CRYSTAL NIGHT
The beginning of the end for the Jews in Germany came on November 9, 1938. A German diplomat named Ernst vom Rath was assassinated by a German-born Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan. Hitler learned of the death just as he was about to deliver a speech celebrating the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.
Instead of delivering the speech, Hitler left the hall abruptly and left it to Joseph Goebbels to deliver the speech. In response to the assassination, Goebbels told the crowd that:
"the Führer has decided that… demonstrations should not be prepared or organised by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."
The next night crowds of German storm troopers wearing civilian clothes and armed with sledgehammers and axes methodically shattered the storefront windows of 7500 Jewish stores and businesses, thus giving the rampage the incongruously elegant name Kristallnicht or Crystal Night.
We of course live in much more enlightened times. The idea that people responding to a tumultuous political moment would go around shattering store front windows while senior national political officials turned a semi-blind eye . . . well, we all know that just couldn't happen. Certainly not here in the good old U.S. of A.
March 25, 2010
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