Damn, I almost forgot...
November 9, 1938
On the night of November 9, 1938, violent anti-Jewish demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Nazi officials depicted the riots as justified reactions to the assassination of German foreign official Ernst vom Rath, who had been shot two days earlier by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year old Polish Jew distraught over the deportation of his family from Germany.
Over the next 48 hours, violent mobs, spurred by antisemitic exhortations from Nazi officials, destroyed hundreds of synagogues, burning or desecrating Jewish religious artifacts along the way. Acting on orders from Gestapo headquarters, police officers and firefighters did nothing to prevent the destruction. All told, approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were plundered, and 91 Jews were murdered. An additional 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Nazi officials immediately claimed that the Jews themselves were to blame for the riots, and a fine of one billion reichsmarks (about $400 million at 1938 rates) was imposed on the German Jewish community.
The Nazis came to call the event Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night,” or, “The Night of Broken Glass”), referring to the thousands of shattered windows that littered the streets afterwards, but the euphemism does not convey the full brutality of the event. Kristallnacht was a turning point in the history of the Third Reich, marking the shift from antisemitic rhetoric and legislation to the violent, aggressive anti-Jewish measures that would culminate with the Holocaust.
Man has a short memory...
ReplyDeleteWith people like Ramaswamy (R), presidential candidate, calling Vlodamir Zelensky (a Jewish man) a Nazi and encouraging the hatred, we are headed for that same kind of vulgar violence again. And Republicans claim that Biden is inciting WW III....
ReplyDeleteAs a history buff I subscribe to the saying "history repeats itself."
ReplyDeleteGiven the current crazy political mess of our country and of course Ukraine and Israeli/Gaza mess, I'm very worried about our future here in the US and if the Middle East explodes then the entire world.
And today Jews are under attack again, from people who think their violence is "justified reactions to" Israel defending itself against people who seek its total extermination.
ReplyDeleteEveryone - The world is a mess right now.
ReplyDeleteYou Americans would be wise to get off the hate and its lunacy.
ReplyDeleteWe in Germany are damned from the stain of WW2 and the Holocaust.
We let the lunatics run our country like an asylum, don't let the lunatics do the same to yours.
Learn a lesson from us before it is too late for your country and people.
(vvs)
In the UK 11 November is Armistice Day when at 11am (11/11/11) we have national silence to remember conflicts. It commemorates the truce that ended WW1.
ReplyDeleteBut we still have so many conflicts globally.
And remember that the Nazis also sent physically and mentally disabled people, mixed race people, trades unionists, Jehovahs Witnesses and Roma people to Concentration Camps along with homosexuals and Jews. They also sent citizens of occupied counties throughout their occupied territories to be worked to death.
Don't forget
Anon@11:27am - I was losing hope until our latest elections. Maybe the tide of insanity is turning.
ReplyDeleteHummel - Too many people are forgetting these days.