Anti-Semitism reminder: Kristallnacht, 80 years ago

Anti-Semitism reminder: Kristallnacht, 80 years ago, must be remembered

...On Nov. 9 1938, mobs burned synagogues, destroyed Jewish homes and businesses, vandalized Jewish hospitals, orphanages and cemeteries, and dragged thousands of Jewish men, women and children into the streets, where they were beaten and humiliated. The Germans later called this night "Kristallnacht" — The Night of Broken Glass —- because of the tons of shattered glass that scattered throughout German cities, after it had taken place. The Jews began to call that date the beginning of the Holocaust because of the tremendous violence, which started on that night and grew even more dreadful as time had passed.

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. Herschel wanted to avenge his parent's expulsion, together with 15,000 other Polish Jews from Germany to Zbonszym. The Nazis used the murder as an excuse to start the mobs and riots that began the "final solution," the extermination of Jews.

The German government attempted 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 the Nazi chiefs and their thugs with technical skill and precision. The Nazi chiefs commanded the Gestapo and the storm troopers to incite mob riots throughout Germany and Austria.


Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the plan to rob the Jews of their possessions for the benefit of the Reich and then to sweep them forever from the German scene. Thereafter, Jews had no place in the German economy, and no independent Jewish life was possible, with the dismissal of cultural and communal bodes and the banning of the Jewish press.

During Kristallnacht, more than 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 the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Dachau, where thousands more died. Jewish Telegraphic Agency's Berlin reporter called that night, "the worst outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in modern German history."