COMMENTARY: Kristallnacht: The World’s First State-Sponsored Terrorism:

c. 2006 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Weapons of mass destruction. Axis of evil. 9-11. Islamic fascism. These grim phrases are part of everyday life and it is likely others will be added to that list. However, as we accumulate new vocabulary to describe the pathology of terrorism, one horrific term must never be forgotten: Kristallnacht. […]

c. 2006 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) Weapons of mass destruction. Axis of evil. 9-11. Islamic fascism. These grim phrases are part of everyday life and it is likely others will be added to that list.

However, as we accumulate new vocabulary to describe the pathology of terrorism, one horrific term must never be forgotten: Kristallnacht.


Kristallnacht, in German, means “Crystal Night,” the gruesome term for the violent attacks upon Jews, synagogues, and Jewish-owned business in Germany, Austria, and Nazi-occupied Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia on Nov. 9-10, 1938. During that night of terror, about 100 Jews were killed and 30,000 others were sent to concentration camps. Some 1,574 synagogues burned and 7,500 shops and stores destroyed; their glass windows shattered by the marauding thugs.

The odious Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of propaganda, told the world the attacks were spontaneous outbursts of an enraged German public, but that official explanation was a lie. In fact, Kristallnacht was a brutal anti-Jewish pogrom carried out with the knowledge and support of the Nazi German government. It was what we would now call state-sponsored terrorism.

Three days after Kristallnacht, Hitler’s regime met in Berlin to assess the damage. In a typical act of cynicism, the Nazis publicly blamed the victims for Kristallnacht and held the attacked Jewish communities financially and legally responsible for the damage. A collective fine of 7 billion marks was placed upon the traumatized victims.

In the five years before Kristallnacht, Jews in Germany had endured a systematic campaign that excluded them from public education, the civil service, many professions and parliamentary elections. Ultimately, they were stripped of their German citizenship. Up until 1938, some Jews in Germany and elsewhere desperately hoped Hitler’s anti-Jewish policies were a temporary aberration.

But Kristallnacht literally and figuratively shattered all such illusions. The lethal assaults represented a violent turning point. Amid the smoke, broken glass, burned synagogues, corpses and concentration camp internments, it was clear the Nazi regime was bent on destroying the Jews _ not simply by depriving them of their rights, but by murdering them.

The violence of Kristallnacht was widely reported outside Germany and Hitler’s regime warily awaited world reaction. Would the family of nations deal severely with Germany? Would the shocked Western democracies open their borders wide to admit Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi terror?

None of that happened. A satisfied Nazi regime drew the correct conclusion: their obscene anti-Jewish policies and actions would go unchecked and unpunished.


In the United States, President Franklin Roosevelt decried Kristallnacht, and recalled the American ambassador from Berlin. However, FDR never called for economic sanctions or breaking off diplomatic relations. There would be no change in America’s harsh immigration laws. Strict numeric quotas would remain in place, effectively closing our nation’s doors to Jews seeking refuge in the United States.

But some courageous American leaders pressed for increased immigration.

New York Sen. Robert Wagner and Rep. Edith Rogers of Massachusetts co-sponsored a bill permitting 20,000 German Jewish children (a modest number) to enter the U.S. as non-quota immigrants. However, the legislation was vigorously attacked by anti-Semites and isolationists, and it died in committee.

FDR’s cousin, Laura Delano Houghteling, whose husband was the U.S. Commissioner for Immigration and Naturalization, opposed the Wagner-Rogers legislation declaring: “20,000 charming children would all too soon grow into 20,000 ugly adults.”

History shows that four prominent American Jewish organizations _ the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, B’nai Brith and the Jewish Labor Committee _ wanted “no parades, public demonstrations or protests by Jews” because such assertive action would only increase anti-Semitism in the United States.

Kristallnacht was much more than a terrifying night of broken glass. It was a time of broken hopes and broken promises.

KRE/JL END RUDIN

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)


Editors: To obtain a photo of Rabbi Rudin, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug. If searching by subject, designate “exact phrase” for best results.

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