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Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
On November 9 and 10, we mark the seventieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass."
Rampaging mobs, spurred by the Nazi leadership, attacked Jewish targets throughout Germany and Austria.
The damage was immense. Hundreds of synagogues were burned to the ground. Thousands of Jewish-owned businesses were ransacked. Nearly 100 Jews were murdered in cold blood. And tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to Buchenwald, Dachau, and other concentration camps.
Their crime? They were Jews. It was as simple as that. Observant or atheist, Zionist or anti-Zionist, bourgeois or socialist, they were all subject to the same fate.
The Second World War had not yet officially begun. That would start on September 1, 1939, not quite ten months after Kristallnacht. But the Nazi war against the Jews was already well under way.
The goal was to rid Germany, Austria, and, eventually, all of Nazi-occupied Europe of Jews.
The Nazis almost succeeded. By the war's end in 1945, six million Jews, or two-thirds of European Jewry, had been annihilated. And ancient centers of Jewish civilization, from Vilna to Salonika, from Amsterdam to Prague, had been all but wiped out.
On this tragic anniversary, and every day, remembrance is essential.
We remember the Jews of Germany and Austria, who had contributed so greatly to what they believed to be their homelands, and who became the targets of a genocidal policy.
We remember the new alphabet of annihilation created by the Third Reich, which began with "A" for Auschwitz and ended with "Z" for Zyklon-B, the killing agent used in the gas chambers.
We remember the vibrant lives of Jewish communities across Europe that were extinguished in the flames of the Holocaust.
We remember the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the relentless Nazi pursuit of the so-called Final Solution.
We remember how many borders were so callously closed to Europe's Jews when there was still a chance to escape.
We remember that our own country, the United States, yielding to domestic isolationism and anti-Semitism, did far less than it could have to shelter Europe's Jews.
We remember a world without the one country, Israel, which could have provided a haven to all Jews seeking sanctuary.
We remember that earlier in 1938, prior to Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany had moved with impunity into the Sudetenland, then part of Czechoslovakia, and Austria, with barely a peep from the international community.
We remember that just weeks before Kristallnacht, the British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, traveled to Germany for the third time in two weeks and returned to London to assure the British public that there would be "peace for our time."
We remember the valiant forces of the Allied nations that ultimately destroyed the Nazi Reich and saved the world from Adolf Hitler's boast of a thousand-year reign.
We remember the military cemeteries across Europe, and beyond, filled with the graves of young soldiers who fought with such courage and bravery to defeat Nazi Germany and its allies.
And we remember the examples of those few who, at such risk, sought to shield Jews from harm.
Kristallnacht reminds us of the lurking capacity for inhumanity that resides in the human spirit.
Kristallnacht reminds us of nations that prided themselves on advanced levels of civilization, yet had a capacity for barbarism that exploded in ways never before witnessed.
Kristallnacht reminds us of the dire consequences when a targeted people is utterly without recourse to any means of self-defense.
Kristallnacht reminds us of the fertile soil of anti-Semitism, cultivated for centuries by religious, racial, and political ideologies obsessed with murdering, exiling, converting, segregating, or scapegoating the Jews.
Kristallnacht reminds us that there is a slippery slope from the demonization of a people, to the dehumanization of a people, to the destruction of a people.
And Kristallnacht reminds us that, in the face of evil against fellow human beings, never can silence be an option, indifference a strategy, or "never again" a mere slogan.
The American Jewish Committee remembers today, as we remembered yesterday and as we shall remember tomorrow.
1 | David L. Phoenix, AZ, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
How ironic. The greatest threat for another holocaust is Iran. The majority of my fellow Jews are voting for a President who said ON THE RECORD "Iran is a small country and not a threrat to anyone." All of you brain dead liberal Jews .. please leave the religion!
2 | Beatrice R., Vernon, CT, USA, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
Dear David Harris,
Your words are so eloquent and timely. Wish that others could feel as much or as more for our unborn children who through no fault of their own are inconvenient. They are held under their mother's heart, yet they are too forsaken, genocide of another generation. That doesn't mean what the Jews suffered was less. The actions of Hate and blind Apathy can both be very violent. I pray for all souls. This is the month my faith remembers and prays for the dead. Too bad we still can't say NEVER AGAIN (genocide in Sudan, etc.)
3 | Frank Tavella, Queens NY, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
And keep on remembering. And don't let anyone else forget. Because if we forget, it will happen again. Peace and All Good, Frank T
4 | Andrew Kevorkian--Philadelphia, PA, USA, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
If it is proper for Jews everywhere to remember the past--and it is--why is it that the State of Israel and its lobbies want to deny the Armenians the same right to remember?
If it is proper for Jews everywhere to impress on governments what was done to them--and it is--why is it that the State of Israel and its lobbies want to deny the Armenains that same right?
Andrew Kevorkian,
5 | Boris Galinsky, Summit, NJ, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
Kristallnacht reminds us that we are "our brothers' keepers" and we should not turn our faces away from Jews suffering anywhere.
Kristallnacht also reminds us that there are people who hate us for what we are, not for what we do, and no amount of good will, peace gestures, signed agreements, etc. will change their attitude toward us.
6 | William Leonard Thomas, Tuesday Nov 04, 2008
Thank you, David A. Harris, for the awful reminder of the evils man is capable of committing. My younger sister was born November 5th of that year of Kristallnacht and myself would turn 3 years old the same month. I was troubled throughout my youth with what was happening in Europe to the Jews. We must not forget these evils and certainly not allow others to even attempt to eradicate them from our memory and knowledge. Len Thomas-Hamilton
7 | Bob Jonap, Port Chester, NY, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
This is a great article. Thank you for writing it and forcing us to remember.
8 | Alan J. Weisbard, Madison WI, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
I'm all for remembering and commemorating tragedies of our past.
I'm more intent on preventing tragedies in our present and future.
Jews have rightly been concerned about maintaining civil and political rights, and opposing racism, in the United States, both because we are committed to these values, and because we recognize that Jews prosper and flourish in an open and free and mutually respectful socierty.
For this reason, I am dismayed that you and other mainstream Jewish leaders have not spoken out forcefully against the slurs on Prof. Rashid Khalidi, and Sen. Obama's relationship with him.
9 | Alan J. Weisbard, Madison WI, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
(Continuing) Prof. Khalidi undoubtedly holds views with which i do not agree, and I'm sure his balance of commitments to Israeli Jews and Palestinians differs from my own. But from what I have read, he is a scholar of integrity and a man of peace, committed to a peaceful two state resolution in Israel/Palestine. No sustainable peace will be achieved without the participation and support of Palestinians like Prof. Khalidi. It is a good thing that Presidential candidates are open to hearing a range of passionately held views (given a commitment to peaceful means and ends). Jews should say so!
10 | Lindsay Gerard, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
I radiate an iridescent light as I gently fall, slowly mingling with the glass shards beneath me. I feel sharp edges chafe my golden coat. Terror-filled cries echo in the night sky, and a stampede congests the street. Those panicked feet crush me deeper. Oh, the pain so many horror-stricken people must suffer! They try to save the holy scrolls as they leave me to rust along with the shattered glass; their memories locked inside me. Im not anything a Jew in despair views helpful. All I do is keep those treasured recollections of love cherished within my shining case. A silence so inaudible spreads through the street. Just when I think its over, someone steps on me, chipping off the final layer of my golden shield. I see a little girl with eyes of tears, and worn teddy bear in hand running away. The clouds above collide, and it begins to rain. I start to weep. She is what lies inside me: a tarnished locket.
11 | David Pearce, Washington, D.C., Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
Thank you for your eloquent post.
Thanks to you, I remember them too.
Let us remain vigilant against xenophobic aggression wherever we find it.
Shalom
12 | pappou NY, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
Unfortunately history is allowed torepeat itself .The German officers during WWI saw their ally the Ottoman Empire and the primitive Turks how they cleansed Asia Minor of its rightful inhabitants there for more than 25 centuries i.e.the Armenians and the Greeks by simply exiling them in the desert or just filling mass graves with them and expelling those that survived.
That knowledge was used by the Nazis against the Jews(~6million) and also gypsies,homosexuals,resistance fighters (~9 million) who all perished in the Extermination Camps they invented for this purpose.
Never forget!
13 | Steve, Denver, Colorado, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
It's inteeresting to see two pieces on Kristallnacht -- one by the AJC's David Harris and the other by the ADL's Abe Foxman. Glad to see the concern by both. Without wishing to take anything away from Mr. Foxman, though, his blog is, well, quite ordinary in its formulation, while Harris's soars in language and inspiration. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for capturing the essence of Kristallnacht's meaning for us.
14 | Fiona, San Francisco, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
Well said and timely. In a world which tragically gives short shrift to history, such an anniversary is a chance not only to remember but also remind everyone of the "slippery slope," as Harris properly calls it, of anti-Semitism.
15 | Anna ATTISANI, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
About a century ago an Italian poet finished one of his poems, in French, with the words: "je cherche un pays innocent".
And he wrote, also: ..."aucune violence ne dépasse celle qui prend un aspect
de froid et de mystère"...
16 | Werner Renberg NY, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
Having watched my father, then 56, arrested by two Gestapo agents during Kristallnacht and not knowing at 10--despite the agents' assurance that he would be released if my mother showed the Gestapo office proof that we had arranged to sail to the US that December 14--whether she and I would ever see him again, I greatly appreciate your essay. Having accompanied my father--on schedule-aboard SS Manhattan following his promised release from Sachsenhausen BUT HAVING HAD TO LEAVE MY MOTHER BEHIND BECAUSE AN MD AT THE US CONSULATE IN HAMBURG DENIED HER IMMIGRATION BECAUSE OF A PHONY DIAGNOSIS OF A LUNG PROBLEM, I also appreciated your candid comments about the shortcomings, to put it mildly, of White House and State Dept. policies and practices at that time.
17 | Werner Renberg NY, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
(Thanks to intervention with State by a US Senator to whom US relatives pleaded for help, my mother was able to follow a month later--something that was not assured when my parents decided that my father had better keep his promise to leave and when I feared that I might never see my mother again.) Your message comes at a time when there seems to be little US synagogue and other public observance of Kristallnacht's anniversary thus, not surprisingly, American Jews appear to be less & less aware of, and inerest in, what happened that night, officially called "Pogromnacht 1938" in Germany--a sharp contrast with the benign-sounding "Kristallnacht."Your article is most welcome, indeed.
18 | Vinegar Hill, Madrid, Spain., Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
There you go again David Harris dragging the past with you every which way you turn. You are like the living dead, continuing to perpetuate divisions by recalling ghosts. Do other nations repeat the atrocities committed against them, playing the same record over and over again? Do the Irish every year remind the world of the famine years of the mid 19th C. where over two million died of famine and famine related diseases while the British government sat by and refused adequate relief measures. Wake up, look forward and let the dead lie peacefully.
19 | clifton rothman, Wednesday Nov 05, 2008
Dear Daviid Harris,
Thanks for your essential remembrance. I was in high school in the USA during the Holocaust and I knew what was happening thanks to ZOA and other Zionist groups and slthough our government denied it, they knew. I could not understand why the entire world condoned it and the religious based hatred of the Jewish people. It seemed obvious that the world was evil.
Please continue to write as you have and to make the World aware. The conclusion is that the USA and Israel today are the most moral of nations.
20 | Roddy Frankel, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
My grandparents fled Germany before Hitler came to power, due to the prevalence of anti-semitism. My parents were small children in Romania when the Nazis invaded. My mother's family ran, but my father's family was imprisoned in a slave-labor camp. Three decades later, my family fled Tel-Aviv after the '67 War. My parents were terrified that my sister and I would be exposed to the horrors of war. My parents were twice refugees, and my grandparents thrice, as a result of anti-semitism. It saddens me to see that few synagogues teach about the Holocaust today. Will the AJC take up the cause?
21 | George, Switzerland, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
When we Jews are asked why we're so "obsessed" with remembering, this blog provides the answer. It should be read aloud in synagogues and other (not just Jewish) settings. Yes, as David Harris wrote, "never again" should never become just a mere slogan.
22 | dottie bennett, virginia, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
David: Your words speak eloquently to what we must remember and never allow to happen again. I can assure you that at the USHMMuseum, we work on this everyday. As an Executive Committee member of the Museum, I will be sharing these words with lay leaders and staff. My father told me that if we are to influence the future, we must not forget the past. Recognizing and confronting evil everywhere will help to strengthen and preserve the Jewish people. Education is the key. I hope that this column is heavily circulated. Protecting mankind is a universal challenge.
23 | Eric S. Cantor, Philadelphia, Thursday Nov 06, 2008
In Germany term "reichspogromnacht" is frequently used to describe the events of Nov. 9 & 10, 1938. It was, infact as the name implies a government sponsored pogrom. Jews were killed, deported to concentration camps while businesses were destroyed. The term "kristallnacht" is inadequate in helping to preserve a memory of the pogrom which occurred during the reign of terror initiated during the Nazi regime.
24 | Minutman, Friday Nov 07, 2008
Islamo-Fascisim in the MidEast became the main threat for the Jewsih survival. The 24-hrs/day incitement for Israel destruction is remind us Kristallnacht could happend again--The Islamo-Fascists, Palestinians hatred, syrian, Iranian, Egyptian, etc. genocidal hatred to Israeli Jews and all Jews, are ideed parcticing the Fascist Jew hatred. Only the power of the Israeli Defense Forces prevents blood beth holocaust the Arab haters obsessed with murdering, exiling, Expelling, or scapegoating the Jews of Israel.
25 | Adam, New York, Friday Nov 07, 2008
Great piece Mr. Harris. It was interesting to note that both you and Abe Foxman wrote on essentially the same topic. It highlights the importance of Kristallnacht and the obvious need never to forgive or let our guard down again. At the same time, it was interesting to note the difference between the two pieces. Foxman's piece appeared rather simple and unpassionate, while I found your piece beautifully written and more inspirational. It is not a competition, as we are all fighting the same cause, but maybe some in the Jewish world could learn from the work of others
26 | Eitan, LA, Friday Nov 07, 2008
In response to number 18. Are we to simply forget the past and move on? If you have read other pieces by Harris, you will see that he does look forward and tries to adress many of the larger facing the Jewish people and Israel. At the same time, we can take a moment to remember the horrible events that led up to the Holocaust. In remebembering we can make a greater effort to prevent. Thank you Mr. Harris for your beautifully written piece and may you continue to fight the good fight.
27 | Ellen - Dover DE, USA, Friday Nov 07, 2008
To Blog entry No. 18 & all ostriches who do not want to hear about Kristallnacht, paraphrased: Those who ignorant of the lessons of history will be doomed to repeat them. No one remembered the Armenian Holocaust as Hitler came to power(see blogs 4 & 12), nor do many know of the artificially-induced Bengali famine created by the British, responsible for over 5 million Bengali deaths 1945. I know of what I speak: my father was incarcerated in Buchenwald & Auschwitz before Kristallnacht; & my "antennae" even now receive hints of future catastrophies. Humankind MUST learn to be more humane.
28 | Fiona, San Francisco, Saturday Nov 08, 2008
To Vinegar Hill of Madrid (#18), suggesting that remembrance of the Holocaust is a wasted exercise in "recalling ghosts" is outrageous. To prevent more genocides, including against Jews, you darn well better recall -- and often -- how earlier ones occurred. Spain's culture of silence about the crimes of its Civil War and the Franco regime was totally misplaced. No discussion, no accountability. And perhaps you'll explain to my living parents, Holocaust survivors, who lost just about everyone, why we should all just quietly move on and let bygones be bygones.
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