On the morning of 7 November, a young Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, wrote a farewell postcard to his parents and put it in his pocket. Grynszpan went to a gun shop in the Rue du Faubourg St Martin, where he bought a 6.35mm revolver and a box of 25 bullets for 235 francs. They went to the German Embassy in Paris and asked to see an embassy official. After he was taken to the office of Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath, Grynszpan fired five bullets at Vom Rath, two of which hit him in the abdomen.
Why he did this is your homework for today.
This was the event that triggered Kristallnacht. Many will have you believe that the violence at Kristallnacht was disrupted spontaneously after and because of the killing of Vom Rath. However, I believe that Kristallnacht was planned weeks beforehand—it stands to reason it did. Many think that the violence only erupted in Germany, but there were attacks in Austria as well. In an era with no social media, where you could arrange something like this within a matter of hours, it must have been planned long prior to the date. It was well orchestrated.
The following is the impression of the British journalist Hugh Greenel of that fateful night—85 years ago, on 9 November 1938. He witnessed the events and wrote: “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 seemed 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’.”
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Americans and the Holocaust is an exhibition at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which opened on 23 April 2018. Before I go into the details of this exhibition, I want to mention one of the few Americans, Eddy Hamel, who was murdered during the Holocaust.
Eddy Hamel was the first Jewish player, and also the first American, to play for Ajax in Amsterdam. Born in New York City in 1902, he had moved to the Netherlands as a baby with his Dutch-born parents and considered himself more Dutchman than American.
Hamel became a first-team regular for Ajax, to date, only four other Jewish soccer players have followed in his footsteps—Johnny Roeg, Bennie Muller, Sjaak Swart, and Daniël de Ridder. Hamel was a fan favourite and was cited by pre-World War II club legend Wim Anderiesen as part of the strongest line-up he ever played with. He had his fan club in the 1920s, which would line up on his side of the field at the beginning of every game and then switch sides—to be on the side of the field he was on during the second half. After his retirement as a player, Hamel managed Alcmaria Victrix for three years and continued to play in an Ajax veteran squad.
Hamel became a first-team regular for Ajax, to date, only four other Jewish soccer players have followed in his footsteps—Johnny Roeg, Bennie Muller, Sjaak Swart, and Daniël de Ridder. Hamel was a fan favourite and was cited by pre-World War II club legend Wim Anderiesen as part of the strongest line-up he ever played with. He had his fan club in the 1920s, which would line up on his side of the field at the beginning of every game and then switch sides—to be on the side of the field he was on during the second half. After his retirement as a player, Hamel managed Alcmaria Victrix for three years and continued to play in an Ajax veteran squad.
Hamel, his wife and their sons lived across town at the time, not far from where 13-year-old Anne Frank and her family lived. In apparent defiance of the rules of the Nazi regime, Hamel continued to play for his old team. Lucky Ajax, during the German occupation.
On 27 October 1942, Hamel was stopped by two officers from the Jewish Affairs division of the Amsterdam Police Department, which collaborated with the Nazis. The arrest report, written in German, states that Hamel told his captors he was born in New York. He gave coaching as his profession. The reason for the arrest: He was caught in public ohne judenstern—without his Jewish star. Despite his American citizenship, Hamel was detained by the Nazis because he was a Jew.
Eddy and his family had to report to Westerbork. They ended up in the so-called English Barrack. There were British and American citizens who were eligible for exchange. But that status turned out to offer no protection either. Leon Greenman, who was in the same barracks, spent the last few months with Eddy. Both their families were deported to Auschwitz in January 1943, where the women and children were immediately murdered. Both men were to work.
Eddy spent four months doing hard labour at Birkenau. After he was found to have a swollen mouth abscess during a Nazi inspection, the Nazis sent him to the gas chambers in Auschwitz concentration camp on April 30, 1943, where they murdered him.
AMERICANS AND THE HOLOCAUST
By the time Nazi Germany forced the world into war, democratic civilization was at stake. The US military fought for almost four years to defend democracy, and 400,000+ Americans died. The United States alone could not have prevented the Holocaust, but more could have been done to save some of the lives of the six million Jews killed.
It was already known in 1933 what was happening in Germany. The photograph at the top of this post is from a resolution sent on 27 March 1933 by the United Churches of Lackawanna County in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to US Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
After Kristallnacht, Gallup asked Americans: Do you approve or disapprove of the Nazi treatment of Jews in Germany? Of the vast majority who responded, 94% indicated disapproval. Yet, although nearly all Americans condemned the Nazi regime’s terror against Jews in November 1938, that very same week, 72% of Americans said, No when Gallup asked: Should we allow Jewish exiles from Germany to come to the United States to live?—only 21% answered Yes.
Prejudice against Jews in the U.S. was evident in several ways in the 1930s. According to historian Leonard Dinnerstein, more than 100 new anti-Semitic organizations were founded in the U.S. between 1933 and 1941. One of the most influential, Father Charles Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice, spread Nazi propaganda and accused all Jews of being communists. Coughlin broadcast anti-Jewish ideas to millions of radio listeners, asking them to pledge to restore America to the Americans.
On 20 November 1938, two weeks after Kristallnacht, Coughlin, referring to the millions of Christians killed by the Communists in Russia, said, “Jewish persecution only followed after Christians first were persecuted.”
Further to the fringes, William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Legion of America (“Silver Shirts”) fashioned themselves after Nazi Stormtroopers (“brownshirts”). The German American Bund celebrated Nazism openly, established Hitler Youth-style summer camps in communities across the United States and hoped to see the dawn of fascism in America.
Fritz Kuhn, Bundesfuher of the German-American Bund. Front centreMe with glasses
Even if the Silver Shirts and the Bund did not represent the mainstream, Gallup polls showed that many Americans held seemingly prejudicial ideas about Jews. A remarkable survey conducted in April 1938 found that more than half of Americans blamed Europe’s Jews for their own treatment at the hands of the Nazis. This poll showed that 54% of Americans agreed that “the persecution of Jews in Europe has been partly their own fault,” with 11% believing it was “entirely” their own fault. Hostility to refugees was so ingrained that just two months after Kristallnacht, 67% of Americans opposed a bill in the U.S. Congress intended to admit child refugees from Germany. The bill never made it to the floor of Congress for a vote.
Fritz Kuhn, a German veteran of World War I, was the leader (or Bundesfuher) of the German-American Bund. After World War I, Kuhn immigrated first to Mexico and then to the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1934. At its height—the Bund had organized 20 youth training camps and were promoted as family-friendly summer camps—Camp Siegfried in Long Island, Camp Hindenberg in Wisconsin, and Deutschhorst Country Club in Pennsylvania. They were devoted to projecting favourable views of Nazi Germany and spreading Nazi ideology in the United States. The camps’ popularity increased rapidly. The New Jersey division of the Bund opened its 100-acre Camp Norland at Sussex Hills in 1937, and the annual German Day festivities at Camp Siegfried in Long Island attracted 40,000 people in 1938.
Even during World War II, the American public realized that the rumours of mass murder in death camps were true—struggling to grasp the vast scale and scope of the crime. In November 1944, well over 5 million Jews had been murdered by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. Yet just under one-quarter of Americans who answered the poll could believe that more than 1 million people had been murdered by Germans in concentration camps; 36% believed that 100,000 or fewer had been killed.
Below is an interview with Dr. Daniel Greene, the guest exhibition curator at the museum, where he talks about further polls in the exhibition Americans and the Holocaust.
Finishing up with the story of another Jewish American. He did not die in any of the concentration camps, but he died on the battlefield.
Leo Lichten was born on 31 May 1925, in Manhattan, the son of Max and Mollie Lichten. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and his best buddy, Paul, described him as “a very noble, intelligent and courageous person.” He even saved Paul from drowning once when they were kids.
Pfc Leo Lichten entered the service in New York, New York on 11 August 1943. Leo’s company, Company A, was ordered on 20 November 1944, to attack pillboxes (small bunkers) just outside Prummern to eliminate the enemy resistance in the small German town.
The weather was cold and rainy, the ground was muddy, and it made the battle even more difficult than it might otherwise have been. Leo stormed one of the pillboxes and was killed by machine gun fire early on in the battle.
He was laid to rest in the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, along with 8,300 fellow US soldiers and the names of 1,700 others who went missing in action.
I know there was a lot to read and listen to in this post, but it is important that these stories are remembered and retold.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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Ruth Maier is often referred to as Norway’s Anne Frank, I don’t agree with that. I think it takes away the value of the words of both women. Their circumstances and lifestyles were completely different. Even the way they were murdered was different. The only thing they had in common was that they were both Jewish.
Ruth Maier was born on 10 December 1920, in Vienna. She and her sister Judith, who was 1½ years younger, spent the first years of their childhood in Vienna-Döbling, in the attic apartment of an apartment building on Peter-Jordan
Starting in 1930, the municipality of Vienna built a large residential complex nearby – along Gersthofer Straße – in which the family moved into a spacious apartment on the 3rd floor (staircase 1, door 14; entrance Hockegasse 2). On the floor above, the father, the chairman of the Austrian postal union and secretary of the International Trade Union Federation of Postal, Telephone and Telegraph employees PTTI, Ludwig Maier, had his office.
Ruth liked to sit and read in her father’s study, with whom she had a close relationship. She was just 13 years old when her father died of bacterial dermatitis. Mother Irma and Grandmother Anna tried to give the two girls a happy childhood.
On her 18th birthday, Ruth witnessed the violent excesses of the Nazi mobs during the November 1938 pogrom in Vienna: Ruth Maier, who had previously had no connection to Judaism, began to confront her identity in her diary. Judith managed to escape to the United Kingdom, via the Kindertransport. Ruth was able to find refuge in Norway. She was too old for the Kindertransport.
On 30 January 1939, a family from Lillestrøm took Ruth Maier into their home: the telegraph operator Arne Strøm, an acquaintance of Ruth’s father, had vouched for the Norwegian authorities that the young refugee would not be a financial burden to the state. In August 1939 Ruth Maier was admitted to the Frogner School in Oslo, she became fluent in Norwegian within a year, completed her final exams, and befriended the future poet Gunvor Hofmo at a volunteer work camp in Biri. The two became a couple, finding lodging and work in various places in Norway.
Ruth was also one of the models for the statue “Surprised”, by Gustav Vigeland. It is on permanent display in Frogner Park in Oslo. Vigeland began work on the sculpture in about 1904. The model for the face of the sculpture was Inga Syvertsen; the sculpture was completed in 1942. Ruth was surprised by another person entering the room while she was modelling for Vigeland, and she tried to cover her naked body, which shows in her posture. The statue was eventually cast in bronze in 2002.
But even during this period, Maier repeatedly found herself overcome by a sense of loneliness and of being misunderstood, feelings which became particularly strong once the German Wehrmacht occupied Norway. They eventually led to a nervous breakdown, and in early 1941, Maier had herself committed to a psychiatric ward. Gunvor Hofmo’s visits were the only ray of hope during the seven weeks she spent there. In fact, it seems that Hofmo was the only person in Norway who cared about Maier.
Below are some excerpts from Ruth Maier’s diary.
Saturday, July 20, 1940, Lillestrøm “Lillestrøm is unbearable now. You come across German soldiers at every turn. They wink at the young girls with the same self-confidence, and the girls always smile back, bewitched by the uniform sore.”
In early January 1941, Biristrand “I can’t tell you how warm I am with Gunvor. I love her deep eyes very much. I love her way of speaking about things subtly”
Ruth’s ast note to Gunvor Hofmo
“I believe that it is good that it has come to this. Why should we not suffer, when there is so much suffering? Do not worry about me. Perhaps I would not want to trade with you.”
Norwegian police officers entered the Engelheim boarding house for girls and young women in Oslo on November 26, 1942, and took Ruth Maier away. The arrest is said to have been violent. Maier was dragged into a car and forced to board the “Donau,” a prisoner transport ship, on the very same day.
Five days later, she was murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp along with 187 Jewish women, 42 children, and 116 men from Norway who were unable to work.
Jan Erik Vold, the editor of her diaries writes about the last hours before her deportation:
“The raid in which she was arrested took place on November 26. 300 men, members of the police, Quisling’s stormtroopers and the Gestapo took part in the operation. Taxis that had been confiscated were used to transport the arrested persons. Nunna Moum lived in the Same boarding school as Ruth. She says that the arrest happened quietly. Two Norwegian police officers led the Austrian down the stairs into the street to a waiting car. She was told to sit in the back seat, where two tearful girls were already sitting. The girls in the boarding school woke each other up and watched the scene. Someone said, ‘We can watch your gold watch until you come back.’ Ruth replied, ‘I’ll never come back.’ “
Gunvor Hofmo kept Ruth’s diaries and much of her correspondence. She approached Gyldendal to get them published in 1953 but was turned down. After she died in 1995, Jan Erik Vold went through her papers and came upon Ruth Maier’s works. After editing them for ten years, they were published in 2007. Vold was highly impressed by the literary value of the diaries, comparing Ruth Maier’s literary talent to that of Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. The book was translated into English by Jamie Bulloch in 2009
Gunvor Hofmo never got over the loss of her girlfriend. This traumatic experience was probably one of the reasons for the crisis Hofmo went through in the 1950s, which caused her to become a long-term patient at the Gaustad mental hospital in Oslo for two decades. In the immediate postwar period, Hofmo had suffered from obsessions which became increasingly intrusive. She heard voices and was afraid of “radiation” in her head.
In a speech issued on 27 January 2012 on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg issued an official apology for the role played by Norwegians in the deportations. As reported on the official website of the Norwegian Government, Stoltenberg delivered his speech at the dock in the capital Oslo where 532 Jews boarded the cargo ship Donau on 26 November 1942, bound for Nazi camps. Stoltenberg said:
“The Holocaust came to Norway on Thursday 26 November 1942. Ruth Maier was one of the many who were arrested that day. On 26 November, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, the sound of heavy boots could be heard on the stairs of the boarding house “Englehjemmet” in Oslo. A few minutes later, the slight Jewish girl was seen by her friends being led out the door of Dalsbergstien 3. Ruth Maier was last seen being forced into a black truck by two big Norwegian policemen. Five days later the 22-year-old was dead. Murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Fortunately, it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes. And it is never too late. More than 50 years after the war ended, the Storting decided to make a settlement, collectively and individually, for the economic liquidation of Jewish assets. By so doing the state accepted moral responsibility for the crimes committed against Norwegian Jews during the Second World War. What about the crimes against Ruth Maier and the other Jews? The murders were unquestionably carried out by the Nazis. But it was Norwegians who carried out the arrests. It was Norwegians who drove the trucks. And it happened in Norway.”
I don’t agree with the line of the speech “Fortunately, it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes” The unfortunate truth is that we don’t, we should, but we don’t.
On the night of 9/10 November 1938, the Nazis unleashed a series of pogroms against the Jewish population in Germany and recently occupied and annexed territories. It should have been clear to the rest of the world what the Nazis were really about.
Telegram from Sir G Ogilvie Forbes regarding the damage dealt to Jewish properties during ‘Kristallnacht’ on 10 November 1938
From GERMANY.
Telegram (en clair) from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes (Berlin),
“D. BY TELEPHONE. 10th November 1938.
R 5.5p.m. 10th November 1938
No.663.
IMPORTANT
My telegram No. 661.
I have just returned from a tour of Friedrichstrasse and city districts, where Jewish shops are being smashed and looted by youths in plain clothes, followed by large and smiling crowds, including soldiers and others in party uniforms. Police were taking no notice.
The only exception was the premises of Messrs. Israel, a big department store partly British-owned which was guarded by police with a fire brigade standing by. His Majesty’s Consul-General who visited these premises informs me that enormous damage has been done to stock and fittings. According to Mr. Israel store was attacked early this afternoon by a crowd which included S.S. men in uniform. Business offices owned by Jews are also being entered and smashed up apparently with impunity. Similar attacks on Jewish property are said to be taking place all over Germany.
His Majesty’s Consul Dresden reports that a British Jew from Leipzig has asked for asylum in the Consulate as Jews in Leipzig are being beaten up. I have taken immediate steps with the Under Secretary of State for the safeguarding of British subjects.
Chief Rabbi of Berlin has been arrested and seven synagogues have been burnt.
The facts that these attacks began only after midnight last night and that Jewish shops and offices have been systematically signalled out indicate that this action was deliberately planned.”
Testimony from survivor Steve Adler.
Steve Adler
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht started on the evening of the ninth of November ’38. I went to school in the morning with my brother but we were immediately sent home. There was a man in our living room with my dad, and he took him away. He was gone for six weeks. And during that six-week time, I didn’t know where he was. He came back on the 23rd of December, 38 six weeks later—beaten up, smelling terribly, he was a mess. Shaved head, no hair on his head; and that was a “good” camp. That was Sachsenhausen North of Berlin, one of three camps operating in Germany.
Cancel Culture seems to become more and more of a problem nowadays. Apparently, the only opinions that matter are those who get offended by literally everything. However, they didn’t realize that what they are doing is a carbon copy of 1930s Nazi Germany, which eventually resulted in the murder of millions.
On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute. In Berlin, 40,000 people gathered to hear German Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels give a speech in Berlin’s Opera Square. He declared “the era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. … The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. … And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past.” Radio stations broadcast the Berlin speeches, songs, and ceremonial incantations to countless German listeners. Widespread newspaper coverage called the “Action against the Un-German Spirit” a success. The Nazi war on “un-German” individual expression had begun.
Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass also called the November pogroms. It was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The Nazi regime looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht (literally 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.
After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany on January 30, 1933, the Nazi leadership decided to stage an economic boycott against the Jews of Germany. Local Nazi party chiefs organized the national boycott operation. Although it lasted only one day and was ignored by many individual Germans who continued to shop in Jewish-owned stores, it marked the beginning of a nationwide campaign by the Nazi Party against the entire German Jewish population.
The April 1, 1933 Boycotts were aimed to intimidate Germany’s Jews and discourage the German public from shopping at Jewish businesses. It marked the beginning of Nazi efforts to drive Jews from the German economy.
These events were basically cancel culture by another name.
So many people think that the Holocaust only lasted as along as WWII. But they could not be further away from the truth. It could be argued that the foundation of the Holocaust goes back to 1879, when Wilhelm Marr becomes the first proponent of racial anti-Semitism, blaming Jews for the failure of the German revolutions of 1848–49. I started to watch a series on Netflix called ‘Knightfall’ which is set in the 13th century, it is inspired by events of the time although with fictional characters. In the show there already is a portrayal of hate against the Jews and there is a scene where they are forced to leave Paris, and the order is given to kill all of them once they have left the outskirts of Paris. In the show they are saved by the templars, but I know there have been pogroms going back as far as that.
In 1933 the first concentration camp became operational,Dachau. Between 13–18 June 1938, the first mass arrests of Jews begin through Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich.
In the course of the “work-shy Reich” campaign carried out by the German police between June 13 and 18, 1938 against people classified as “asocial”, more than 10,000 people were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Around 6,000 prisoners were taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp alone and marked as “asocial” with a brown, later black triangle.
During the Nazi regime, the accusation of work shyness served to characterize the so-called asocial. According to an implementing regulation from 1938, anyone who “shows through behavior contrary to the community, even if it is not criminal, that he does not want to fit into the community” was considered antisocial.
According to the ordinance, anti-social persons were those who “through minor but recurring violations of the law do not want to submit to the order that is taken for granted in a National Socialist state”. Tramps, beggars, prostitutes, gypsies, drunkards and people suffering from contagious diseases, especially venereal diseases, were listed by name.
The wave of arrests was primarily intended to discipline the so-called sub-proletarian groups. During the “June Action” there were also targeted mass arrests of Jews. In Berlin, the police arrested between 1,000 and 2,000 Jews under the flimsiest of pretexts, crossing a street crossing incorrectly was enough. An anti-Semitic speech by Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels acted as the initial impetus. At a meeting in the Ministry of Propaganda on June 10, 1938, he stirred up the atmosphere. In his diary, Goebbels noted: “Spoke in front of 300 police officers in Berlin. I really got excited. Against all sentimentality. The slogan isn’t the law, it’s harassment. The Jews have to get out of Berlin. The police will help me with that.” Encouraged by the actions of the police, pogrom-like anti-Semitic riots broke out in Berlin and other large cities in the German Reich. Jewish shops were smeared and Jewish shopkeepers forced to close their shops; several synagogues were demolished.
Dr Christian Dirks, curator of the exhibition of diplomatic dispatches on the 1938 pogrom, suggests a connection with anti-Semitic attacks in Berlin, which, starting in May, escalated from June 13–16, 1938 with boycotts of Jewish shops, marking shops, raids on cafes and arrests.
In 2013 Dr Dirks also called an Irish report on Kristallnacht ,which was issued by Ambassador Charles Bewley in 1938, disgraceful.
Bewley, who described the events as “obviously organised,” began his report in the tone of a dispassionate diplomatic observer and identified with Germany’s claims that Jews dominated in areas of finance and entertainment and used their influence to promote “anti-Christian, anti-patriotic and communistic” thinking.
Charles Bewley
He went on to say their corrupting moral influence helped explain the “elimination of the Jewish element from public life.”
Bewley condemned the Irish media for following the “British press, itself in Jewish hands”, and “Anglo-Jewish telegraph agencies” by prominently displaying news of oppression against Jews but suppressing news of crimes perpetrated by Jews and anti-fascists.
He refrained from advising Dublin on how to correct what he believed was Ireland’s one-sided view of what he called the “Jewish problem”, but left no doubt that he viewed Jews themselves as the key issue.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
To donate click on the credit/debit card icon of the card you will use. If you want to donate more then $2 just add a higher number in the box left from the PayPal link. Many thanks.
I know that looking back on history with a retrospective view always comes with a 20/20 vision, nevertheless it is important to understand that it was widely know what was happening to the Jewish population in Europe throughout World War 2. Too often I have heard the argument that no one knew until after the war. There were regular reports issued to the governments of the allied forces and to newspapers.
The picture above is a cutting from the Daily Worker newspaper of an open letter – also published in the Times – by well-known figures appealing for action against the mistreatment of Jews in Europe. It was issued in February 1943.
Transcript DAILY WORKER
Cutting dated …17 Feb 1943 … 194
Britain Urged To Act Now and Save Jews
The following letter appeared in the Times yesterday: –
We have noted with satisfaction the Joint Declaration of the United Nations vigorously protesting against the Nazi outrages upon the Jewish people.
We desire to associate ourselves with it. But we think that present action to mitigate this barbarism now is even more essential that the assurance of penalties after Hitler’s defeat for those who have shared in the perpetration of the outrages upon the Jews and other victims of Nazi Germany.
We suggest that the nation is eager to see the British Government take the lead in attempting to rescue as many as possible of these, the most helpless of Hitler’s victims, as they were also the first; the generous temper in which Italian settlers in Abyssinia have been repatriated to Italy should be applied to the right of the Jews to protection.
OBLIGATION
In the circumstances, we suggest that it is incumbent on the British Government to take the initiative in the following measures:
To make representations by the United Nations to the German Government to permit Jews to leave the occupied countries of Europe. To offer the joint protection of the United Nations to Jews liberated or escaping from the occupied territories. To facilitate the transfer of Jews to and their asylum in the territories and colonies of the United Nations. To urge on neutral countries the desirability of receiving as many Jewish refugees as possible until, with victory, it is possible to consider ways and means of their permanent settlement. Where food and finance raise difficult problems for neutral countries willing to assist, the United Nations should agree to make these available to them. To make available the fullest possible facilities for the immigration of Jewish refugees into Palestine. We suggest that, as a prelude to these large-scale measures, the British Government should offer immediately to admit to Great Britain the largest possible number of Jewish refugees, especially children.
We see little difficulty, given good will, in taking all the necessary precautions which the national security demands.
We do not deny either the magnitude or the complexity of the Jewish problem. But we do not feel that the Government and nation can stand helplessly by while a whole people is ruthlessly butchered.
Verbal sympathy is not enough. We must be prepared, whatever the action of other people, to act with resolution and magnanimity.
HISTORIC TRADITION
That is an attitude rooted in our historic tradition. Never was it more necessary to prove that it is still a living faith among us.
For if we do nothing while a helpless people is assassinated, we shall breed a temper of acquiescence in the barbarism of tyrants which may become one of the unhappiest legacies of this epoch of agony. – Yours faithfully, W.G.S Adams, Phyllis Bottome, A.M. Carr-Saunders, Wyndham Deedes, P.A.M. Dirac, E.M.Forster, G.P.Gooch, R.A.Gregory, Storm Jameson, F.G.Kenyon, A.D.Lindsay, Kingsley Martin, Frederick Maurice, Gilbert Murray, Harold G. Nicolson, John Boyd Orr, Margaret Rhondda, Sankey. George Bernard Shaw, R.H. Tawney, Beatrice Webb, Wedgwood, Rebecca West.
Report from Poland
Report of the mass execution of Jews in Poland
Transcript EXTERMINATION OF THE JEWS IN POLAND
According to recent reliable reports received from leaders of the underground movement in Poland, the process of extermination of the Polish Jewish population of over 3 million and of the large number of Jews deported to Poland from Germany, Austria and the occupied countries of Europe has been carried far towards its final completion.
Although at first the Germans established a number of ghettos in various Polish cities and towns, thus deluding the Jews into the belief that they would be allowed to survive in this way, they proceeded early in 1942 with the mass extermination of the Jews and it is known that the principal ghettos, those of Warsaw, Wilno, Lwow, Krakow and Lublin have now been largely liquidated. It is known that some time in April the remnants of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, offered desperate resistance to the German military and police attempting to remove them, and that the complete destruction of the Jews in this ghetto was preceded by street and house-to-house fighting lasting several days.
The dreadful mass slaughter of the Jews in Poland is being carried out in several death camps, the largest and most notorious of which is that of TREBLINKA. The Polish Government have received a detailed description of the circumstances and methods of the mass slaughter, based on the personal accounts of several Jewish grave-diggers who succeeded in escaping from the confines of the camp and are being sheltered by the Polish underground movement.
The Slaughter Camp of TREBLINKA.
‘The extermination of Jews in Poland by methods of mass slaughter continues with unabated intensity. Not only Polish Jews, but those from other occupied countries of Europe, including France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Czechoslovakia, etc., are being deported to special Death Camps and murdered by the thousand without discrimination as to age or sex.
‘The principal Death Camp has been established near the village of TREBLINKA situated near the main Biakystok-Warsaw Railway Line. At first, the Germans used this camp as a Penal Concentration Camp for Poles, where many thousands of them were executed in March 1942, however, the Germans proceeded to construct a special Death Camp for their mass …’
Situation in transit camps
Telegram describing the deteriorating situation in transit camps
Transcript [CYPHER] Departmental No.1.
From Berne to Foreign Office
Mr Norton
No. 3767 D.8.00p.m. 11th August, 1944.
11th August, 1944 R.2.00a.m. 12th August, 1944
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My telegram 3229.
The Swiss Government inform me orally that Bergen-Belsen is the Transit Camp to which all jews eligible for repatriation are temporarily sent.
The Jewish camp at Westerbork in Holland is in process of being dissolved. The usual number of inmates fluctuates between 40,000 and 50,000. The present number is approximately 2,000. The Jews are evacuated from Westerbork in three directions; those eligible for repatriation fall to Bergen-Belsen; technicians and persons likely to be of use to the German war effort are sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia those who are considered useless are sent to Ausschwitz for elimination.
O.T.P.
Kristallnacht
Telegram from Sir G Ogilvie Forbes regarding the damage dealt to Jewish properties during ‘Kristallnacht’ on 10 November 1938.
Transcript From GERMANY.
Telegram (en clair) from Sir G. Ogilvie Forbes (Berlin),
D. BY TELEPHONE. 10th November, 1938.
R 5.5p.m. 10th November, 1938
No.663.
IMPORTANT
“My telegram No. 661.
I have just returned from a tour of Friedrichstrasse and city districts where Jewish shops are being smashed and looted by youths in plain clothes, followed by large and smiling crowds including soldiers and others in party uniforms. Police were taking no notice.
Only exception was the premises of Messrs. Israel, a big department store partly British-owned which was guarded by police with fire brigade standing by. His Majesty’s Consul-General who visited these premises informs me that enormous damage has been done to stock and fittings. According to Mr. Israel store was attacked early this afternoon by a crowd which included S.S. men in uniform. Business offices owned by Jews are also being entered and smashed up apparently with impunity. Similar attacks on Jewish property are said to be taking place all over Germany.
His Majesty’s Consul Dresden reports that a British Jew from Leipzig has asked for asylum in the Consulate as Jews in Leipzig are being beaten up. I have taken immediate steps with the Under Secretary of State for the safeguarding of British subjects.
Chief Rabbi of Berlin has been arrested and seven synagogues have been burnt.
The facts that these attacks began only after midnight last night and that Jewish shops and offices have been systematically signalled out indicate that this action was deliberately planned.”
The report on the Kristallnacht was issued 10 months before World War 2 started.
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Over the last few days I have heard the riots in Washington DC and the storming of the Capitol being compared to Kristallnacht. Although I can understand the emotions and sentiment behind that comparison and reasoning, it is a totally incorrect assessment of the situation, in fact I would go as far as to say it is actually disturbing because it shows the lack of historical knowledge by some people who should know better. I can understand why someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to put a historical context to it, but in this case that does more damage then good
What happend on January 6th 2021 was an organized group of thugs surrounded by clueless nitwits. They were there to disrupt political proceedings and were encouraged by POTUS Donald J. Trump and some of his cronies and perhaps the mob also had murder in mind. However it did not compare to Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht was a widescale series pf state sponsored and encouraged criminal acts in Germany and Austria, a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and others, with the aim to cause death and destructions to Jews, their places of worship, their homes and their businesses.
Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers destroyed buildings with sledgehammers. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, an estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps, at least 91 Jewish people were killed, none of the thugs were killed. On January 6 2021 in DC, 5 people lost their lives, 4 of which were rioters.
Below are just some impression of Krustallnacht and its immediate aftermath.
Comparing the events of January 6, 2021 to the Kristallnacht does a great disservice to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.
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Some people say that Kristallnacht marks the start of the Holocaust. I don’t really subscribe to that point of view.
In my opinion the Holocaust started on 19 August 1934. That was the date that 88.1% of the German population gave Hitler the Carte blanche to do whatever he wanted to via a referendum, merging the posts of Chancellor and President which gave him absolute power.
The wording of the referendum question was:
“The office of the President of the Reich is unified with the office of the Chancellor. Consequently all former powers of the President of the Reich are demised to the Führer and Chancellor of the Reich Adolf Hitler. He himself nominates his substitute.
Do you, German man and German woman, approve of this regulation provided by this Law?”
But this is not a blog to debate on when the Holocaust started. The bigger problem is that it started in the first place, and it did so with relative ease.
One aspect of the Kristallnacht which is often forgotten is the psychological terror committed on the Jews, often by colleagues and neighbors.
Not only were shops and businesses ransacked and destroyed but also hallowed places like synagogues. Many burned all night in full view of the public and of local firefighters, who were told to intervene only to prevent flames from spreading to nearby buildings. Regardless what religious or a-religious views you have, destroying something which is so sacred to many people, is a direct assault on your own decency and turns you into an instrument of evil.
But it was also homes of German and Austrian citizens ,who happened to be Jewish . which were destroyed.their privacy was invaded Men broke down doors then cut into the feather beds, broke the furniture into pieces with sledgehammers and destroyed everything inside.30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps, many never returned. It is estimated that nearly 100 Jews were killed that night, but that number is more then likely higher.
British Historian Richard J. Evans estimates 638 suicides are directly linked to the brutal events on that night.
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It would be so easy for ordinary citizens to turn a blind eye to the Holocaust, and indeed many did. I do not judge these people, because faced with a similar situation I don’t know how I would react. Anyone critical of the Nazi regime could face a prison sentence or worse, death. And it really didn’t take that much to be sentenced to death. I can therefore understand why people ignored the things happening around them, for many it was a way to ensure survival.
There were those though who saw the injustice and evil and spoke out against it publicly. People like the Catholic Priest Fr. Bernhard Lichtenberg.
Ever since the Nazis came to power he spoke out against them. After the pogrom of 9 November 1938, known as Kristallnacht he said the following public prayer in the St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin.
“We know what was yesterday. We do not know what will be tomorrow. But we have experienced what happened today. Outside, the Temple is burning. That is also a House of God.”
Lichtenberg prayed publicly for the persecuted Jews at the daily Vespers service. Bishop Konrad von Preysing later entrusted Lichtenberg with the task of helping the Jewish community of the city, via the Welfare Office of the Berlin Diocesan Authority (“Hilfswerk”). In theory, non-Aryan Christians were to be supported by the “Fund.” However, aid was provided to every Jewish citizen who contacted the office.
Lichtenberg protested in person to Nazi officials against the arrest and killing of the sick and mentally ill. In 1941 he wrote a letter to the chief physician of the Reich, Minister of Public Health Leonardo Conti, concerning the T4 euthanasia program.
“I, as a human being, a Christian, a priest, and a German, demand of you, Chief Physician of the Reich, that you answer for the crimes that have been perpetrated at your bidding, and with your consent, and which will call forth the vengeance of the Lord on the heads of the German people.”
Initially, the Nazis saw him as more of a nuisance than a threat but his efforts to help the Jews and his calls to put an end to the immoral actions of the Nazis grew stronger. To silence him, the Nazis arrested him on October 23, 1941, and was sentenced to 2 years in prison. But because of his unyielding opposition, he was sent to Dachau. However, he never reached Dachau. He collapsed and died while in transit on 5 November 1943 in Hof, Bavaria.
He died for being a decent human being, who spoke out about the evil he saw around him.
I am not a Catholic and I don’t believe in saints but if I had to believe in saints, he would be top of my list.
On 7 July 2004, Yad Vashem recognized Bernhard Lichtenberg as a Righteous Among the Nations.
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I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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History of Sorts 
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