On November 9 and 10, 1938 a wave of violence aimed at Jewish people, institutions, and businesses took place in Germany, Austria, and parts of Czechoslovakia. The events of those days and nights became known as Kristallnacht, a German word loosely translated as the night of broken glass because of the shards of glass in the streets from the broken windows of homes, hospitals, schools, Jewish-owned businesses, and synagogues destroyed by paramilitary forces and German civilians as German authorities looked on without intervening. Estimates vary, but it’s believed that hundreds of people were murdered and thousands arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Over 1,000 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed or damaged.
Kristallnacht is widely understood to be the event that signaled the beginning of overt anti-Semitism in pre-WWII Germany which evolved to the “final solution” and ended in the murder of 6-million people in what became known as the Holocaust. Full accounts of Kristallnacht and the events leading up to it and flowing out if it are here and here.
The Southern Poverty Law Center counts 917 hate groups currently operating in the United States. It defines them as groups having beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. Not all of them are specifically anti-Semitic but all have that potential. Of the 917, ten are specifically holocaust deniers, 99 are neo-Nazi, 79 are racist skinheads, and 100 are white nationalists. The SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League, and others report hundreds of anti-semitic incidents in the past few months and thousands in the past year or so, including vandalism in Jewish cemeteries, spray-painted swastikas in public spaces, slurs on social media, and so on. The AMCHA Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitic incidents at American colleges and universities, reports 185 such incidents so far in 2017 and 430 in 2016. Are these incidents a collection of small Kristallnachts – precursors of a larger uprising of people and groups who are encouraged and emboldened by the current political climate?
We know this much: History tells us that anti-Semitism is always bubbling just below the surface and has been for centuries, and that it erupts and becomes virulent and toxic particularly when demagoguery and despotism give people license to blame a hated “other” for their own problems, failings, and disappointments or for a lack of general prosperity. We see a lot of that now, including the resurrection of ageless tropes having to do with Jews controlling the banks or the international financial system or the media.
During the debates, Donald Trump said this: “[Hillary Clinton] meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty, in order to enrich these global financial powers…” In addition to being another entry in the lengthy and ever-growing catalog of ludicrous Trumpian pronouncements, this statement, while not overtly anti-Semitic, has been very much a part of the anti-Semitism vocabulary over the decades.
Everyone knows about the Holocaust. But Kristallnacht, the event that foretold it, is not as well known. It seems important now, as anti-Semitic activity seems to be ramping up once again, that younger generations be made aware of it and of the ominous warning it carried.
Kristallnacht is widely understood to be the event that signaled the beginning of overt anti-Semitism in pre-WWII Germany which evolved to the “final solution” and ended in the murder of 6-million people in what became known as the Holocaust. Full accounts of Kristallnacht and the events leading up to it and flowing out if it are here and here.
The Southern Poverty Law Center counts 917 hate groups currently operating in the United States. It defines them as groups having beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. Not all of them are specifically anti-Semitic but all have that potential. Of the 917, ten are specifically holocaust deniers, 99 are neo-Nazi, 79 are racist skinheads, and 100 are white nationalists. The SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League, and others report hundreds of anti-semitic incidents in the past few months and thousands in the past year or so, including vandalism in Jewish cemeteries, spray-painted swastikas in public spaces, slurs on social media, and so on. The AMCHA Initiative, an organization that tracks anti-Semitic incidents at American colleges and universities, reports 185 such incidents so far in 2017 and 430 in 2016. Are these incidents a collection of small Kristallnachts – precursors of a larger uprising of people and groups who are encouraged and emboldened by the current political climate?
We know this much: History tells us that anti-Semitism is always bubbling just below the surface and has been for centuries, and that it erupts and becomes virulent and toxic particularly when demagoguery and despotism give people license to blame a hated “other” for their own problems, failings, and disappointments or for a lack of general prosperity. We see a lot of that now, including the resurrection of ageless tropes having to do with Jews controlling the banks or the international financial system or the media.
During the debates, Donald Trump said this: “[Hillary Clinton] meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty, in order to enrich these global financial powers…” In addition to being another entry in the lengthy and ever-growing catalog of ludicrous Trumpian pronouncements, this statement, while not overtly anti-Semitic, has been very much a part of the anti-Semitism vocabulary over the decades.
Everyone knows about the Holocaust. But Kristallnacht, the event that foretold it, is not as well known. It seems important now, as anti-Semitic activity seems to be ramping up once again, that younger generations be made aware of it and of the ominous warning it carried.
If only people had listened.
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