Today is the 75th 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 and synagogues throughout
Germany.
More than 200 synagogues and thousands of homes and businesses
were ransacked and torched throughout the Reich (which by then included Austria
and most of Czechoslovakia), starting the night of the 9th and;
continuing through the next day. Efforts by municipal fire and police services
to stop the conflagrations and violence were blocked by Nazi storm troopers.
More than 90 Jews were murdered and 30,000 men and boys were arrested and sent
to concentration camps.
Hermann Goering, Oberbefehlshaber of the
Luftwaffe, Prussian minister of the interior (thus head of the largest police
force in Germany) and 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.
And 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, and 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 and
murder were unleashed on the community.
And this time they were successful. There were no substantial
protests either internally or from the fraternity of nations. The Nazis had
removed their gloves and 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.
Some time 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 and
was riding my bicycle around the town. At one stop light a young man on a bicycle came up
beside me—he must have recognized by the panniers that I wasn’t a local—and 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 and 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, and 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 and 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 and I cycled over to the shul. He
was such a trusting soul he didn’t even lock his bike, just leaned it up
against the wall.
He rang the bell and 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 and 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) and 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, and 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?
A few years ago I wondered 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? I found out in 2009 when I retraced the French part
of my pilgrimage: you can’t get close to the Great Synagogue; it’s fenced off and I couldn’t even see where
you might ring to get someone’s attention. Looking at that iron fence I
thought, well, I guess 1979 was that brief window of lull in the storm—between the
Nazi anti-Semites and the Islamists and National Front varieties of today.
