The Night of Broken Glass

68 years ago, tonight: Kristallnacht, meaning “the night of broken glass” in German and commonly referred to as the official beginning of the Holocaust, takes place.

A POISON FESTERS WITHIN

By 1935, the Nuremberg Laws prohibited Jews from becoming German citizens, and just a year later Jews were forced to deal with signs in their neighborhoods and towns that declared them “unwelcome.” An air of danger smothered Jewish people everywhere, especially in Germany, but there was just no place to go. Economic depression had plagued the country ever since the end of the Great War. There was social unrest. Hitler had come to power by making empty promises and exploiting a desperate people who longed to hear anything that remotely resembled leadership. Perhaps Hitler was not so publically forthright with his plans or intentions or prejudices. Perhaps the Jews thought these random acts of violence were symptoms of a poison that festered within, something that could be pardoned until the winds of progression provided the remedy, a force that could separate evil thoughts from the minds of their countrymen, like chaff from grain.

ONE ASSASSINATION CHANGES THE WORLD

By 1938, Jews were restricted from economic activity and occupation. They had to carry identification cards with them at all times. Soon, Jews of Polish decent were deported over the border. But Poland didn’t want them either, so many were sent against their will to “relocation camps” throughout Poland’s frontier. Such was the case of Zindel Grynszpan and his family, who were forced from their home by German police. Grynszpan’s store and the family’s belongings were confiscated. Meanwhile, a young son of Grynszpan’s living with his uncle in Paris, got word of the incident and sought revenge against the German government by targeting the German Ambassador to France for assassination. Due to the Ambassador’s absence, he ended up taking the life of a lesser official instead.

THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS

This was all Hitler’s aids needed to retaliate against the Jews back home. On November 9 and 10, Nazi youth gangs (with direction from the Third Reich) canvassed the streets, targeting Jewish businesses and homes, breaking windows as they moved. Over 100 synagogues were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were apprehended and transported to concentration camps. 91 were killed. The German government denied these as being premeditated acts, claiming they were purely spontaneous. The government went so far as to make the Jews responsible for these events, the assassination in Paris providing sufficient justification.

Some scholars believe the term “Kristallnacht,” which was coined by one of Hitler’s top officials, was actually a euphemism for a larger initiative against the Jews and used in a mocking way. For some, referring to the night as “Kristallnacht” is of poor taste, believing its original meaning to be contemptuous and not sympathetic. This suggests the Jews were either too weak (mentally and psychologically, as were other German citizens) to give a damn, perhaps entering a period of apathy, a kind of social dissipation, or perhaps were just (reluctantly) accepting of their place in society, fearing that what was on the “other side” was more unbearable than the hatred they faced at home. Regardless of the answer, by that night, it was too late. Intertia had crept up ever so gently until, like with the breaking of a dam, there was no conceivable way the Third Reich’s initiative could be stopped.

How incredibly dispiriting an event. According to Walter Pehle, “[i]t is clear that the term Crystal Night serves to foster a vicious minimalizing of its memory, a discounting of grave reality: such cynical appellations function to reinterpret manslaughter and murder, arson, roberry, plunder, and massive property damage, transforming these into a glistening event marked by sparkle and gleam…Such terms reveal one thing in stark clarity – the lack of any sense of involvement or feeling of sympathy on the part of those who had stuck their heads in the sand before that violent night” [1]. (Perhaps the apathy I postulated before?)

LEARN AND SPREAD THE WORD

Why and how could a people let discrimination and hatred go so far, even as it threatened their very culture and physical safety, and that of their children? Perhaps that’s what grants Globalism its Yang: the fact that governments are far too involved with each other, bringing people and places and events together much more easily, and with far greater clarity, than could be imagined a century ago, to allow something like this to again go unchecked. November 9, 1938 was a dark day for many, indeed for the world, but it couldn’t possibly compare to what waited for the Jews in the fateful years to come. It’s important that these events be learned and remembered by all.

[1] Pehle, W.H., “Editor’s Preface” in Pehle, W.H. (ed.) November 1938, From Reichskristallnacht to Genocide, Berg Publishers Inc., NY, 1991, pp. vii-viii (English edition)

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