The pogrom was a response to the murder in Paris of a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath. Ironically, he was a non-Nazi who was under investigation by the authorities for disloyalty. He was shot on 7 November 1938 by a Jewish refugee of Polish roots, Herschel Grynszpan, whose family had been expelled from Germany to Poland. Vom Rath died on 9 November.
Coincidentally, 9 November 1938 was being celebrated in Nazi circles, including by Hitler himself, as the 15th anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch on 8-9 November 1923. That was Hitler’s first attempt to seize power and led to a shamefully weak response: he was briefly jailed before being released to take up again his drive for power which succeeded ten years later. A sad indictment of the failure of authorities to take appropriate action against right-wing insurgents, and an object lesson of what the consequences can be.
When the news of Vom Rath’s death reached the party, Hitler left without giving his planned speech. His propaganda chief Goebbels gave it for him, and then announced that if demonstrations broke out, they would not be hampered. That was an instruction to turn for revenge against the Jewish community.
A gutted Jewish shop int he aftermath of Kristallnacht |
Police stood by and watched but didn’t intervene to stop the violence. Firemen attended but only prevented flames extending to neighbouring buildings when Jewish premises were set on fire.
A synagogue burns |
From the elimination of Jews from the economy, the Nazi regime slipped almost inevitably towards the elimination of Jews altogether. The decision was taken in the end at the Wannsee conference in January 1942, and in consequence the final solution – in other words, extermination – went into effect.
The notion of a ‘Jewish Question’ strikes me as a strange one. The only question that ought to be asked about Jews is to antisemites: ‘what’s your problem with Jews?’ Similar questions could be asked of other groups: ‘what’s your problem with gays?’ or ‘what’s your problem with Muslims?’
In other words, the problem isn’t with the people targeted but with the people doing the targeting. And, sadly, there are far more of them around than there should be after the experience of the Second World War.
Despite my own Jewish roots, I’ve experienced no overt antisemitism. Until a year or two ago, I argued that antisemitism, certainly in Europe or the Americas, had shrunk until it was limited to a tiny number of fringe groups.. Islamophobia or homophobia struck me as far more widespread and far more acute.
Today, I’m changing that view. We’ve had scandals about antisemitism in various organisations – including, sadly, my own party – and a failure to take action against it. Not acting on time is dangerous, as the case of Hitler after the Beer Hall putsch showed. The sores are festering, the disease is spreading. Nothing has made that clearer than the murder of eleven Jews in a gun attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Islamophobia and homophobia remain bigger problems. But maybe we can learn to oppose both of those and antisemitism as well. And what better time could there be for revitalising our commitment to the cause than the anniversary of Kristallnacht?
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