Lesson 13: Handout 4, Reading 1
Kristallnacht: The range of choices (Part 1)
Alfons Heck
(From the biography of Alfons Heck, a leader in the Hitler Youth Movement, excerpted
from Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer)
On the afternoon of November 9, 1938, we were on our way home from
school when we ran into small troops of SA and SS men [Nazi police]. . . .
We watched open-mouthed as the men . . . began to smash the windows of
every Jewish business in [our town]. Paul Wolff, a local carpenter who
belonged to the SS, led the biggest troop, and he pointed out the locations.
One of their major targets was Anton Blum’s shoe store next to the city
hall. Shouting SA men threw hundreds of pairs of shoes into the street. In
minutes they were snatched up and carried home by some of the town’s
nicest families—folks you never dreamed would steal anything.13
It was horribly brutal, but at the same time very exciting to us kids. “Let’s
go in and smash some stuff,” urged my buddy Helmut. With shining eyes,
he bent down, picked up a rock and fired it toward one of the windows.14
My grandmother found it hard to understand how the police could disregard this massive destruction. . . . [She said,] “There is no excuse for
destroying people’s property, no matter who they are. I don’t know why the
police didn’t arrest those young Nazi louts.”15
Purpose: To deepen understanding of how our decisions can perpetuate or prevent injustice and violence
by studying Kristallnacht. • 211
Lesson 13: Handout 4, Reading 2
Kristallnacht: The range of choices (Part 1)
Andre
(Excerpted from “Taking a Stand” pp. 268–70 in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and
Human Behavior)
In November, 1938, twelve-year-old Andre came home from a youth group
meeting. He told his father that his youth group leader said that everyone
was supposed to meet the next day to throw stones at Jewish stores. Andre
said to his father, “I have nothing against the Jews—I hardly know them—
but everyone is going to throw stones. So what should I do?” Andre went
for a walk to help him figure out what he should do. When he came back,
he explained his decision to his parents. “I’ve decided not to throw stones at
the Jewish shops. But tomorrow everyone will say, ‘Andre, the son of X, did
not take part, he refused to throw stones!’ They will turn against you. What
are you going to do?” His father was proud and relieved. He said that the
following day, the family would leave Germany. And that is what they did.16
Purpose: To deepen understanding of how our decisions can perpetuate or prevent injustice and violence
by studying Kristallnacht. • 212
Lesson 13: Handout 4, Reading 3
Kristallnacht: The range of choices (Part 1)
Melita Maschmann
(Excerpted from “Taking a Stand,” pp. 268–70 in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and
Human Behavior)
Melita Maschmann lived in a small suburb of Berlin and knew nothing of
Kristallnacht until the next morning. As she picked her way through the
broken glass on her way to work, she asked a policeman what had happened. After he explained, she recalled:
I went on my way shaking my head. For the space of a second I was
clearly aware that something terrible had happened there. Something
frighteningly brutal. But almost at once I switched over to accepting
what had happened as over and done with, and avoiding critical reflection. I said to myself: the Jews are the enemies of the New Germany.
Last night they had a taste of what this means. . . . I forced the memory of it out of my consciousness as quickly as possible. As the years
went by, I grew better and better at switching off quickly in this manner on similar occasions.17
Purpose: To deepen understanding of how our decisions can perpetuate or prevent injustice and violence
by studying Kristallnacht. • 213
Lesson 13: Handout 4, Reading 4
Kristallnacht: The range of choices (Part 1)
Frederic Morton
(Excerpted from “The Night of the Pogrom,” pp. 263–67 in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and
Human Behavior)
The writer Frederic Morton recalls his experience in Vienna, Austria (which had been
taken over by Germany) on November 9, 1938:
The day began with a thudding through my pillow. Jolts waked me. . . . By that
time we’d gone to the window facing the street. At the house entrance two storm
troopers lit cigarettes for each other. Their comrades were smashing the synagogue
on the floor below us, tossing out a debris of Torahs [holy scripture] and pews.
“Oh, my God!” my mother said. . . .
The doorbell rang. . . . Ten storm troopers with heavy pickaxes . . . were young and
bright-faced with excitement. . . . “House search,” the leader said. “Don’t move.”. . .
They yanked out every drawer in every one of our chests and cupboards, and tossed
each in the air. They let the cutlery jangle across the floor, the clothes scatter, and
stepped over the mess to fling the next drawer. Their exuberance was amazing.
Amazing, that none of them raised an axe to split our skulls. “We might be back,”
the leader said. . . .
We did not speak or move or breathe until we heard their boots against the pavement. “I am going to the office,” my father said. “Breitel might help.” Breitel, the
Reich commissar in my father’s costume-jewelry factory, was a “good” Nazi. Once
he’d said we should come to him if there was trouble. My father left. . . . I began to
pick up clothes, when the doorbell rang again. It was my father. “I have two minutes.” “What?” my mother said. But she knew. His eyes had become glass. “There
was another crew waiting for me downstairs. They gave me two minutes.” Now I
broke down. . . .
Four months later he rang our doorbell twice, skull shaven, skeletal, released from
Dachau [a prison], somehow alive.18
Purpose: To deepen understanding of how our decisions can perpetuate or prevent injustice and violence
by studying Kristallnacht. • 214
Lesson 13: Handout 4, Reading 5
Kristallnacht: The range of choices (Part 1)
The United States
(Excerpted from “World Responses” pp. 270–72 in Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust
and Human Behavior)
On November 15, six days after Kristallnacht, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt opened a press conference by stating, “The news of the last few
days from Germany has deeply shocked public opinion in the United
States. . . . I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in
a twentieth-century civilization.”19 As punishment to Germany, he
announced that the United States was withdrawing its ambassador to
Germany. But he did not offer to help the thousands of Jews now trying
desperately to leave Germany.
Few Americans criticized Roosevelt’s stand. According to a poll taken at the
time, 72 percent did not want more Jewish refugees in the United States. In
the 1930s Americans were more concerned with unemployment at home
than with stateless Jews in Europe. Although many were willing to accept a
few famous writers, artists, and scientists who happened to be Jewish, they
were less willing to let in thousands of ordinary Jews. Then in February
1939, Senator Robert Wagner of New York and Representative Edith
Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts sponsored a bill that would bypass the
immigration laws and temporarily admit 20,000 Jewish children who would
stay in the country only until it was safe for them to return home. As most
were too young to work, they would not take away jobs from Americans.
Furthermore, their stay would not cost taxpayers a penny. Various Jewish
groups had agreed to assume financial responsibility for the children. Yet the
bill encountered strong opposition and was never passed.20
Purpose: To deepen understanding of how our decisions can perpetuate or prevent injustice and violence
by studying Kristallnacht. • 215
Notes
Proceedings of the Intergovernmental Committee, Evian, July 6–15, 1938. Verbatim Record of the Plenary
Meetings of the Committee. Resolutions and Reports. London: July 1938, 25.
2
Margot Stern Strom, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior (Brookline: Facing
History and Ourselves National Foundation), 264.
3
Anthony Read and David Fisher, Kristallnacht: The Unleashing of the Holocaust (New York: Peter Bedrick
Books, 1989), 127.
4
Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1992), 142.
5
Richard Rubenstein, The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future (New York: Harper &
Row, 1975), 27.
6
“Extract from the Speech by Hitler,” January 30, 1939, http://www.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust
/documents/part1/doc59.html (accessed on January 16, 2009).
7
Rubenstein, The Cunning of History, 33.
8
Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide (London: The Free Press, 1979), 33.
9
Joe Lobenstein, “Kristallnacht: Still an Unforgettable Nightmare 70 Years On,” Telegraph, 10 November
2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/3416004/Kristallnacht-Still-an
-unforgettable-nightmare-70-years-on.html (accessed January 16, 2009).
10
Dan Barry, “A Boy the Bullies Love to Beat Up, Repeatedly,” The New York Times, May 24, 2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/24/us/24land.html?pagewanted=l&_r=l&partner=permalink&exprod
=permalink (accessed January 16, 2009).
11
Eleanor Ayer, Parallel Journeys (New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1995), 30.
12
Alexandra Zapradur, Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002), 19–23.
13
Ayer, Parallel Journeys, 27.
14
Ibid., 29.
15
Ibid., 30.
16
Dan Bar-On, Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children from the Third Reich (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1989), 1.
17
Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered: A Dossier on My Former Self (New York: Abelard -Schuman, 1965),
56.
18
Frederic Morton, “Kristallnacht,” New York Times, November 10, 1978.
19
“Kristallnacht,” The American Experience, PBS website, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust
/peopleevents/pandeAMEX99.html (accessed January 16, 2009).
20
“Jewish Refugees from German Reich, 1933–1939,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website,
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/stlouis/teach/supread2.htm (accessed January 16, 2009).
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