If there is one word, when spoken
or read, that invokes terror, injustice, tyranny, and yes even perseverance in the minds of the listener or reader, it is Holocaust. For the Jewish people who lived, died, and survived the Holocaust, “Crystal Night or Night of the Broken Glass” refers to Kristallnacht, a 48-hour reign of terror where violent mobs, made up of Nazi officials, destroyed thousands of Jewish homes and hundreds of synagogues. The Kristallnacht riots, conceived and perpetrated by Nazi officials, took place seventy years ago, on November 9–10, 1938 throughout Nazi Germany.
According
to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization,
the Kristallnacht riots marked a major transition in Nazi policy, and were, in-many
ways, a harbinger of the “Final Solution.” Nazi anti-Semitic policy
began with the systematic legal, economic, and social disenfranchise-
ment of the Jews. This was accomplished in various stages (e.g. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which, among other things, stripped German Jews of their citizenship.) One of these steps involved the deportation of Polish Jews who were residing in Germany (est. 20,500). On the night of October 27, 1938, 18,000 Polish Jews were deported, but were initially refused entry into Poland by the Polish authorities. Caught in between, the Jews were forced to camp out in makeshift shelters. Upon hearing that his family was so trapped, 17 year-old Herschel Grynszpan, a student in Paris, shot the third secretary of the German Embassy, Ernst vom Rath, whom he mistook for the ambassador. This assassination served as a welcome pretext for the German initiation of Kristallnacht.
This clear and visible action forebodes to the world the unspeakable actions that would follow under the Nazi government. Historians debate the point in time that actions by a few could have changed the course of history. What we do know now is that if we do not speak out against injustice, history is doomed to repeat itself. What can you do?
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Above: Torah scrolls desecrated during the Kristallnacht pogrom.
Left: Jewish prisoners paraded by the SS and local police through the streets of Baden-Baden, Germany on November 10, 1938.
If you saw a fanatical mob
pillage and burn a church or synagogue you would not stand silent . . .
— Thomas E. Dewey
The New York Times
November 12, 1938, p. 4
According
to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, an international Jewish human rights organization,
the Kristallnacht riots marked a major transition in Nazi policy, and were, in-many
ways, a harbinger of the “Final Solution.” Nazi anti-Semitic policy
began with the systematic legal, economic, and social disenfranchise-ment of the Jews. This was accomplished in various stages (e.g. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which, among other things, stripped German Jews of their citizenship.) One of these steps involved the deportation of Polish Jews who were residing in Germany (est. 20,500). On the night of October 27, 1938, 18,000 Polish Jews were deported, but were initially refused entry into Poland by the Polish authorities. Caught in between, the Jews were forced to camp out in makeshift shelters. Upon hearing that his family was so trapped, 17 year-old Herschel Grynszpan, a student in Paris, shot the third secretary of the German Embassy, Ernst vom Rath, whom he mistook for the ambassador. This assassination served as a welcome pretext for the German initiation of Kristallnacht.
This clear and visible action forebodes to the world the unspeakable actions that would follow under the Nazi government. Historians debate the point in time that actions by a few could have changed the course of history. What we do know now is that if we do not speak out against injustice, history is doomed to repeat itself. What can you do?
Previous Next
Above: Torah scrolls desecrated during the Kristallnacht pogrom.
Left: Jewish prisoners paraded by the SS and local police through the streets of Baden-Baden, Germany on November 10, 1938.
If you saw a fanatical mob
pillage and burn a church or synagogue you would not stand silent . . .
— Thomas E. Dewey
The New York Times
November 12, 1938, p. 4
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Honors Holocaust Remembrance Day 2008. "Do Not Stand Silent: Remembering Kristallnacht 1938"(background is a faded image of a people walking past a broken window of a Jewish-owned business)
Photo Credits: Courtesy of Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs'
and Heroes' Remembrance Authority (left); Courtesy of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum (right); Courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration,
College Park/USHMM (background image)