BERLIN: (AP) Mobs charged into a police guard in the heart of Berlin today and began plundering shattered Jewish shops, while smoke still billowed from synagogues in various parts of the capital.
Propaganda Minister Paul Joseph Goebbels this afternoon issued a brief appeal to the German population to desist from further anti-Jewish demonstrations.
-Elkhart Truth, November 10, 1938
Reading the first two paragraphs of this front-page article, Elkhartans got the impression that the Nazi government of Germany was trying to curb violence against the Jews. Goebbels comes off as a humane man, working to stop the violence. But the third paragraph begins to tell a different story:
“The justifiable and understandable indignation of the German people over the cowardly Jewish murder of a German diplomat in Paris has resulted during the past night in extensive demonstrations,” said Goebbels.
Then it was back to restraint:
“The entire population is now, however, strictly requested to desist immediately from all further demonstrations and all actions of whatever nature against Jewdom.”
And then the chiller line:
“The final answer to Jewry will be given in the form of laws or decrees.”
On October 18, 1938, some 12,000 Polish-born Jews were expelled from Germany on Chancellor Adolf Hitler's orders. They had to leave their homes in a single night, and were allowed to carry only one suitcase. The Gestapo marched them to the nearest railway station, where they were put on trains to the Polish border. Poland accepted 4000, but about 8000 were denied entry and were in a sort of limbo state at the German-Polish border.
About 7000 were stranded at the Polish border station of Zbaszyn, and in nearby stables. As Polish authorities dithered over granting entry permits, the people waiting became more and more desperate. At least five committed suicide.
One couple from Hanover, stranded at the border with their daughter, had a seventeen year-old son in Paris. The daughter wrote to her brother asking for help. After receiving her postcard November 3 and reading about the situation in a Yiddish-language Paris newspaper the next day, the seventeen year-old, Herschel Grynszpan, bought a pistol.
On Monday, November 7, he went to the German Embassy, saying he had an important document to deliver. The doorman sent him to the office of the Third Secretary, Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan pulled out his pistol and said, “You are a filthy Boche and here, in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, is your document.” He fired five shots, of which two hit vom Rath, wounding him seriously.
Martin Gilbert, in Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2006) writes: “A violent mass action against the Jews had been in the minds of Nazi leaders had been in the minds of Nazi leaders for some time.” The shooting gave them the excuse to carry out the attack.
Attacks on Jewish shops began on the night of November 8. That same night, the execution of Jews who had been imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp began, though the news did not get out until a week later.
Vom Rath died from his wounds on the evening of November 9. That night the “spontaneous demonstrations” began, with synagogues and Jewish shops being vandalized and burned.
Kristallnacht, or “the night of broken glass,” let the world know that Nazi regime's anti-Semitism was not just rhetoric, but campaign of terror.
Next: A brave Roman Catholic archbishop speaks out against the violence while German Jews are confined to ghettos.
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