Seventy-Five Years After Kristallnacht

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Seventy–five years ago, Nazis in Germany and Austria launched Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, which was designed to intimidate German Jews.

Actually, it did a lot more than intimidate the Jews, I suppose, and I don't mean to belittle the significance of the event by using that word.

One can reach many conclusions about Kristallnacht's role in the Holocaust — whether it was truly the starting point for the Holocaust or merely another step in a process that had been under way for years (the persecution of the Jews, observes TIME magazine, was "already intense by the mid–1930s").

If it was the latter, it was a massively violent step and signaled more clearly than anything that had come before — to those who did not turn away and ignore what was happening, which was still a sizable number in 1938 — the Nazis' intention to eliminate the Jews from Europe. Synagogues were burned, Jewish schools, homes and businesses were vandalized, and nearly 100 Jews (men, women and children) were killed.

Some context is necessary here.

A few days earlier, a 17–year–old German Jewish refugee shot and killed the third secretary of the German embassy in Paris. "The youth's father had been among 10,000 deported to Poland in boxcars shortly before," wrote historian William Shirer, "and it was to revenge this and the general persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany that he went to the German embassy intending to kill the ambassador."

Instead, the third secretary was sent out to see what the young man wanted and paid with his life.

As Shirer observed, there was irony in the death of the third secretary — "[H]e had been shadowed by the Gestapo as a result of his anti–Nazi attitude," Shirer wrote. "[H]e had never shared the anti–Semitic aberrations of the rulers of his country."

But it was used as the pretext for the Night of Broken Glass.

All through the night of Nov. 9–10, 1938, the sound of shattering glass could be heard throughout Germany and Austria as the Nazis carried out their search–and–destroy mission.

"According to Dr. (Joseph) Goebbels and the German press, which he controlled, it was a 'spontaneous' demonstration ... in reaction to the news of the murder in Paris," Shirer wrote. "But after the war, documents came to light which show how 'spontaneous' it was. They are among the most illuminating — and gruesome — secret papers of the prewar Nazi era."

Those papers revealed that it was Reinhard Heydrich — perhaps the main architect of the Holocaust and "the man with the iron heart," in Hitler's words — who was the "real organizer" of Kristallnacht, Shirer asserted.

On Nov. 9, Goebbels ordered that the "spontaneous demonstrations" were to be "organized and executed" during the night.

But Heydrich issued more specific instructions on how the demonstrations were to be organized:

• "Only such measures should be taken which do not involve danger to German life or property. (For instance, synagogues are to be burned down only when there is no danger of fire to the surroundings.)"
• "Business and private apartments of Jews may be destroyed but not looted ..."
• "The demonstrations which are going to take place should not be hindered by the police."
• "As many Jews, especially rich ones, are to be arrested as can be accommodated in the existing prisons ... Upon their arrest, the appropriate concentration camps should be contacted immediately, in order to confine them in these camps as soon as possible."

The thing I found telling was that the numerous rapes on Kristallnacht were of greater concern to Nazi leaders than the killings — because it was a violation of the Nuremberg racial laws for Gentiles to have sex with Jews. That says a lot about the priorities of the Third Reich. The day after Kristallnacht, Heydrich made a preliminary confidential report:

"The extent of the destruction of Jewish shops and houses cannot yet be verified by figures ... 815 shops destroyed, 171 dwelling houses set on fire or destroyed only indicate a fraction of the actual damage so far as arson is concerned ... 119 synagogues were set on fire, and another 76 completely destroyed ... 20,000 Jews were arrested. 36 deaths were reported and those seriously injured were also numbered at 36. Those killed and injured are Jews."

In the story and timeline of the Third Reich, what was the significance of Kristallnacht? Was it a perpetuation of a policy that was already in place, or was it the introduction of a new and more sinister phase of the Third Reich's rule? The Los Angeles Times favors the latter, writing that Kristallnacht "marked the Nazis' transition from discrimination to genocide." Given the historical record, it was reasonable for BBC News to wonder recently "how strong is anti–Semitism in Germany?" The answer to that question is unclear, but Stephen Evans of BBC News writes that "[w]hat does seem to be clear is that anti–Semitism is rising in Germany."

Evans cited figures from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation, an anti–racism organization, that reported more than 800 attacks on Jews in Germany in 2011. The number was more than 850 last year. The trend has continued this year; figures show 409 attacks in the first half of 2013. Not all the attacks have been physical; some have been verbal.

Makes me wonder if civilization has learned anything in the last 75 years.

Where Have We Heard That Before?

Every once in awhile, something happens that makes me stop whatever it is I'm doing and go, "Huh?"

Such a moment occurred today, when I heard about the admission by a 73-year-old man in Austria, who acknowledged that he had held his own daughter prisoner underneath his house for 24 years, had raped her repeatedly, had fathered more than a half dozen children with her -- and no one had any notion that anything was wrong in the household.

Apparently, the man managed to explain his daughter's sudden disappearance in 1984 by claiming that she had run away from home.

And then he was able to explain the sudden appearances of three of his children/grandchildren by saying his daughter had abruptly returned and left the children with him.

He and his wife got Good Samaritan points from their friends and neighbors for taking the children in and adopting them.

A medical emergency with one of the children who had been kept captive with the man's daughter exposed the "house of horrors."

And for the second time in the last couple of years, residents of a small, idyllic community in Austria, less than 100 miles from Vienna, were confronted with a case of a woman who had been kidnapped, held captive and raped for years -- and then the case came unraveled and the locals were left to ask themselves how all this could have happened under their noses.

I don't want to stereotype anyone, and I don't wish to be politically incorrect, but this sounds a lot like what the Germans and the Austrians and the residents of their satellites in eastern Europe were saying about the concentration camps at the end of World War II.

The camps were out there in plain sight. The smoke from the ovens was there in the sky for everyone to see in the closing weeks of the war.

Yet, when the allies revealed what had been going on, the locals all said, "We didn't know what was being done." And "What could we have done if we had known?"

The argument has some validity, on the surface. But if you dig a little deeper, there are some disturbing elements.

I know we've had some disturbing cases in the United States. Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors in Milwaukee have to live with the realization of what he was doing in his apartment and no one apparently said anything about what may have been heard or seen around there over the years. Authorities were only summoned when the stench from Dahmer's apartment began to intrude into his neighbors' living space.

And there was the notorious case in New York City in the mid-1960s when a young woman named Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death near her home in Queens. Although she screamed and cried out for help, according to news reports, more than three dozen witnesses in the neighborhood did nothing to help her. One witness even reportedly opened his door and watched the fatal assault and never tried to summon help or stop what was happening.

I know it's hard to be sure what goes on behind the closed doors of someone else's home.

But these Austrian cases are disturbing for another reason. They're disturbing for what they reveal about the mindset in that part of the world.

There just seems to be something in the culture of that part of the world -- maybe it's an Aryan culture thing -- that frowns on asking questions when one's suspicions are aroused even slightly. Don't get involved. Don't know anything about what others are doing.

It's like the familiar line often recited by Sgt. Schultz on the TV show Hogan's Heroes. It's a prophetic line, really.

"I know nothing!" he used to insist. "Nothing!"

Edmund Burke is often cited as the source of a great quote, although I have yet to see a definitive attribution to him. Whether he said it or not, it seems appropriate to this case -- and others like it.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."