How the World Shrugged Off Kristallnacht

Klaus Wiegrefe
de Spiegel
via ABC News
11/9/2013

In the days surrounding Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis committed the worst pogrom Germany had seen since the Middle Ages. To mark the incident’s 75th anniversary, an exhibition in Berlin gathers previously unknown reports by foreign diplomats, revealing how the shocking events prompted little more than hollow condemnation…

…The pogroms in November 1938 lasted several days, although history books often refer to the event merely as one “Night of the Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht) because Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels announced on the radio on Nov. 10 that the excesses had ended. Experts estimate that up to 1,500 people died in the days surrounding Nov. 9. It was the worst pogrom in Germany since the Middle Ages.

This week marks the 75th anniversary of what Leipzig-based historian Dan Diner has called the “catastrophe before the catastrophe.” This prompted the German Foreign Ministry to take the unusual step of asking 48 countries that had diplomatic missions in Germany in 1938 to search their archives for reports on the November pogrom.

For months, the Foreign Ministry has been receiving copies of historical documents previously unknown to experts. Beginning next Monday, the Foreign Ministry and the Berlin Centrum Judaicum will display a selection of the documents at the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse, in an exhibition titled “From the Inside to the Outside: The 1938 November Pogroms in Diplomatic Reports from Germany.”

Despite the often-truncated form of the reports and the detached language of the diplomats, these are impressive documents with historical value. They attest to the fate of the Jewish orphanage in Esslingen, near Stuttgart, where a mob of Nazi sympathizers drove children out into the streets; of Jews who were forced to march in rows of two through Kehl, in southwestern Germany, and shout “We are traitors to Germany”; and of terrified people hiding in forests near Berlin.

What is also noteworthy about the documents is what they do not contain. In this respect, they point to the failure of the international community and its far-reaching consequences. The diplomats almost unanimously condemned the murders and acts of violence and destructions. The British described the pogrom as “Medieval barbarism,” the Brazilians called it a “disgusting spectacle,” and French diplomats wrote that the “scope of brutality” was only “exceeded by the massacres of the Armenians,” referring to the Turkish genocide of 1915-1916.

Nevertheless, no country broke off diplomatic relations with Berlin or imposed sanctions, and only Washington recalled its ambassador. Most of all, however, the borders of almost all countries remained largely closed for the roughly 400,000 Jewish Germans…

…For many of the later perpetrators of the Holocaust, Kristallnacht marked a turning point. Suddenly everything seemed possible, writes historian Raphael Gross, alluding to the emerging mood. The Nazis felt “like pioneers who had just successfully entered new territory,” Gross says…

 

 

Read the complete article at ABC News.

 

 

Update: World War II’s surviving Doolittle Raiders make final toast

DAYTON, viagra buy india OHIO –  Known as the Doolittle Raiders, the 80 men who risked their lives on a World War II bombing mission on Japan after the attack on Pearl Harbor were toasted one last time by their surviving comrades and honored with a Veterans Day weekend of fanfare shared by thousands.

Three of the four surviving Raiders attended the toast Saturday at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force. Their late commander, Lt. Gen. James “Jimmy” Doolittle, started the tradition but they decided this autumn’s ceremony would be their last…

 

 

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