Remembering...Kristallnacht

Today is the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. On 9 November 1938, in “response” to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a minor functionary in the German embassy in Paris by a teen-aged Polish Jew, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated “spontaneous” acts of outrage on Jewish homes, shops & synagogues throughout Germany.

More than 200 synagogues & thousands of homes & businesses were ransacked & torched throughout the Reich (which by then included Austria & most of Czechoslovakia), starting the night of the 9th & continuing through the next day. Efforts by municipal fire & police services to stop the conflagrations & violence were blocked by Nazi storm troopers. More than 90 Jews were murdered & 30,000 men & boys were arrested & sent to concentration camps.

Hermann Goering, Oberbefehlshaber of the Luftwaffe, Prussian minister of the interior (thus head of the largest police force in Germany) & chief Nazi clothes horse, berated Goebbels for mismanaging the affair—since despite countless millions in goods looted, not a pfennig had made its way into state coffers.

By way of placating Goering, Goebbels decreed that German Jews should pay an indemnity of 1 billion Reichsmarks “for causing the damage” that now littered communities throughout the Reich.

& he collected.

“Kristallnacht” doesn’t really convey the full horror of these events. Although the Nazis had been steadily closing in the walls on Jews according to the blueprint patently evident in Mein Kampf, & had even essayed a public boycott of Jewish businesses (unsuccessful, as it happens, so not repeated) shortly after taking power in 1933, this was the first instance where widespread violence & murder were unleashed on the community.

& this time they were successful. There were no protests either internally or from the fraternity of nations. The Nazis had removed their gloves & revealed their brass knuckles—and no one cared. There were a few lackluster objections from here or there, but no official recognition (much less outrage) that this was a state act of collective violence against a group of people. Likewise no one seemed to connect the dots that there could be other groups on the murder list to be lined up after the Jews were eliminated.

About 29 years ago, I was following the pilgrim’s route from Paris to Santiago de Compostela. I’d checked in to the Auberge de Jeunesse in Bordeaux & was riding my bicycle around the town. At one stop light a young man came up beside me—he must have recognized by the panniers that I wasn’t a local, & we struck up a conversation. He was also outfitted for distance—I think he was working the vendange (I ran into a lot of kids at hostels who were following the harvest around the country), but at this point I can’t really recall.

Anyhow, he was German & told me that he was heading over to the “main” synagogue (the Great Synagogue). Seems he’d never in his life (of probably 20 years) seen a Jewish temple, & thought he should do so. (My first thought was, “Okay, there’s a reason you’ve never seen a synagogue on the hoof—do you know what that is?” But I didn’t bring it up & neither did he.) He’d been by earlier but was told he should return in the afternoon. He invited me along.

Well, my only diary-entry for Bordeaux was going to be the Centre Jean Moulin (museum of the Résistance), so he & I cycled over to the shul. He was such a trusting soul he didn’t even lock his bike.

He rang the bell & we were buzzed in; no one came to greet us, we just went in. I have to say I felt a little on edge—didn’t know whether he was going to pull a Molotov out of his jeans & finish off one of the ones the Nazis missed 35 years earlier. But in the end we just wandered around the sanctuary, unescorted, looking at the space so different from Christian churches.

Actually, at the time this was only the second temple I’d ever been in, so I wasn’t that much further along culturally speaking that my companion.

We could hear voices in other rooms, but no one ever did come out to check on us. After a while, we let ourselves out. He went on to find a place to camp for the night (the hostel’s couple of francs was more than he wanted to spend) & I headed off to the museum. (Which, BTW, had a terrific collection of propaganda posters. Some of them are still quite vivid in my mind.)

I wonder if he’s remembering his first visit to a synagogue on this anniversary, & how he had to travel hundreds of miles out of Germany to find it?

I also wonder if we’ve progressed since 1938—no one did much about the Serbian or Rwandan versions of Kristallnacht, did they?

I even wonder if we’ve progressed since 1979—would the keepers of a synagogue anywhere today buzz in someone to have unaccompanied free rein of the sanctuary?

But it’s a start if we remember & reflect.