[Reader-list] Nov 9: Remembering 'Night of Broken Glass'

[Lehar ..]

Tonight, 65 years ago..The Holocaust began.. on the
Night of the Broken 
Glass.. named after the glass debris from smashed
Jewish shops which 
littered germany..
We are still walking on broken glass..as Gujrat
testified last yr..

--
Remembering the Night of Broken Glass/ Walking on
Broken Glass
by Lehar Sethi Zaidi

Tonight, 65 years ago..The Holocaust began.. on the
Night of the Broken 
Glass.. named after the glass debris from smashed
Jewish shops which 
littered germany..
We are still walking on broken glass..
On the nights of November 9 and 10, rampaging mobs
throughout Germany and 
the newly acquired territories of Austria and
Sudetenland freely attacked 
Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places
of work and worship. 
At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more
injured, more than 1,000 
synagogues were burned (and possibly as many as
2,000), almost 7,500 Jewish 
businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were
vandalized, and 
30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration
camps. This pogrom has 
come to be called Kristallnacht, "the Night of Broken
Glass."
Kristallnacht signaled the onset of the Holocaust and
turns out to be a 
crucial turning point in German policy regarding the
Jews .
The official German position on these events, which
were clearly 
orchestrated by Hitler's propaganda chief Goebbels,
was that they were 
'spontaneous outbursts'. The Fuehrer, Goebbels
reported to Party officials 
in Munich, "has decided that such demonstrations are
not to be prepared or 
organized by the party, but so far as they originate
spontaneously, they are 
not to be discouraged either."

On that night, which has become infamously known as
Kristallnacht ("Night of 
the Broken Glass"), more than 30,000 Jews were sent to
concentration camps, 
and almost 100 Jews were murdered.

The damage to shop windows was estimated at $4 million
U.S. dollars.

The pretext for this violence was the November 7
assassination of a German 
diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel
Grynszpan, a Jewish student 
whose parents, along with 17,000 other Polish Jews,
had been recently 
expelled from the Germany. On October 28, 1938, the
Gestapo had without 
warning rounded up the Polish Jews within Germany, put
them on transports, 
and then dropped them off on the Polish side of the
Poland-Germany border 
(near Posen). Among these Polish Jews were the parents
of seventeen year old 
Hershl Grynszpan. With little food, water, clothing,
or shelter in the 
middle of winter, thousands of these people died. Many
of them people had 
spent most of their lives in Germany and were
decorated German veterans of 
the first World War. The Nazis without warning had
picked up these 
German-Polish families in the middle of the night and
deported them to 
Poland where the Polish government refused entry On
November 7, 1938, Hershl 
shot Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German
embassy in Paris. Two 
days later, vom Rath died. The day vom Rath died,
Goebbels announced the 
need for retaliation.

Though portrayed as spontaneous outbursts of popular
outrage, these pogroms 
were calculated acts of retaliation carried out by the
SA, SS, and local 
Nazi party organizations.

This was due to the fact that almost immediately upon
assuming the 
Chancellorship of Germany, Hitler began promulgating
legal actions against 
Germany's Jews. In 1933, he proclaimed a one-day
boycott against Jewish 
shops, a law was passed against kosher butchering and
Jewish children began 
experiencing restrictions in public schools. By 1935,
the Nuremberg Laws 
deprived Jews of German citizenship. By 1936, Jews
were prohibited from 
participation in parliamentary elections and signs
reading "Jews Not 
Welcome" appeared in many German cities.
The assassination provided Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's
Chief of Propaganda, 
with the excuse he needed to launch a pogrom against
German Jews. 
Grynszpan's attack was interpreted by Goebbels as a
conspiratorial attack by 
"International Jewry conspiracy" against the Reich
and, symbolically, 
against the Fuehrer himself.

The kristallnacht runs though all the world..
The kristallnacht was the beginning of the end of
Germany.. and Europe and 
Germany's loss was America’s gain. For with it,
Germnay lost its best 
minds.. from Einstein to other Nobel Laureates…
And the kristall nacht continues to be a warning from
history..

more in Part 2: full article on the way..


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