Kristallnacht, 70 Years Later

There is a vital, if not urgent need for expanded research, collection of documents and materials and their preservation. If one looks at the loss of American history by development and neglect, the picture of the horrific impacts of the Nazi era is even less welldocumented as strange as that may sound. Similalry, the archeology of significant sites remains to be done. The trash heaps (literally the garbage dumps) of Europe can be a major source of information. Finding and recording the memories of survivors throughout the world, although begun, is largely incomplete and every day, thousands of witnesses are lost as they die. The task of hisotry is to preserve the past so that we may bear witness and prevent the resurgence of new horrors.

I am non jewish, but being 73 means I remember all to well the holocaust, and although the new generations are looking to make a better future, those past moments in history need to be remembered. If the present generations become complacent, forms of the holocaust can and will erupt again. Yes, I am old, but we must never forget what can happen, and the pain and suffering so many of our jewish friends and relatives endured.

It wasn't all about persecuting Jews. It was also about terrorizing everybody else.

There is something to that. The Nazis used Kristallnacht to remove officials who stood in the way of Nazi thugs and tried to protect Jews - notably police officials. What was left of German civil officialdom after Kristallnacht was thus totally compliant with Nazi needs.

However, those Germans complaining about feeling terrorized themselves - are they willing to talk about the mass enthusiasm and support they felt for Hitler and Nazidom in those early days of the Nazi era? When they were silent as Hitler and his goons clamped down on Jews, murdered or imprisoned gays, Communists, and democrats, and forced the military to swear personal allegiance to Hitler?

That all happened FIVE YEARS before Kristallnacht. By their own testimony, these Germans were not thinking about "how to be sardines" then. These survivors were probably young and enthusiastic Nazi supporters. Some of them just didn't realize until Kristallnacht that the Jews were merely the "canary in the coal mine", and that they themselves could become the next victims of the wolves of the regime. They were shocked, but continued to do nothing to alter the course of events.

Very interesting and insightful comments. The lessons of Kristallnacht should not be ignored. First, we shouldn't become complacent about the status quo; what humans have created, humans can destroy.

Next, that wonderful document, The United States Constitution, should be protected by each of us. The rights we have, thanks to it, make it difficult, but not impossible for a future Hitler to take away our liberty and freedom.

Guard each and every right with equal fervor. Many of you reading this consider yourselves highly sophisticated. You call those of us who enjoy things like hunting, fishing, camping, shooting and other outdoor activities "bitter". The man you follow says things like "...they cling to guns or religion..." while you knowingly nod your heads in agreement because you deem your lifestyles to be oh so superior.

We all cling to our religion, otherwise we wouldn't be posting here. Does that make any of us bitter? The same first amendment that makes it possible for us to attend Torah Services on Shabbos also made it possible for the president-elect to sit in his church for twenty years and ignore his pastor's venomous sermons.

I urge each of you to view any attempt to limit our Constitutional rights by any elected official as an attempt to visit another Kristallnacht on us. Whether it is an attempt to limit our ability to own a weapon, to speak our mind, to write our opinions or go to the house of worship of our choice, zealously fight any attempt to limit our rights. NEVER AGAIN should be each and very Jew's personal mantra.

Al,

You can't let it o? On a thread about our dead, you're still going to fight the election?!

Sorry, but that kind of discussion does not belong in one about the Holocaust. It is, in fact, disgustingly out of place (as it would if, say, one of us called GWB a Nazi here).

"However, those Germans complaining about feeling terrorized themselves - are they willing to talk about the mass enthusiasm and support they felt for Hitler and Nazidom in those early days of the Nazi era? When they were silent as Hitler and his goons clamped down on Jews, murdered or imprisoned gays, Communists, and democrats, and forced the military to swear personal allegiance to Hitler?"

They are mostly dead now, but the answer to your first question is yes.

Here's a typical response when I put the question to someone of that era. It would be something on the lines of "I was hungry all the time as a child, then I wasn't hungry for a few years after Anschloss. When Hitler took over, we had bread and soup and a chicken now and then. Before Hitler, there was disaster. After Hitler, there was disaster, but for a while under Hitler, our stomachs didn't rumble."

I remember one man, who'd be about 80 now, telling me that he joined the Hitler Youth and then the SS at age 15 because he was informed his mother and younger sister would not get any ration cards if he didn't. Should he have joined the SS, or not, do you suppose?

And I had an uncle who was a captain in the US Army who said as a matter of policy they shot any SS trooper on capture. One time, he said, he personally executed 112 SS inductees aged 15 to 17. Were they innocent? I think not. Were they demons? I think not. Can we make that judgment? My uncles eventually lost his mind over the guilt of that and similar incidents.

And the issues of the time were not as obvious then as they are now. I had a relative on my mother's side of the family, a Jew, who voted for the National Socialists in 1932 because, he wrote the family in America, "Hitler will bring economic stability." Hitler did. That relative was never heard from again after 1933 (and we've never been able to find any records on him). My father's family was Lutheran. One relative popped off about Hitler being a petty dictator and 14 members of the family were executed, this also in 1933. They have a nice monument in Passau, although it keeps getting covered with swastikas even now.

Perhaps you are of greater courage than they. I frankly do not know how I would have acted in the same situation myself. I believe it is easy to pronounce judgment from the relative security of the twenty-first century in either the EU or the USA.

Scott R, I guess my post went way over your head. My ending paragraph reads:
"I urge each of you to view any attempt to limit our Constitutional rights by any elected official as an attempt to visit another Kristallnacht on us. Whether it is an attempt to limit our ability to own a weapon, to speak our mind, to write our opinions or go to the house of worship of our choice, zealously fight any attempt to limit our rights. NEVER AGAIN should be each and very Jew's personal mantra."

That, was the thrust of the post. Did I besmirch our president-elect by quoting him? Did I besmirch him by recalling his actions? Does the truth cause you that much discomfort?

In small words what I tried to get across is be wary of those who hold office who try to limit ANY of our constitutional rights. That means both the ones you personally like and the ones you do not. Kapish?

To protect the constitutional rights that are slowely disapating takes more that a mere conscience to vote. And it is not just a single persons fault for a political shift or change, and to think that just one person can or should be held to suffer because of a indifference is wrong. It is not that one person will suffer but that we all will suffer. It takes companionship and compadra ship to unflock unjustice, let all people around the world who watched the election take notice. That it is people who make changes and governments that bend.But when ever a truely deadly agenda does sprout its head, it is not just one government that is the hero, but all governments. A unified world government sphereheade with universal application, and my prayers Jewish dominancy.

Instead of wailing and complaining we should get our own back, we should act exactly the way we are being accused of doing things. They maim or kill one of us, we should maim and kill two of them. That's the only thing bullies and racist m-f c-s s.o.b.s understand. Remember the story of the lamb and the wolf? A lamb was drinking downriver and a wolf upriver. The wolf suddenly yelled: "You dirty little lamb, you're muddying my water!" The lamb replied: "How could I? The stream is flowing down from where YOU are!" The wolf: "That's a lie, my water is full of mud and for this I'll kill and eat you...."