On the night of November 9, 1938, the sounds of breaking glass shattered the air in cities
throughout Germany while fires across the country devoured synagogues and Jewish
institutions. By the end of the rampage, gangs of Nazi storm troopers had destroyed 7,000
Jewish businesses, set fire to more than 900 synagogues, killed 91 Jews and deported some
30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. In a report back to the State Department a few
days later, a U.S official in Leipzig described what he saw of the atrocities. "Having demolished
dwellings and hurled most of the moveable effects to the streets," he wrote, "the insatiably
sadistic perpetrators threw many of the trembling inmates into a small stream that flows
through the zoological park, commanding horrified spectators to spit at them, defile them with
mud and jeer at their plight."
An incident several days earlier had given the Nazi authorities an excuse to instigate {initiate}
the violence. On November 7th, a 17-year-old Polish Jewish student named Hershel Grynszpan
had shot Ernst vom Rath, the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris. Grynszpan,
enraged by the deportation {banishment/kick out} of his parents to Poland from Hanover,
Germany, where they had lived since 1914, hoped that his dramatic action would alert the
world to the ominous {threatening} plight {troubles} of Europe's Jews. When the French police
arrested Grynszpan, he sobbed: "Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live
and the Jewish people have a right to exist on earth. Wherever I have been I have been chased
like an animal." The assassination attempt was successful; vom Rath died on November 9th.
News of the Third Secretary's death reached the leading figures of the Nazi party later that day
while they were attending a dinner in Munich.
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered an inflammatory {provocative and rabblerousing} speech, urging the assembled crowd to take to the streets. The message was clear: The
Jews of Germany would have to pay for vom Rath's death. Later that night Reinhard Heydrich,
the head of the Security Service, sent a series of orders to all State Police offices: Business
establishments and homes of Jews could be destroyed but not looted; German life and
property should not be jeopardized {put at risk}; and as soon as the events of the night
permitted, officers should arrest as many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails
would hold. The following day Goebbels announced, "We shed not a tear for them [the Jews.]"
He went on to comment on the destruction of synagogues saying, "They stood in the way long
enough. We can use the space made free more usefully than as Jewish fortresses."
"Kristallnacht" provided the Nazi government with an opportunity at last to totally remove Jews
from German public life. It was the culminating event in a series of anti-Semitic policies set in
place since Hitler took power in 1933.
Within a week, the Nazis had circulated a letter declaring that Jewish businesses could not be
reopened unless they were to be managed by non-Jews. On November 15th, Jewish children
were barred from attending school, and shortly afterwards the Nazis issued the "Decree on
Eliminating the Jews from German Economic Life," which prohibited Jews from selling goods or
services anywhere, from engaging in crafts work, from serving as the managers of any firms,
and from being members of cooperatives. In addition, the Nazis determined that the Jews
should be liable for the damages caused during "Kristallnacht." "The Decree on the Penalty
Payment by Jews Who Are German Subjects" also imposed a one billion mark fine on the Jewish
community, supposedly an indemnity for the death of vom Rath.
Although the atrocities perpetrated during the Night of Broken Glass did arouse outrage in
Western Europe and the United States, little concrete action was taken to help the Jews of
Germany. At a press conference on November 15th, President Roosevelt said, "The news of the
past 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 20th century civilization." The president
also instructed that the 12,000-15,000 refugees already in the U.S. on temporary visitor visas
could remain in the country indefinitely.
Discussion Questions – PLEASE WRITE IN COMPLETE SENTENCES
1. Summarize the catalyst (inciting action – what caused it / reason) for Kristallnacht?
2. Describe what happened at Kristallnacht? Have other ―Kristallnachts‖ taken place since 1938?
Are there any indications that similar events are happening now? Explain your answers.
3. What was the impact of the event? What role did Kristallnacht play in the larger Holocaust?
4. What can we do to prevent another ―Kristallnacht‖? What can we do as individuals? What can
we do as a country?
Bearing Witness To Nazis' Life-Shattering Kristallnacht
Bearing Witness To Nazis' Life-Shattering
Kristallnacht
Esme Nicholson
http://www.npr.org/2013/11/09/241903489/bearing-witness-to-nazis-life-shattering-kristallnacht
View of a destroyed Jewish shop in Berlin on Nov. 11, 1938, after the anti-Semitic violence of
Kristallnacht. The pogrom unleashed Nazi-coordinated attacks on thousands of synagogues and
Jewish businesses.
On a busy street in Berlin's shabby-chic district of Kreuzberg, the gray and dirty pavement
glistens with little brass cobblestones. Millions of these stones are embedded in sidewalks all
over Europe. They commemorate the last address the city's Jewish residents called home before
the war.
Etched into each stone is the name of an individual, a date of deportation, the name of a
concentration camp and, more often than not, a date of death.
But some stones are inscribed with the word ueberlebt, meaning "survived." The name on one
such stone is Margot Bendheim, the maiden name of Margot Friedlander. For the past three
years, this stone is no longer a valid record of her most recent Berlin address — which lies across
town.
A view of a Jewish-run shop in Germany, after being vandalized by Nazis and covered with antiSemitic graffiti, on Nov. 10, 1938.
"As a survivor, I feel that I do something for the people who cannot speak for themselves
anymore," says Friedlander, who just turned 92.
After 64 years of exile in New York, Friedlander made the decision to return to her native Berlin
for good. City officials welcomed her with open arms, and Friedlander was promptly given back
her German citizenship.
"When I received my German citizenship, I said: 'You expect me to say thank you for it? I will
not do it. Because you only give me back what you took away from me,'" she says.
Her late husband, also a German Jew, never wanted to return to Berlin, and initially, her decision
to move back was met with disbelief from her New York friends. But Friedlander says America
only offered her and her husband sanctuary once the war was over.
"I don't owe America anything because when I needed them, they didn't let us in," she says.
"And that's why I came back to Germany. It is the country where I was born."
Brass cobblestones in Berlin sidewalks mark the last known addresses of the city's Jewish
residents before the war. Margot Friedlander, nee Bendheim, now lives at a different address in
Berlin, where she returned to from New York three years ago.
Sitting in her new Berlin apartment, surrounded by books and photographs of her husband,
Friedlander has not forgotten how her native city gradually disowned her and how living here
became untenable. She recalls the night euphemistically known as Kristallnacht — The Night of
Broken Glass — the violent pogrom that saw Nazi-coordinated attacks on thousands of
synagogues and Jewish businesses. She says the wanton terror and destruction of Nov. 9, 1938,
came as a shock.
"I did not hear fire engines and we understood then that they didn't come because they wanted
the synagogues to burn," she says. "We never thought that Germans would stand by, and not do
something about it."
Friedlander's family knew then they had to leave Germany, but their attempts to emigrate failed
until it was too late. Her father left without them, and her brother and mother were deported to
Auschwitz, where all three eventually perished. Margot went into hiding in Berlin.
And it is because of those few courageous, gentile Germans who helped her that she felt able to
return to Berlin three years ago. All the same, she remains wary of her own generation.
"I don't want them to tell me, 'We did not know.' Because this is something that I will not accept.
Everybody knew something," she says. "So I keep my distance."
"As a survivor, I feel that I do something for the people who cannot speak for themselves
anymore," says Margot Friedlander, shown here in 2011.
Instead, Friedlander spends much of her time with young Germans, visiting schools and sharing
her valuable testimony. She is adamant they should not feel guilt, but a sense of responsibility.
And responsibility is something the German state takes very seriously.
Stefan Redlich is spokesman for the Berlin police.
"The Berlin police protects all Jewish schools, all hospitals, all kindergartens and all synagogues
in the city," he says, noting that 250 policemen stand guard in front of Jewish properties
throughout the city.
But German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently said she is not proud of this fact: "I feel deep
shame that there is not a single Jewish building in Germany without police protection because
we still have to worry about anti-Semitic attacks."
Merkel's concerns are justified. On last year's Kristallnacht anniversary, vandals in the
northeastern city of Greifswald removed a number of cobblestone memorials.
Seventy-five years on, though, Germans refuse to stand by and watch. To mark this anniversary,
they are taking to the streets — chamois leather in hand — to polish the brief, brass biographies
that serve as a daily reminder of lives cut short by the Holocaust.
Discussion Questions – PLEASE WRITE IN COMPLETE SENTENCES
1. How does Germany commemorate the Holocaust today?
2. What do are people doing in Germany to ensure that history does not repeat itself?
3. What do you think of these commemorations and protections? What kind of impact do you
think they have on the people living in Germany today?