The Postcard
A postcard that was published by F. Frith & Co. Ltd. of Reigate and printed in England. The card was posted in Waltham Cross on Tuesday the 8th. November 1938 to:
Miss G. Huddlestone,
25, Wellhouse Lane,
Barnet,
Herts.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"We shall be delighted to
see you on the 19th. I shall
have to go out to tea with a
friend on Sunday, but I expect
you will not mind.
My sister wants you to have
tea with her, & Dingles will be
at home.
Love from G. N. B.
Len will meet you at the
church at Barnet at 9 o’clock".
Selworthy
Selworthy is a small village 5 kilometres (3 mi) from Minehead in Somerset, England. It is located in the National Trust’s Holnicote Estate on the northern fringes of Exmoor.
Jewish Suppression in Germany and Kristallnacht
So what else happened on the day that the card was sent?
Well, on the 8th. November 1938, the German government barred Jewish children from German state elementary schools as a precursor to Kristallnacht that took place on the following two days.
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on the 9th. and 10th. November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening.
The name Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night") comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed.
The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.
Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.
Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.
Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from foreign journalists working in Germany sent shockwaves around the world. The Times of London observed on the 11th. November 1938:
"No foreign propagandist bent upon
blackening Germany before the world
could outdo the tale of burnings and
beatings, of blackguardly assaults on
defenceless and innocent people, which
disgraced that country yesterday."
Estimates of fatalities caused by the attacks have varied. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews had been murdered. However, modern analysis of German sources puts the figure much higher; when deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll reaches the hundreds, with Richard J. Evans estimating 638 deaths by suicide alone.
Historians view Kristallnacht as a prelude to the Final Solution and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.
Background to Kristallnacht
In the 1920’s, most German Jews were fully integrated into German society as German citizens. They served in the German army and navy, and contributed to every field of German business, science and culture.
However, conditions for German Jews began to change after the appointment of Adolf Hitler (the Austrian-born leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party) as Chancellor of Germany on the 30th. January 1933, and the Enabling Act (implemented on the 23rd. March 1933) which enabled the assumption of power by Hitler after the Reichstag fire of the 27th. February 1933.
From its inception, Hitler’s regime moved quickly to introduce anti-Jewish policies. Nazi propaganda alienated 500,000 Jews in Germany, who accounted for only 0.86% of the overall population, and framed them as an enemy responsible for Germany’s defeat in the First World War and for its subsequent economic disasters, such as the 1920’s hyperinflation and the Wall Street Crash Great Depression.
Beginning in 1933, the German government enacted a series of anti-Jewish laws restricting the rights of German Jews to earn a living, to enjoy full citizenship and to gain education, including a law which forbade Jews from working in the civil service. The subsequent 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped German Jews of their citizenship, and prohibited Jews from marrying non-Jewish Germans.
These laws resulted in the exclusion and alienation of Jews from German social and political life. Many sought asylum abroad; hundreds of thousands emigrated, but as Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936:
"The world seemed to be divided into
two parts – those places where the Jews
could not live, and those where they
could not enter."
The international Évian Conference on the 6th. July 1938 addressed the issue of Jewish and Gypsy immigration to other countries. By the time the conference took place, more than 250,000 Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by Germany in March 1938; more than 300,000 German and Austrian Jews continued to seek refuge and asylum from oppression.
As the number of Jews and Gypsies wanting to leave increased, the restrictions against them grew, with many countries tightening their rules for admission. By 1938, Germany had entered a new radical phase in anti-Semitic activity. Some historians believe that the Nazi government had been contemplating a planned outbreak of violence against the Jews, and were waiting for an appropriate provocation; there is evidence of this planning dating back to 1937.
In the so-called "Polenaktion", more than 12,000 Polish Jews were expelled from Germany on the 28th. October 1938, on Hitler’s orders. They were ordered to leave their homes in a single night, and were allowed only one suitcase per person to carry their belongings. As the Jews were taken away, their remaining possessions were seized as loot both by Nazi authorities and by neighbours.
The deportees were taken from their homes to railway stations and were put on trains to the Polish border, where Polish border guards sent them back into Germany. This stalemate continued for days in the pouring rain, with the Jews marching without food or shelter between the borders.
Four thousand were granted entry into Poland, but the remaining 8,000 were forced to stay at the border. They waited there in harsh conditions to be allowed to enter Poland. A British newspaper told its readers that:
"Hundreds are lying about, penniless and
deserted, in little villages along the frontier
near where they had been driven out by
the Gestapo and left."
A British woman who had been sent to help those who had been expelled reported that:
"Conditions in the refugee camps are so bad
that some actually tried to escape back into
Germany and were shot".
The Shooting of Ernst vom Rath
Among those expelled from Germany was the family of Sendel and Riva Grynszpan, Polish Jews who had emigrated to Germany in 1911 and settled in Hanover.
At the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961, Sendel Grynszpan recounted the events of their deportation from Hanover on the night of the 27th. October 1938:
"They took us in police trucks, in prisoners’
lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they
took us to the railway station.
The streets were full of people shouting:
‘Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina!’" ("Jews out,
out to Palestine!").
Their seventeen-year-old son Herschel Grynszpan was living in Paris with an uncle. Herschel received a postcard from his family from the Polish border, describing the family’s expulsion:
"No one told us what was up, but we realized
this was going to be the end. We haven’t a
penny. Could you send us something?"
Herschel received the postcard on the 3rd. November 1938. On the morning of Monday, 7 November 1938, he purchased a revolver and a box of bullets, then went to the German embassy and asked to see an embassy official.
After he was taken to the office of Ernst vom Rath, Grynszpan fired five bullets at Vom Rath, two of which hit him in the abdomen. Vom Rath was a professional diplomat with the Foreign Office who expressed anti-Nazi sympathies, largely based on the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews and was under Gestapo investigation for being politically unreliable.
Grynszpan made no attempt to escape the French police and freely confessed to the shooting. In his pocket, he carried a postcard to his parents with the message:
"May God forgive me. I must protest so
that the whole world hears my protest,
and that I will do."
It is widely assumed that the assassination was politically motivated, but historian Hans-Jürgen Döscher says the shooting may have been the result of a homosexual love affair gone wrong. Grynszpan and vom Rath had become intimate after they met in Le Boeuf sur le Toit, which was a popular meeting place for gay men at the time.
The next day, the German government retaliated, barring Jewish children from German state elementary schools, indefinitely suspending Jewish cultural activities, and putting a halt to the publication of Jewish newspapers and magazines, including the three national German Jewish newspapers.
A newspaper in Great Britain described the last move, which cut off the Jewish populace from their leaders, as:
"Intended to disrupt the Jewish community
and rob it of the last frail ties which hold it
together."
Their rights as citizens had been stripped. One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatsoever, and imposing a penalty of twenty years’ confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter.
The Death of Ernst vom Rath
Ernst vom Rath died of his wounds on the 9th. November 1938. Word of his death reached Hitler that evening while he was with several key members of the Nazi party at a dinner commemorating the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch.
After intense discussions, Hitler left the assembly abruptly without giving his usual address. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered the speech in his place, and said that:
"The Führer has decided that demonstrations
should not be prepared or organized by the
party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously,
they are not to be hampered."
The chief judge Walter Buch later stated that the message was clear; with these words, Goebbels had commanded the party leaders to organize a pogrom.
Some leading party officials disagreed with Goebbels’ actions, fearing the diplomatic crisis it would provoke. Heinrich Himmler wrote:
"I suppose that it is Goebbels’s megalomania
and stupidity which is responsible for starting
this operation now, in a particularly difficult
diplomatic situation."
The historian Saul Friedländer believes that Goebbels had personal reasons for wanting to bring about Kristallnacht. Goebbels had recently suffered humiliation for the ineffectiveness of his propaganda campaign during the Sudeten crisis, and was in some disgrace over an affair with a Czech actress, Lída Baarová.
Goebbels needed a chance to improve his standing in the eyes of Hitler. At 1:20 am on the 10th. November 1938, Reinhard Heydrich sent an urgent secret telegram to the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) and the Sturmabteilung (SA), containing instructions regarding the riots.
This included guidelines for the protection of foreigners and non-Jewish businesses and property. Police were instructed not to interfere with the riots unless the guidelines were violated. Police were also instructed to seize Jewish archives from synagogues and community offices, and to arrest and detain "healthy male Jews, who are not too old", for eventual transfer to (labour) concentration camps.
Rioting
Müller, in a message to SA and SS commanders, stated that the most extreme measures were to be taken against Jewish people.
The SA and Hitler Youth shattered the windows of about 7,500 Jewish stores and businesses, hence the appellation Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), and looted their goods.
Jewish homes were ransacked throughout Germany. Although violence against Jews had not been explicitly condoned by the authorities, there were cases of Jews being beaten or assaulted. Following the violence, police departments recorded a large number of suicides and rapes.
The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms, many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores were damaged, and in many cases destroyed. More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps; primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.
The synagogues, some centuries old, were victims of considerable violence and vandalism, with the tactics the Stormtroops practised on these and other sacred sites described as "approaching the ghoulish" by the United States Consul in Leipzig.
Tombstones were uprooted and graves violated. Fires were lit, and prayer books, scrolls, artwork and philosophy texts were thrown upon them, and buildings were either burned or smashed until unrecognizable. Eric Lucas recalls the destruction of the synagogue that a tiny Jewish community had constructed in a small village only twelve years earlier:
"It did not take long before the first heavy
grey stones came tumbling down, and the
children of the village amused themselves
as they flung stones into the many colored
windows.
When the first rays of a cold and pale
November sun penetrated the heavy dark
clouds, the little synagogue was but a heap
of stone, broken glass and smashed-up
woodwork.
After this, the Jewish community was fined 1 billion Reichsmarks (equivalent to 7 billion in 2020 USD). The Daily Telegraph correspondent, Hugh Greene, wrote of events in Berlin:
"Mob law ruled in Berlin throughout the afternoon
and evening and hordes of hooligans indulged in
an orgy of destruction.
I have seen several anti-Jewish outbreaks in Germany
during the last five years, but never anything as
nauseating as this.
Racial hatred and hysteria seem to have taken
complete hold of otherwise decent people. I saw
fashionably dressed women clapping their hands
and screaming with glee, while respectable
middle-class mothers held up their babies to see
the ‘fun’".
Many Berliners were however deeply ashamed of the pogrom, and some took great personal risks to offer help. The son of a US consular official heard the janitor of his block cry:
"They must have emptied the insane asylums
and penitentiaries to find people who’d do
things like that!"
Tucson News TV channel briefly reported on a 2008 remembrance meeting at a local Jewish congregation. According to eyewitness Esther Harris:
"They ripped up the belongings, the books,
knocked over furniture, shouted obscenities".
Göring, who was in favour of expropriating the Jews rather than destroying Jewish property as had happened in the pogrom, complained directly to Sicherheitspolizei Chief Heydrich immediately after the events:
"I’d rather you had done in two-hundred
Jews than destroy so many valuable assets!"
The persecution and economic damage inflicted upon German Jews continued after the pogrom, even as their places of business were ransacked. They were forced to pay a collective fine of one billion marks for the murder of vom Rath (equal to roughly $US 5.5 billion in today’s currency), which was levied by the compulsory acquisition of 20% of all Jewish property by the state.
Six million Reichsmarks of insurance payments for property damage owing to the Jewish community were to be paid to the government instead as "damages to the German Nation".
The number of emigrating Jews surged, as those who were able to left the country. In the ten months following Kristallnacht, more than 115,000 Jews emigrated from the Reich. The majority went to other European countries, the U.S. and Mandatory Palestine, and at least 14,000 made it to Shanghai, China.
As part of government policy, the Nazis seized houses, shops, and other property the émigrés left behind. Many of the destroyed remains of Jewish property plundered during Kristallnacht were dumped near Brandenburg.
In October 2008, this dumpsite was discovered by Yaron Svoray, an investigative journalist. The site, the size of four Association football fields, contained an extensive array of personal and ceremonial items looted during the riots against Jewish property and places of worship on the night of the 9th. November 1938. It is believed the goods were brought by rail to the outskirts of the village and dumped on designated land. Among the items found were glass bottles engraved with the Star of David, mezuzot, painted window sills, and the armrests of chairs found in synagogues, in addition to an ornamental swastika.
Responses to Kristallnacht
The reaction of non-Jewish Germans to Kristallnacht was varied. Many spectators gathered at the scenes, most of them in silence. The local fire departments confined themselves to prevent the flames from spreading to neighbouring buildings. In Berlin, police Lieutenant Otto Bellgardt barred SA troopers from setting the New Synagogue on fire, earning his superior officer a verbal reprimand from the commissioner.
The British historian Martin Gilbert believes that many non-Jews resented the round-up, his opinion being supported by German witness Dr. Arthur Flehinger who recalls seeing people crying while watching from behind their curtains.
Rolf Dessauers recalls how a neighbour came forward and restored a portrait of Paul Ehrlich that had been slashed to ribbons by the Sturmabteilung:
"He wanted it to be known that
not all Germans supported
Kristallnacht."
The extent of the damage done on Kristallnacht was so great that many Germans are said to have expressed their disapproval of it, and to have described it as senseless.
In an article released for publication on the evening of the 11th. November, Goebbels ascribed the events of Kristallnacht to the "healthy instincts" of the German people. He went on to explain:
"The German people are anti-Semitic. It has
no desire to have its rights restricted or to
be provoked in the future by parasites of
the Jewish race."
Less than 24 hours after Kristallnacht, Adolf Hitler made a one-hour long speech in front of a group of journalists where he completely ignored the recent events on everyone’s mind. According to Eugene Davidson, the reason for this was that Hitler wished to avoid being directly connected to an event that he was aware that many of those present condemned, regardless of Goebbels’s unconvincing explanation that Kristallnacht was caused by popular wrath.
Goebbels met the foreign press in the afternoon of the 11th. November and said that the burning of synagogues and damage to Jewish owned property had been:
"Spontaneous manifestations of indignation
against the murder of Herr Vom Rath by the
young Jew Grynsban [sic]".
As it was aware that the German public generally did not support the Kristallnacht, the propaganda ministry directed the German press to portray opponents of racial persecution as disloyal.
The press was also under orders to downplay the Kristallnacht, describing general events at the local level only, with prohibition against depictions of individual events.[64] In 1939 this was extended to a prohibition on reporting any anti-Jewish measures.
To the consternation of the Nazis, the Kristallnacht affected public opinion counter to their desires, the peak of opposition against the Nazi racial policies was reached just then, when according to almost all accounts the vast majority of Germans rejected the violence perpetrated against the Jews. Verbal complaints grew rapidly in numbers, and for example, the Dusseldorf branch of the Gestapo reported a sharp decline in anti-Semitic attitudes among the population.
While individual Catholics and Protestants took action, the churches as a whole chose silence publicly. Nevertheless, individuals continued to show courage, for example, a parson paid the medical bills of a Jewish cancer patient and was sentenced to a large fine and several months in prison in 1941.
Reformed Church pastor Paul Schneider placed a Nazi sympathizer under church discipline and he was subsequently sent to Buchenwald where he was murdered. A Protestant parson spoke out in 1943 and was sent to Dachau concentration camp where he died after a few days. A Catholic nun was sentenced to death in 1945 for helping Jews.
Kristallnacht as a Turning Point
Kristallnacht changed the nature of the Nazi persecution of Jews from economic, political, and social to physical with beatings, incarceration, and murder; the event is often referred to as the beginning of the Holocaust.
In this view, it is described not only as a pogrom, but also as a critical stage within a process where each step becomes the seed of the next. An account cited that Hitler’s green light for Kristallnacht was made with the belief that it would help him realize his ambition of getting rid of the Jews in Germany.
Prior to this large-scale and organized violence against the Jews, the Nazis’ primary objective was to eject them from Germany, leaving their wealth behind. In the words of historian Max Rein in 1988:
"Kristallnacht came…and
everything was changed."
While November 1938 predated the overt articulation of "The Final Solution", it foreshadowed the genocide to come. Around the time of Kristallnacht, the SS newspaper Das Schwarze Korps called for a "destruction by swords and flames."
At a conference on the day after the pogrom, Hermann Göring said:
"The Jewish problem will reach its solution if,
in anytime soon, we will be drawn into war
beyond our border—then it is obvious that we
will have to manage a final account with the
Jews."
Kristallnacht was also instrumental in changing global opinion. In the United States, for instance, it was this specific incident that came to symbolize Nazism and was the reason the Nazis became associated with evil.
Kristallnacht was publicly referenced on the 10th. January 2021 by former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger in a speech decrying the actions of President Donald Trump and the attack he was said to have incited on the U.S. Capitol on the 6th. January.
Posted by pepandtim on 2021-04-05 09:00:59
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