The celebrated British Jewish writer and historian Martin Gilbert, biographer of Winston Churchill and author of many books, including several on the Holocaust and on Israel, presented us recently with Kristallnacht, Prelude to Destruction.
The book, which was published by HarperCollins, describes the November 10th, 1938 pogroms organized by the Nazi leadership in the wake of the shooting on November 7th of Ernst vom Rath III, Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, by 17 year old Herschel Grynszpan. Grynszpan’s parents and sister, who resided in Hamburg, had been deported in October by the German government, together with more than 12,000 Jews of Polish nationality, to the German Polish border. Most of those who were expelled including the Grynspan family were not admitted to Poland and lived in very harsh conditions near the border.
Gilbert’s book also depicts world reaction to the pogroms and the situation of German Jewry in the following years, until its total destruction during World War II.
Gilbert states in his introduction: “Almost 400 years earlier in 1542, Martine Luther, in his pastoral letter On the Jews and their Lies, advised that the synagogues of the Jews ‘should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may be able to see a cinder or stone of it. And this ought to be done for the honor of G-d…’
Hilter and his acolytes followed this advice for their own destructive purposes.”
Gilber’s description of the pogroms is based in part on newspaper report. He writes, “No event in the history of the fate of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely covered by newspapers while it was taking place There were several hundred foreign journalists in Germany.” He also used more than 50 previously unpublished eyewitness testimonies. [In his “Acknowledgements” at the beginning of the book, he mentions by name all the persons and eyewitnesses who sent him their previously unpublished recollections as well as the children and grandchildren who furnished him with accounts of what they had heard from their parents and grandparents who had witnessed the pogroms.]
“Krystallnacht” – the Night of the Broken Glass= was the name given to the night and day of terror. Gilbert notes: “For the perpetrators of the destruction, the name reflected their sense of both triumph and contempt: triumph at what they had destroyed, laughter at the sound of the breaking glass. Yet fear and distress were inflicted on every German Jew that night.”
On November 8, as Vom Rath lay gravely wounded, the German government announced its first anti-Jewish collective punitive measures. All Jewish newspapers and periodicals were ordered to cease publication. Jewish children could no longer attend elementary state schools — until then they had been permitted to do so in areas in which there were not enough or no Jewish elementary schools. All Jewish cultural activities were suspended.
In the night of November 8 and into the early hours of November 9, Jews held in the Buchenwald concertation camp were executed. The number of Jews murdered is said to have reached seventy.
There were anti-Jewish demonstrations and outbreaks in various localities in Germany as well as in the Free City of Danzig, which was then nominally under the control of the Leaue of Nations.
The outbreaks speared throughout Germany after it became known in the evening of November 9 that vom Rath had died of his wounds. In more than 1000 localities, members of the SS, the SA and Hitler Youth joined by street mobs, assailed Jews, burned synagogues, and broke into Jewish businesses and homes, proceeding to pillage them
(To be continued )
The Jewish Press, Friday, September 1, 2006
Several maps in Martin Gilber’s book show the places in Germany where Jews and Jewish property were attacked.
During the night and day of terror 91 Jews were killed and over 30000 Jewish men betweent he ages of 16 and 60 were arrested and sent to concentration camps, where they were tormented and tortured for several months. One thousand of them died.
Many Jews committed suicide.
The author presents us with accounts of the attacks on Jews and Jewish property in various places throughout the Reich.
The following are facts excerpted from his description of the events of Kristallnacht in some of the major cities of Germany
In Berlin at least 30 synagogues had been set on fire by 8 o’clock in the morning. When the mob broke into the Fasanen Strasse synagogue they first removed the hangings and ornaments, dumped them in Wittengbergplatz, set them on fire and danced around the bonfire. Then having set the synagogue on fire, they hired 30 taxis to take them on a tour of wrecking and fire setting int he Kurfuserstendamm area.
In Vienna synagogue were attacked and burned in all the city’s districts. In the predominately Jewish Second District a number of synagogues were blown up by bombs. The interior furnishings, the Ark and the Torah scrolls of four of these synagogues were piled up in the street and set on fire. Jewish men were given spades and taken to the destroyed synagogues where they were made to clear away the ruins.
Merchandise was taken away from Jewish shops throughout the city. A high Nazi official told a British correspondent: “We began seizing goods from the Jewish shops because sooner or later they would have been nationalized anyway. The goods seized will compensate us for at least part of the damage the Jews have been doing for years to the German people.”
Ten thousand Jewish men were arrested in the city. Six thousand were released by nightfall and the remaining four thousand were taken to Dachau.
Thirty Jews were reported to have committed suicide. Twice as many were said to have tried to take their lives.
In Munich, crowds incited by Brownshirts attacked Jewish shops., destroying and lotting the wares. Kaufinger Strasse , one of the main thoroughfares looked as if had been bombed. Half a dozen of the most fashionable shops in that street had been turned into ruins overnight.
Five hundred Jews were arrested.
Emil Kremer was a partner in the largest remaining Jewish banking firm in Germany. When the bank windows were smashed the building was taken over by the Nazis, he committed suicide. The Nazi papers reported that he jumped out of a window of his apartment. But banking circles in Germany wondered how he could have killed himself in that way. He had been paralyzed for the last two years and could hardly walk even with two canes.
Ten of Hamburg’s 16 synagogues were burned or destroyed. The British Consul General in Hamburg, L.M. Robinson witnessed the attacks of Jews and Jewish property in the city. In the report to the British embassy in Berlin he described the destruction of Jewish stores in the city’s main shopping center: “The plate glass windows of two drapery establishments, a fashionable ladies’ and gentleman’s outfitting ship, and a photo and optical shop were demolished and the contents scattered on the pavements.”
He also reported having seem some 60 school children throwing stones over the head of a policeman at the glass doors of a synagogue in the presence of some 200 people.
(To be continued)
The Jewish Press, Friday, Sept.8, 2006