to enter Palestine. Again, the doors were shut. Hitler must have laughed himself silly.

Anti-Semitism was alive and well in the United States...and still is. In the midst of the public outcries following Kristallnacht, there were reports of increased anti-Semitic incidents right here in the U.S. At a huge meeting at Madison Square Garden in New York, thousands of members of the German-American Bund defended the activities of the German government and railed against world Jewry. American citizen Fritz Kuhn spoke to the crowd, calling FDR “Frank D. Rosenfeld” and proclaiming that “if the United States is to avoid communism, the Jews in this country must be driven from their high posts in government, finance, and education, as they have been in certain European countries.” In Los Angeles, famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson ignored protests from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and invited anti-Semitic Gerald B. Winrod to act as preacher at her Angelus Temple on the Sunday following Kristallnacht. Winrod was the leader of a group called the Defenders of the Christian Faith and in his sermon he condemned the “coterie of international Jewish bankers who ruled the Gentile world by the power of gold.” Winrod believed that Hitler would save the world from Communism and that Franklin Roosevelt was a devil linked to the Jewish-Communist conspiracy. 

Winrod died in 1957 but his son and grandchildren are still going strong in their attempts to spread virulent anti-Semitism at their churches in Gainesville, Missouri, and southeast Alaska. To quote from a recent publication, if I can stomach it: “Every Jew is a pervert by religion…Reports in Jew dailies about child molesters are stories about Jews; for Jews are the child molesters. Without these sexual perversions, Judaism would perish! Jews entice Gentiles to sin by attacks of immorality. Then by ill-use of God’s Law, Jews turn these poor Gentiles, through guilt and despair, to hatred for God. Jews learn to hate God, and want to slay him. They murdered Him once, but not again; so they lust to kill and destroy His Christians, and all humanity, and all His creation. Judaism is the devil’s religion based on hatred for God, and perpetuated by the dark secret Talmudic doctrine of incest and sodomy of infants.” It goes on from there. Sigh.

I could continue but it’s too depressing. "We must not be silent about condemning anti-Semitism," German chancellor Angela Merkel declared today during 70th anniversary commemorations in Berlin. Merkel said that understanding the lessons of the nation's past were crucial in confronting the current increase in xenophobia and racism. Charlotte Knobloch, head of German's Central Council of Jews, told a gathering at Berlin's restored Rykestrasse Synagogue tonight that Germans must fight against far-right extremism in all its forms. 

While many people in this country and abroad worked feverishly to help the Jews following Kristallnacht, they were unable to move their governments to act when there was still time. We eventually defeated the Nazis, of course, and liberated the death camps, but I truly believe the United States and other countries could have saved millions of lives if they had acted more forcefully. So let’s mark this seventieth anniversary by recognizing that there are still plenty of people, groups, and governments who would persecute and scapegoat certain segments of society. Let’s be careful to not to repeat what we did in 1938: express revulsion and then close our eyes super tight. 

Comments

[Leslie]

Danny, very disturbing. Some historians think that FDR was single mindedly trying to win a war and refused to be sidetracked by what was happening to the Jews. I don't believe it. By the way, I notice you have somewhat of an interest in Jews and the Holocaust. Had it long? Anyway, thank you for prompting me to honor this tragic anniversary.

[OldOldLady Of The Hills]

A wonderful post, Danny. And the parrallels (?) to the present are kind of scary...No, I don't mean the looting and detroying of homes and businesses, but the ideology of the Religious Right and the passing of Prop 8 here in California and the speaking of gays as an abomination, etc....What's next?

It is depressingly fascinating to think that so many countries COULD have done something, yet didn't--including our country! As has been said many times before: "WE MUST NEVER FORGET". Your post is important on so very many levels and not the least of which is reminding us to remember what happened 70 years ago and be aware of the dangers of the real possibility that these kinds of things could happen again.

[Jen]

I have never understood why humans have such capacity to be inhumane. And just downright stupid. Rational thought seems to give way to primal beastial response far too easily. We might vow to never forget but we don't seem to be able to stop these things from happening either (Sudan? Sierra Leone?)

I was shocked the day after the election to read a diatribe comparing the rise of Obama to the rise of Hitler and predicting dire times ahead for the white race in America. Why, after all this time and widespread availability of primary education, do we persist in having such stupidity and intolerance? With widespread exposure to media and other points of view why can't we counter this basic fear of the "other"? If anyone has a solution I'd sure like to know. My kids will be draftable in another decade...

[Judy]

I remembered this day, and last night reminded my husband who grew up without grandparents, aunts or uncles due to these inhuman Nazis. His mother, stuck in Austria with her mortgage broker Mother could not easily leave, and after her mother was worked to death, was arrested (for refusing to tell where the family jewels were)and later put in Ravensbruck. His father, having been recognized at an early Nazi rally for blowing his car horn blocking speakers' voices in Rockhausen Germany, had already escaped to Belgium where he started a business before escaping one step ahead of the Nazis til he was able to leave the Iberian peninsula claiming, he was a friend of Bernard Baruch (his cousin had the same name as Roosevelt's advisor.His family wouldn't believe how bad Hitler was until it was too late. I wish we could stop the murders in Africa, and not being able to do it, reminds me of what happened in Europe during WW2. Our lives went on quite normally when all those atrocities were taking place.

[churlita]

That is so tragic, and has happened on different levels all over the world.

Back when Jesus was alive, all of those so-called Christians would have hated him, because he was Jewish. It's so dumb, and horrible.

Since my girls are part Jewish, part Mexican, and part Irish, and we live in Iowa, we talk about ethnic oppression a lot. It's such a sad history, I hope it doesn't become a part of our future too.

[jason]

Thank you, Danny. That was as profoundly educational and enlightening as it was disturbing and sad. I learned from you today, even if it's from a dark time in our history, and learning is always good even when it's distressful.

Would that mankind could learn from these tragic eras the lamentable and unforgivable lesson of what comes from such hate and bigotry. But we don't learn, do we? We go right on choosing new targets when the old are taken from us by enlightenment, if not also--or only--by law.

[Dave]

I truly believe Germany owes an eternal debt to the Jewish people, and Chancellor Merkel's comments are welcome. But your post reminds me that it isn't just Germany who owes that debt, it's every country that turned a blind eye to the horrors that were occurring.

Jen asks how such stupidity and intolerance can continue in this day and age. And I feel it's because we give it voice. We do a disservice when we put a Holocaust survivor on television with a Holocaust denier. They are not equal. But by allowing the denier equal presence, we give credence to their beliefs.

Freedom of speech is something I cherish. I truly do. But screaming "fire" in a public building when there is none is the same, to me, as allowing hate mongers the privilege of spewing their vile on radio or television.

When someone says something that is outrageous and hate filled it is our duty to stand up to them.

If we don't, then we risk repeating Germany in the 30s and 40s all over again.

[Ken Kinsley]

Sorry to go slightly off-topic, but right after I read your post on Kristallnacht I stumbled by accident onto a story about the Mormon church's attempts to baptize by proxy Jews who died in the Holocaust. Am I the only person who didn't know about this? Or is this merely one of many bizarre behind-the-scenes things happening that everyone knows about but gets lost in the shuffle?

Between this and their support for Prop 8 I have a new-found lack of respect for the LDS.

Here's a link to the story for anyone who's clueless like me.

[Danny]

Wow, that is bizarre, I hadn't heard of that practice. What's up with the Mormons lately? Is this their revenge for "Big Love?"

[Steph]

I echo the thanks, Danny. I really got a lot out of your article. And as an FYI, the mormons are pretty bad - look at what they've done to scouting in america for one thing. It's a great example of a minority with a lot of money exercising an undue amount of influence through the perpetuation of fear and hatred. Oh, and all in the name of God. Why does God hate so many people but only whisper about it in the ears of a few (who are to spread the word)? It just begs the question, if you were god wouldn't you make yourself a happy dude?

[david]

There's an amazing exhibit now at the U. Chicago's Regenstein Library (my home away from home) that shows how German Jews looked down on the Eastern European brethren as the lice-ridden, corrupt sort that gave all Jews in Germany a bad name. After World War I, many Eastern European Jews found themselves in Germany, thanks to their flight from destroyed shtetls or redrawn borders.

The documents in the Regenstein exhibit show how German Jews thought that raising the shtetl Jew to full German status would change the German mind about the Jewish population. German Jewish efforts to (alternately) lift up and distance themselves from their brethren foreshadowed how Germany's ambivalence toward **all** its Jews was turning into something more sinister.

The Jews who considered themselves German first -- fully assimilated and acculturated Jews, accomplished professionals, esteemed leaders; even people who had a Jewish grandparent -- were marched off to the camps, never to return.

Thanks for a great summary of a low moment in modern history.

[Dave]

I was surprised by Ken's comments above. Not that the practice occurred, as it's a common Mormon practice to baptize dead family members. But I am surprised that the agreement reached over 10 years ago wasn't as solid as I thought it was. I was under the impression that the LDS church stopped baptizing those who died in the Holocaust.

For the spokesperson of the church to claim that having to stop baptizing these victims somehow restricts their religious practices would be laughable if it weren't so painful to survivors and family members.

The LDS church really should just change their beliefs on this. After all, they had little problem changing their stance on polygamy after the government forcefully objected to the practice.

And more recently (1978) they finally changed their beliefs and allowed black skinned people to become full members of their church.

Yeah, I think the least they could do is keep their faith to themselves.

[Elisabeth]

It boggles my mind whenever I hear people say that German citizens and the rest of the world didn’t know what was happening to the Jews until after the war.

Me too! And I am personally ashamed to have, on tape, my own mother (who is 87 and lives in northern France), and her husband, my stepfather (who is 94), asserting that "they knew nothing of what was happening to the Jews until after the war." I personally cannot believe that assertion. No matter what. And I lost a lot of the respect I may have had for my mother and her husband when they uttered those words. Maybe their denial is a coping mechanism against an insurmountable amount of guilt for knowing, and having done nothing at the time.

Thanks for a great post, Danny.

[Robert W. Cox]

Danny,

I was looking for my friend and colleague's blog My Bitter Agenda by Skip Williamson on Google when I click on your blog. I did a little 36 page graphic Novel recently dealing with some of this from within the German High Command resistance movement. Below is a little advanced satirical pr I did. I hope you are not offended by it. I was not going to post this but when I read everything i thought maybe I would, of course you can take it down if you think it is inappropiate. I am an old underground cartoonist from Chicago and i did my piece in 1983-84. But when I reproduce it this month in 2008 it noticed it was really like 1938, well here is my analogy to your post:
Once upon a time, a slick, little known Politician became the Prime Minister of a very powerful nation in Europe, a nation of scientific genius in every field known to mankind, a nation so far ahead of the rest of the world that it seemed there would be no stopping it from doing whatever that Nation wanted to do. So clever was this leader that his popularity soared throughout the Nation by leaps and bounds. Only in a few quarters of that Nation was there any outcry or mistrust in the Leader and his Party. Those few that stood up and denounced the Leader became subject to investigation, interrogation and incarceration.
Not long after this carefully planned ascent to Power came about that the rest of the World began to wonder what the fuss was about? Seeing their moment in the Sun had arrived, the Leader began holding hugh mass rallies to demonstrate the strength and Power of the Party he represented and the kind of "New Order" that he wanted for the country and the World. This was the image that they wanted to project to the whole world what the future would be like, with their Nation and their Party and their ideals as the Supreme Nation in all areas of life. So this grand scheme of things got kick started by assassinating a certain segment of gay members of their own Party who threatened the success of the "movement" towards the goal of this Great New Society of God Men.
Rather than arrest each one of this publicly embarrassing, unruly "perverted" segment of the Party individually and then holding trumped up trials for treason or insurrection,or whatever, the Leader said "let's just spring on them in the middle of the night in their gay spas and kill them in cold blood". The Leadership of the Party agreed that this would be the best solution to the " Immoral Gay Threat" the Nation faced in the coming months and years. So, they did it, taking their own party members, who once had been friends and allies, by surprise, at gun point executing all in one night, many in their beds with their lovers who had to be killed as well.
The people of the Nation watched and went about their business as though it was commonplace now that the Future had arrived and that their new Party would have to do things like this now and in the future to maintain the new State from threats from within and from without.
Again, a few in the Nation stood their ground against this kind of criminal violence by the Party to their own peril. But most of the people wanted to hear the positive side of these negative criminal acts and thus entered the greatest Spin Doctor of all time, or maybe one of the best if not the best of the Best.
The Spin Dr. explained to the Nation in common language, everyday over the pro Party Media outlets that these steps were necessary to insure the Peace and Security of the Nation as a whole as well as for the safety of the Leader, now commonly accepted as the Beloved Leader, the Adored Leader, and even the Worshipped Leader.
His Worship, the Leader himself accepted His new role as Supreme Head of The New God Men Party, the NGMP as it was affectately known by insiders and began hosting hugh Worship Services at Night through out the nation to glorify Himself and the NGMP. They were called the TorchLight Services of NGMP because they used fire lit torches in their parades lighting up the night like a Macabre Fourth of July parade. The difference was, they did it almost as often as they could, not just once a year on Halloween.
Then the NGMP decided to pass laws against a rather large wealthy minority Race of people in the Nation whom they (NGMP) despised and hated. Instead of just announcing that they would raise taxes in the near future on this small group of very rich minority citizens, the Party decided that acquisition by confiscation of that wealth was faster and more effective. Again a small group of non Party government officials that formed Resistance cells, began to make plans to overthrow the NGMP at the earliest opportunity. Of course the biggest obstacle was the NGMP Secret Police which was constantly looking for any and all opposition to their efforts to create the Perfect God Man State which, by the way, denied the existence of all other Gods including the God of the despised wealthy minority Race, accepting only the Party's own God, The Leader Himself.
So the Resistance within the bureaucracy of the pre-existing government, had to work, on the one hand, as though they were all for the NGMP Party's new laws and attitudes about racial superiority and hatred of the despised wealthy minority Race, while seeking legal grounds to overthrow the Party and arrest the leaders as well as their God Man Leader, the Beloved One with out being caught by the Secret Police in the process.
Finally after five years of hard work putting together a strong case against the NGMP for trying to involve the Nation in an insane effort to start another World War, the Resistance cells' top leaders in the Justice Ministry, the Army and The Navy saw their moment to arrest and try the Leader and top NGMP followers before the Supreme Court in the summer of 1938. What happened next will shock and stun the World...............But it did not end there......