Ingrid Weckert
Source: http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p183_Weckert.html
"Crystal Night" is the name that's been given to the night of
9-10 November 1938. In almost all large German cities and some smaller ones
that night, store windows of Jewish shops were broken, Jewish houses and
apartments were destroyed, and synagogues were demolished and set on fire. Many
Jews were arrested, some were beaten, and some were even killed. The
"Reich Crystal Night" (Reichskristallnacht) was one of the
most shameful events of National Socialist Germany. Although the Jews suffered
initially, the greatest harm was ultimately done to Germany and the German
people.
Even people who are
sympathetic to National Socialism cannot understand how this event could have
happened. Julius Streicher, the so-called "number one Jew baiter"
[note 1] for example, was shocked when he first learned about the
demonstrations and destruction the next morning.
The all-important question is:
Who was responsible for the incident? It is generally accepted, especially by
contemporary historians, that the Nazi gang organized and carried out the
pogrom, and that the chief instigator was Propaganda Minister Dr. Joseph
Goebbels. The truth of the matter is that Adolf Hitler was so disgusted by the
incident that he forbade anyone from discussing the matter in his presence. Dr.
Goebbels complained that he would now have to explain this terrible affair to
the German people and the world, and that he simply did not know what kind of
credible explanation to give. If he had actually been responsible for the
Crystal Night, he surely would have had a well-prepared explanation. The
explanation he gave on the morning of the 10th was extremely unconvincing and
was generally not believed by the German public. During my study of this
subject, which resulted in my book on the Crystal Night, Feuerzeichen, I
found many facts which do not agree with the generally accepted thesis. On the
contrary, the evidence which I have found gives a completely different picture.
The Story We Are Given
The generally accepted
sequence of events, according to most writers on the subject, is this:
In early October 1938 the
Polish government announced that all Polish passports would become invalid at
the end of the month unless they received a special stamp before then,
obtainable only in Poland. This measure was meant to rid Poland effectively for
all time of all Polish Jews living in foreign countries, most of whom were in
Germany. Many of the approximately 70,000 Polish Jews living in the Reich at
the time had arrived after the First World War. Of course, the German
government now feared that it would have to permanently accept these 70,000
Jews. The German government tried to negotiate this issue with the Poles, but
they flatly refused.
On 28 October, just two days
before the deadline, German police rounded up between 15,000 and 17,000 Polish
Jews, mostly adult males, from across the Reich and transported them to the
German-Polish border. The deportees traveled in regular German passenger trains
with more than adequate space. Contrary to some claims, they were not crammed
into cattle cars. The deportees were well provided with food and medical care.
Red Cross personnel and medical doctors accompanied them on the trains.[note 2]
The Polish border officials
were surprised when the first trainloads arrived at the border, and they let
the Jews enter Poland. At about the same time, the Polish government was
deporting German Jews back to Germany. The next day, 29 October, the Polish and
German governments suddenly agreed to stop the deportations of their respective
Jewish populations to each other's countries. The deportations were completely
halted that night.
Among the Polish Jews deported
was the family of Herschel Feibel Grynszpan (Gruenspan), a l7-year-old then
living Paris. What followed next is generally reported either incorrectly or
very one-sidedly. On 7 November Grynszpan went to the German Embassy in Paris
and shot Embassy Secretary Ernst vom Rath. It is said that Grynszpan did this
because he was furious over the deportation of his family. The truth about his
motivation is very different. It is also claimed that the German population,
upset by the news of vom Rath's death on the 8th, organized anti-Jewish
demonstrations, destroyed Jewish stores, and demolished or set on fire all the
synagogues in Germany. Demonstrations and destruction did take place, but the
truth is that they were not organized by the German people and did not affect
most of the synagogues in the Reich. Finally, it is claimed that the Crystal
Night was the beginning of the extermination of the Jews in Germany. This is
entirely false.
German-Jewish Relations Prior to the Crystal
Night
Before explaining how the
events surrounding the Crystal Night differ from what is generally believed, I
must first give some background information about the peaceful years in Germany
after Hitler came to power in 1933. Anyone who is aware of the true situation
in Germany during the Third Reich era recognizes that the Crystal Night episode
was quite extraordinary. It was a radical aberation from the normal pattern of
daily life. The outburst was not in keeping with either the official National
Socialist Jewish policy nor with the general German attitude towards the Jews.
The Germans were no more anti-Semitic than any other people. In fact, Jews who
had to leave other European countries preferred Germany as a place to live and
work.
Within the National
Socialist-Party itself there were two distinct anti-Semitic factions. One was
scholarly and one was vulgar. The scholarly faction was centered around the
Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question. It published several journals
and gave lectures to civic and political groups. Its activities were consistent
with the policy of peacefully removing the Jews from Germany and resettling
them elsewhere. The SS was totally committed to this policy and rejected vulgar
anti-Semitism. The vulgar anti-Semitic faction tried to influence popular
feeling. The chief exponent of this approach was Julius Streicher, who
published the unofficial monthly Der Stuermer. It used crude caricatures
to portray Jews in the most horrible way in an effort to convince readers that
the Jews were as evil as Satan. For years the motto "The Jews Are Our
Misfortune" appeared on the front page of every issue. Der Stuermer
often employed improper and undignified means to make its point.
German National Socialism
basically regarded the Jews as non-German aliens who had proven themselves destructive
to any nation that permitted them to dominate. Therefore, the only way to
prevent further problems was to separate the Jews from the Germans. In other
words, they had to emigrate. On this point the National Socialists and the
Zionists were in full agreement. Although the Jews made up less than one
percent of the total German population in 1933, they had power and influence in
finance, business, cultural affairs and scientific life far out of proportion
to their small numbers. Jewish influence was very widely regarded as harmful to
German recovery after the First World War. No legal measures were taken against
the Jews in Germany until after the international Jewish "Declaration of
War" against Germany, as announced, for example, on the front page of the
London Daily Express of 24 March 1933. This "declaration" took
the form of a worldwide boycott of German goods. A week later there was an
officially sanctioned boycott of Jewish shops and stores throughout Germany.
This action was in direct response to the international Jewish boycott of
German goods already in effect. However, the German response was a rather
absurd affair and it was therefore limited to a single day, the first of April
1933. Hitler and Goebbels privately recognized that the German counter-boycott
was a failure and would only turn people against the new government.
Furthermore, this one-day action came on a Saturday, the Jewish sabbath.
Religious Jews took malicious pleasure at the discomfort of the Jews who
normally kept their stores open on Saturdays and were now, in effect, forced by
the government to obey the Jewish law against work on the sabbath. The National
Socialist regime thereafter sought to diminish Jewish influence and power by
strictly legal means. The first German law which could be considered
anti-Jewish was dated 7 April 1933. Although the legal status of the Jews was
restricted, each and every Jew knew what his legal rights were and to what he
was still entitled. There were no secret or extra-legal measures against the
Jews.
Ironically, it was precisely
the official discrimination policy against the Jews which reduced the
effectiveness of anti-Semitic propaganda to almost nothing. The Germans are a
generally fair-minded people. When Germans saw their Jewish neighbors being
treated unjustly, they considered that far worse than the dangers which the
Jews supposedly represented simply because they were Jewish. Furthermore, the
examples of Jewish criminality and perversion described in Der Stürmer
were widely regarded as exceptions to normal Jewish behavior. The average
German was convinced that the Jews whom he knew personally were completely
unlike the criminal types sometimes described in newspapers. In my home town of
Berlin most of the doctors and lawyers were still Jewish. And even the public
health officer for children in the district of Berlin where my family lived was
a Jew who kept this job throughout the war. I still remember one day when my
mother returned from her Jewish doctor. She told us that she hadn't been able
to see him because he was no longer there. He had been taken away-hauled off
the previous night. My mother was very upset. A crowd of people had gathered
outside his house. They were all shocked, and they discussed the injustice of
this measure quite openly. My parents later talked about what had happened, and
they both agreed that the doctor had never really done anything wrong. Their
reaction was typical. A few days later our family pediatrician, who was also
Jewish, was likewise taken away.
At the time I did not know
what it meant to be taken away. It was only many years after the war, when I
started reading the Holocaust literature, that I learned that I was supposed to
believe that to be taken away meant deportation to a concentration camp and probable
death. But like so many thousands of others, these two doctor families were not
exterminated. One summer day in 1973, as I was walking through the streets of
the German quarter in Tel Aviv, I came upon the name plates of both doctors on
the doors of two houses. I immediately tried to visit them and found out that
both families had migrated to Palestine in 1939. Although one of them had died
in the meantime in Israel, I was able to speak to the other. He remembered my
father very well and explained that when he and his family were arrested, they
were taken to a camp and given the choice of either signing a document
declaring their intention of emigrating from Germany or being taken to a labor
camp. He and his family chose to emigrate. In fact, most German Jews survived
the anti-Semitic measures quite well. That does not mean that those measures
were not unfair to individual Jews, but they could usually manage to live with
them.
The Haavara Agreement
As already mentioned, the main
goal of Germany's Jewish policy was to encourage the Jews to emigrate. After
the beginning of the international Jewish boycott against German goods in March
1933, the Jewish community in Palestine contacted the German government and
offered a break in the boycott as far as Palestine was concerned provided it
was combined with Jewish emigration from Germany. As a result, the
"Haavara" or "Transfer" agreement was signed by the Germans
and Jews in May 1933. [note 3] The Jewish community thus concluded an extremely
beneficial agreement with the National Socialist government only a few months
after its formation. This agreement was a crucial phase in the creation of the
State of Israel. When I made this claim in my book Feuerzeichen, which
appeared in 1981, some readers considered it outrageous. [note 4] But then this
same claim was made in The Transfer Agreement, a book by Edwin Black published
in 1984. The final paragraph of his book concludes with the statement that the
continuing economic relationship between the Jewish community of Palestine and
National Socialist Germany was "an indispendable factor in the creation of
the State of' Israel." [note 5]
The Haavara agreement made it
possible for any Jew to emigrate from Germany with practically all of his
possessions and personal fortune provided that Jews could deposit all of their
assets in one of two Jewish-owned banks in Germany which had branch offices in
Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Upon arrival in Palestine they could withdraw their
assets according to the terms of the agreement. The German capital of these two
Jewish banking firms was guaranteed by the German government. Even after the
war these assets were fully available to the Jewish owners or their
representatives If a Jew did not wish to emigrate immediately he could transfer
all of his personal assets to Palestine where they would be safeguarded by a
trustee while he remained in Germany for an indefinite period with emigration
as his eventual goal. In the meantime his personal fortune was safe outside of
Germany.
Even poorer Jews who did not
possess 1,000 English pounds were able to emigrate to Palestine with credits
provided through the Haavara. The British authorities generally required
minimum assets of 1,000 pounds for each immigrant to Palestine if he was not
entitled to a so-called worker's certificate. Only a limited number of these
certificates were available and they were issued only to persons with special
job skills. In addition, Jews emigrating to Palestine were exempt from the
so-called "Reich flight tax," which all emigrating Germans normally
had to pay. However, the Jewish companies which arranged the transfers charged
the emigrants a fixed percentage of their total assets. The Haavara agreement
remained in operation until the end of 1941 when the United States entered the
war.
National Socialist Ethical Standards
I am always amazed whenever I
read books about the Third Reich published after the war. Most give an almost
totally false impression of the reality of the Third Reich. The Germany of
Adolf Hitler was not the Germany described by such books. It was quite
different. I was brought up during the Third Reich. Along with my entire
generation, I received an education of the highest ethical standards. We were
brought up to love and respect our country and people. We were taught to be
proud of its great history. The heroes of Germany's past represented our great
ideals. They spurred us to honesty and responsibility in our own lives. In my
opinion, the youth of Adolf Hitler's Germany was the finest of all Europe and
perhaps of the entire world.
The same ethical standards
applied to the SS and SA. The SA stormtroopers were not sophisticated men. They
usually preferred to use their fists before using their heads, but they acted
according to the ideals which they had been taught: honor, faithfulness,
honesty and devotion to their people and country. They were not at all the
sadistic beasts portrayed by so-called historians. It was their faithfulness
and gallantry which saved Germany from chaos and Communism. It is sheer stupidity
to describe the SA men as blood-thirsty killers, as is widely done today.
Although some individual SA men may have committed acts of brutality, it is
nonsense to blame the entire organization or the whole German people and its
government for such behavior. Individual SA men were indeed involved in the
Crystal Night incident. But far fewer actually participated than has been
claimed. Of the 28 SA Groups which existed in Germany at the time, the
available evidence identifies only three as having actually received orders to
join the anti-Jewish demonstrations.
What Really Happened During the Crystal Night
Now let us look at what really
happened during that fateful night.
After 1945 any harm ever done
to any Jew in National Socialist Germany has been described in great detail in
many publications and combined with other.stories to give exaggerated figures
which have then become the so-called "historical truth." How strange
it is then that despite the passage of more than forty years, no one has established
the true extent of the damage done to the Jews during the Crystal Night. All
one can learn from history writers is that "all" synagogues were
demolished and that "all" shop windows were destroyed. Aside from
this vague description, one is given almost no details.
On the basis of the so-called
"historical truth" about the Crystal Night, the President of the
World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann, had the chutzpah in 1952 to claim 500
million dollars from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as reparation payment
for the damage done during that November night. When Adenauer asked Goldmann
for his justification for this enormous request, Goldmann replied: "You
find the justification yourself! What I want is not the justification but the
money." [note 7] And he got his money! Goldmann may have interpreted the
willingness of the German Chancellor to pay a half billion dollars as proof for
the claim that all synagogues had been destroyed. Why else would Germany be so
foolish as to pay for something which never happened? All the same, the
"historical truth" that "all" German synagogues were
destroyed is a lie.
In 1938 there were
approximately 1,400 synagogues in Germany, of which only about 180 were
destroyed or damaged. Furthermore, Jews owned approximately 100,000 shops and
department stores in Germany in 1938. Of this number, only about 7,500 had
their windows broken. These figures show just how much the so-called
"historical truth" differs from what actually happened. The damage
and destruction that did actually occur was, of course, a terrible shame, but
the exaggerations, especially by German historians who use them to condemn
their own people, are also a shame.
History writers tell us that
during the Crystal Night all the Jews were frightened, meekly accepted whatever
happened to them and watched the destruction of their property with no
resistance. The contrary is true. While going through the files on this
subject, I found many documents which report precisely just the opposite of
what is claimed. The fact is that in many cases Jews and their German neighbors
fought together against the attackers, pushing them down staircases. Street
mobs were beaten up and chased away in more than one case. Police and Party
officials were generally on the side of the Jews. Some Jewish community leaders
went to police stations the next morning and asked the police to investigate
the damage done to their synagogues. The resulting police reports are still
available in the files today.
Also contrary to what we have
been told, most Jews were not directly affected by these events. In Berlin, for
example, all of the teachers and pupils of the city's largest Jewish school,
which served the entire Berlin area, appeared in their classes the next morning
without having noticed anything unusual during the previous night. Heinemann
Stern, the Jewish principal of that school, wrote in his postwar memoirs that
he noticed a burning synagogue on his way to the school on the morning after
the Crystal Night, but he thought it was just an accidental fire. It was only
after he arrived at the school that he received a telephone call informing him
of the destruction of the previous night. He then went on with his classes of
the day and only during the first recess did he take the trouble to inform the
entire student body about what had happened. [note 8]
How can such evidence be
reconciled with the claim by Herman Graml, a prominent German historian and
associate of the Munich Institute of Contemporary History, who wrote:
"Every single Jew was beaten, chased, robbed, insulted and humiliated. The
SA tore the Jews from their beds, mercilessly beat them in their apartments and
then ... chased them almost to death ... Blood flowed everywhere." [note
9] Is it conceivable that thousands of Jewish children would be have been sent
to school by their parents on the morning after that fateful night if the
attacks against Jews had been so horrific or extensive? Would any parents have
let their children go to school if they had thought there was even the
slightest danger of them being attacked by roving gangs of SA men? I think the
answer is clearly no! Deplorable things did indeed happen which were bad
enough, but the fantasies of modern historians and history writers such as
Graml are simply inexcusable.
The Grynszpan Story
It was Herschel Feibel
Grynszpan (Gruenspan) who initiated the entire Crystal Night affair by shooting
the Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath. History writers
tell us that the 17-year-old Grynszpan was merely a poor Jewish boy who had
been driven to despair by the injustice done to his family and who, in his deep
depression, shot the young German diplomat. The fact, however, is that
Grynszpan had not shown any previous interest in his family's fate. He had
wanted to be free of them and had gone to Paris to live on his own.
When the French police asked
Grynszpan why he had shot vom Rath, he gave several contradictory explanations:
Version 1: He did not mean to
kill vom Rath. He had wanted to kill the German ambassador but because he did
not know the ambassador personally, he shot vom Rath instead by mistake.
Version 2: He had only wanted
to kill himself, but wanted to do so directly beneath a portrait of Adolf
Hitler. In this way he hoped to become a symbol for the Jewish people, who were
being murdered daily in Germany.
Version 3: He had not intended
to kill anyone. Although he had a pistol in his hand, he did not know how to
handle it properly and it simply went off accidentally.
Version 4: He could not
remember what had happened while he stood in vom Rath's office. All he
remembered was that he was there, but did not remember why.
Version 5: He couldn't
understand the question at all. He must have had a complete blackout because he
no longer remembered anything.
And finally, version 6, which
he gave several years later to German officials: Whatever the French police had
written down about his reason was nonsense. The true story is that he used to
procure young boys for the German embassy secretary because vom Rath had been a
homosexual. And he shot vom Rath because he had not been paid for his services.
This is the only explanation which he later retracted during interrogation.
However, none of these explanations is correct.
The true story is far less
heroic. Grynszpan had left his family in Hannover, Germany, in 1936 after
finishing elementary school but without graduating. His father had been a
piece-work tailor who had moved from Poland to Germany after the First World
War. Herschel had a reputation for disliking work and he hung out at the homes
of his uncles in Brussels and Paris. In February 1938 his Polish passport
expired and the French government refused to renew his residence permit. As a
direct result, his Paris uncle insisted that Herschel leave his home because he
was afraid of getting into touble with the law. And now the story begins to get
extremely interesting. Although Grynszpan had no job or money (his uncle
refused to support him), he was nevertheless able to move into a hotel. His
hotel happened to be just around the corner from the offices of an important
and influential Jewish organization, the International League Against
Anti-Semitism, or LICA. The questions which now arise are: Who supported him
after February 1938 and who paid for his hotel room? Although he had no
apparent means of support or even valid identity papers between February and
November 1938, Grynszpan was nevertheless able to purchase a handgun for 250
francs on the morning of 7 November 1938 and then, about an hour later, go to
the German Embassy and shoot vom Rath.
Grynszpan was arrested at the
scene and was taken to a police station. Although he was a totally obscure
Polish Jew with no money and no apparent supporters, nevertheless one of
France's most famous lawyers, Moro Giafferi, appeared at the police station a
few hours after the shooting and told the police that he was Grynszpan's
attorney. Nothing could possibly have appeared about the shooting in any
newspaper before his arrival. How then could Moro Giafferi have possibly known
about the shooting? Why was he so eager to defend this young foreigner? And
finally, who was going to pay his attorney fees? As it turned out, Giafferi
took good care of Grynszpan during the following years. Before the Grynszpan case
could come before a French court, the war broke out. After the Germans occupied
France, he was turned over to them by the French authorities. He was taken to
Germany where he was interrogated many times, but no trial ever took place.
Moro Giafferi, who had moved to Switzerland in the meantime, still managed to
take good care of Grynszpan.
Many German officials were
actively interested in the case. They wanted Grynszpan brought to trial, but
this never happened. Rumors circulated. A trial date was scheduled but then
postponed again and again and again. Whenever any official asked why Grynszpan
had not been brought to trial, he was given a different answer each time. The
veil of mystery surrounding this case was lifted only slightly many years after
the war when a note was discovered among the many hundreds of pages in the
Grynszpan file. This single short note stated simply that the trial against
Grynszpan would not take place for "other than official reasons."
[note 10] It gave no further explanation. Although the National Socialist
regime supposedly committed the greatest imaginable crimes against the Jews,
the murderer Grynszpan survived the war and returned to Paris. Why to Paris,
where he could still have been arrested and tried for murder? But instead he
received a new name and new identity papers there. [note 11] From whom? Who was
in Paris to help him and once again take such good care of him?
Incidentally, the Grynszpan
family also survived the war. The young man's father, mother, brother and
sister were deported to Poland as a result of the Polish passport affair and
shortly thereafter were somehow able to emigrate to Palestine. Amazingly
enough, this took place at a time when immigration to Palestine was limited to
persons who possessed at least 1,000 English pounds in cash. Grynszpan's
father, a poor piece-work tailor, certainly never had a fortune of 4,000
English pounds. Many years after the war the father testified at the Eichmann
trial in Jerusalem that he and his family had to give up all of their money
except for ten marks per family member when they arrived at the German-Polish
border in October l938. [note l2] How did they ever raise the 4,000 English
pounds only a short time later for their migration to Palestine? Who organized
their move?
Perhaps the answer to all of
these questions is ... Moro Giafferi! He was not a sorcerer, but someone even
more powerful: he was the legal counsel of the LICA. The LICA was founded in
Paris in 1933 by the Jew Bernard Lecache and operated as a militant propaganda
organization against real or imagined anti-Semitism. Its main office is still
in Paris at the same address it was at in 1938. (Now known as the LICRA, it
unsuccessfully sued Robert Faurisson a few years ago.) Moro Giafferi was well
worth the fees LICA paid him as its legal counsel. He apparently enjoyed
spectacular scenes. He had already achieved international renown at a mass
meeting in Paris following the Berlin Reichstag fire of February 1933. Without
knowing at all what had happened, he nevertheless delivered a spiteful speech
against National Socialist Germany in which he accused Hermann Göring of
setting the fire. In February 1936 Giafferi hurried to Davos, Switzerland,
where the Jew David Frankfurter had shot and killed Wilhelm Gustloff, the head
of the Swiss branch of the German National Socialist Party. During the
subsequent trial it was clearly established that Frankfurter had been a hired
murderer with backing from an unidentified but influential organization. All
clues pointed to the LICA, but with Moro Giafferi as his defense counsel,
Frankfurter remained silent about who, if anyone, had hired him. Amazingly
enough, Frankfurter's answers to questions about the shooting showed the same
pattern as Grynszpan's answers almost three years later after Giafferi arrived
to help following the shooting of Ernst vom Rath.
Who Could the Provocateurs Have Been?
Like a medal, the Crystal
Night has two sides. One side lies in the shining glare of historical research
while the other remains in the shadows. Until now no one (at least as far as I
know) has tried to examine the hidden side.
In the wake of the Crystal
Night, almost everyone wanted to know who the culprits were. Dr. Goebbels had
to give an official explanation which was, in effect, that the German people
had been so enraged by the murder of Ernst vom Rath that they wanted to punish
the Jews and therefore started the pogrom. But Goebbels did not really believe
this story himself. To several persons he expressed his suspicion that a secret
organization must have instigated the entire affair. He simply could not
believe that anything so well organized could have been a spontaneous popular
outburst.
One must understand the broad
popularity of the National Socialist regime at that time to realize how incredibly
difficult it was to imagine that any secret, well organized opposition movement
could have instigated such a pogrom. We now know about some of these so-called
resistance organizations. But at that time such well-organized opposition
groups seemed preposterous, so overwhelming was the popularity and
self-confidence of Hitler and the National Sociatist government. Although the
National Socialists were probably more aware of the danger of Jewish power and
influence than anyone else, they nevertheless totally underestimated it. In a
real sense, they were far too naive. One consequence of this enormous
popularity and self-confidence was that the Party leaders themselves simply
could not imagine that it was not one of their own colleagues behind the whole affair.
Among the Party leaders fingers were being pointed in all directions.
Apparently to avoid internal wrangling and the harm that this would do to their
public image, an investigation to determine the instigators never took place.
Hitler believed that Dr. Goebbels, his closest confidant and the one man he
could never abandon, had been the instigator.
The only persons actually
punished were individual SA men who had participated directly in the pogrom and
been accused in German courts of murder, assault, looting or other criminal
acts by Jewish or German witnesses to these crimes. But before any of these
cases ever actually came to trail, Hitler issued a special decree ordering the
postponement of all such cases until after the accused individuals were first
prosecuted by the Supreme Party Court, an internal court concerned with
discipline within the National Socialist Party organization. The most severe
punishment which the Court could impose was expulsion from the Party. In this
way the Party hoped to remove any guilty members from its own ranks before they
appeared as defendants in the criminal courts. In February 1939 the Chief Judge
of the Supreme Party Court, Walter Buch, reported his findings to Hermann
Göring. From an examination of the Buch report as well as many documents from
some of the thousands of trials of so-called Nazi criminals held after the war,
and corroborating testimony by thousands of defendants and witnesses, I have
been able to gain a detailed and accurate understanding of what actually
happened during those fateful days and nights of November 1938.
Already on 8 November 1938,
one day before the Crystal Night, strange persons who had never been seen there
before suddenly appeared in several small towns in Hessen near the French-German
border. They went to mayors, Kreisleiters (district Party leaders) and other
important officials in these towns and asked them what actions were being
planned against the Jews. The officials were rather startled by these questions
and replied that they didn't know of any such plans. The strangers acted as if
they were shocked to hear this. They shouted and complained that something had
to be done against the Jews and then, without further explanation, they
disappeared. Most of those who were approached by these strangers reported the
incidents to the police or discussed them with friends. They usually regarded
the strangers as crazy anti-Semites and promptly forgot about the incidents --
until the next evening. Some of these apparently crazy individuals really
outdid themselves. In one case two men, dressed as members of the SS, went to
an SA Standartenführer (Colonel) and ordered him to destroy the nearby
synagogue. To understand the absurdity of this one must know that the SS and SA
were completely separate organizations. A real SS member would never have tried
to give orders to an SA unit. This case shows that the strangers were
foreigners who did not even understand the distinctions of German authority.
The SA Standartenführer rejected the demands of the self-styled SS men and
reported the incident to his superiors.
When the provocateurs realized
that their efforts were not working with local officials, they changed their
tactics. Instead they tried to incite directly the people in the streets. In
another town, for example, two men appeared at the market place and began
making speeches to the people there, trying to incite them against the Jews.
Eventually some people did indeed storm the synagogue, but by then the two
provocateurs had, of course, disappeared.
Similar incidents occured in
several towns. Unidentified strangers suddenly appeared, gave speeches, started
throwing stones at windows, stormed Jewish buildings, schools, hospitals, and
synagogues, and then disappeared. These unusual incidents had already started
on the 8th of November, that is, before Ernst vom Rath was dead. His death was
only reported late on the evening of the gth. The fact that this strange
pattern of incidents had already begun one day earlier proves that the death of
vom Rath was not the reason for the Crystal Night outburst. Vom Rath was still
alive when the pogrom began.
And this was only the
beginning. Well organized and widespread incidents began on the evening of 9
November. Groups of generally five or six young men, armed with bars and clubs,
went down the streets smashing store windows. They were not Jew-hating SA men,
enraged over the murder of a German diplomat. They operated too methodically to
have been motivated by anger. They carried out their work without any apparent
emotion. Nonetheless, it was their destruction that encouraged certain other
individuals from the lowest social classes to become a mob and contimue the
destruction. There is another mysterious aspect to all this. Several district
and local Party leaders (Kreisleiters and Ortsgruppenleiters) were awakened
from their sleep in the middle of the night by telephone calls. Someone
claiming to be from the regional Party headquarters or the regional Party
propaganda bureau (Gauleitung or Gaupropagandaleitung) would ask what was
happening in the official's town or city. If the Party official answered
"Nothing, everything is quiet," the telephone caller would then say
in German slang that he had received an order to the effect that the Jews were
going to get it tonight and that the respective official should carry out the
order. In most cases the Party leader, disturbed from his sleep, did not even
understand what had happened. Some simply dismissed the call as a joke and went
back to bed. Others called back the office from where the telephone voice had
pretended to be calling. If they managed to reach someone in charge, they were
often told that nobody knew anything about such a call. But if they reached
only a lower official they were often told: "Well, if you got that order,
you'd better go ahead and do what you were told." These telephone calls
caused considerable confusion. All this came out months later during the trials
conducted by the Supreme Party Court. The Chief Judge concluded that in every
case a misunderstanding had arisen in one link or other of the chain of
command. But when they were confronted with apparently genuine orders to
organize demonstrations against the Jews that night, most of the Party leaders
had simply not known what to do.
The pattern of seemingly
sporadic anti-Jewish incidents in small towns, followed only later by a
carefully planned outburst in many large cities throughout Germany, clearly
suggests the work of a centrally organized group of well-trained agents. Even
shortly after the Crystal Night, many leading Party officials suspected that
the entire affair had been centrally cordinated. Significantly, even Hermann
Graml, the only West German historian who has written in detail about the
Crystal Night, carefully distinguished between provocateurs and people who were
simply carried away by their emotions and spontaneously took part in the riot
and destruction. Without providing the slightest shred of real evidence, Graml
claims that the provocative agents were directed bv Dr. Goebbels.
Munich on the Ninth of November
While all this was happening
across the Reich, a special annual commemoration was being held in Munich.
Fifteen years earlier, on 9 November 1923, a movement led by Adolf Hitler,
Erich von Ludendorff (a leading First World War General), and two major figures
in the Bavarian government tried to depose the legal government and take
responsibility themselves as a new national government. The uprising or putsch
was put down and 16 rebels were shot down next to the Feldherrnhalle, a famous
old monument building in central Munich. Accordingly, the 9th of November had
been commemorated every year since 1933 as the memorial day for the martyred
heroes of the National Socialist movement. Adolf Hitler and the Party veterans,
as well as all of the Gauleiters (regional Party leaders) met every year in
Munich for the occasion. Hitler would usually deliver a speech to a select
audience of Party veterans at the famous Buergerbraeukeller restaurant on the
evening of the 8th. On the morning of the 9th Hitler and his veteran comrades
would reenact the 1923 "March to the Feldherrnhalle." On the evening
of the 9th the Führer always held an informal dinner at the Old Town Hall
("Alte Rathaus") with old comrades as well as all the Gauleiters. At
midnight young men who were about to enter the SS and the SA were sworn in at
the Feldherrnhalle. All of the Gauleiters and other guests participated in this
very solemn ceremony. After it was over they left Munich and returned to their
homes throughout the Reich.
It is clear that the 8th of
November date was chosen very cleverly. The annual commemoration ceremony of
that day insured that almost all of the Gauleiters would be away from their
home offices when the anti-Jewish demonstrations began. In other words, the
actual decision-making responsibilities that were normally carried out by the
Gauleiters were temporarily in the hands of lower-ranking individuals with less
experience. Between 8 and 10 November, subordinate officials stood in for the
Gauleiters who were either in Munich or en route to or from the annual
commemoration there. This temporary transfer of decision-making authority is
very important because it contributed to much of the subsequent confusion and
thus helped the provocateurs. Another contributing factor was the fact that no
one expected any trouble. At that time Germany was one of the most peaceful
countries in the world. There was no reason to expect any kind of unrest. It
was only during dinner at the Old Town Hall that the first sporadic reports of
riot and destruction reached Munich from some of the Gauleiter's home offices.
At the same time it was learned that Ernst vnm Rath had died in Paris from his
wounds.
What Was Goebbels Doing?
After the dinner was over, the
Führer left at about g p.m. and returned to his apartment. Dr. Goebbels then
stood up and spoke briefly about the latest news. He informed the audience that
vom Rath had died and that, as a result, anti-Jewish demonstrations had spontaneously
broken out in two or three places. Goebbels was renowned for his passionate and
inspiring speeches. But what he gave that evening was not a speech at all but
only a short and very informal announcement. He pointed out that the times were
over when Jews could kill Germans without being punished. Legal measures would
now be taken. Nevertheless, the death of vom Rath should not be an excuse for
private actions against Jews. He suggested that the Gauleiters and the head of
the SA, Viktor Lutze, should contact their home offices to make sure that peace
and order were being maintained. It's very important to understand that Dr.
Goebbels had no authority to give any orders to the others present.
As fellow Gauleiters they were
colleagues of equal rank. Anyway, what he said was apparently considered so
reasonable that the others agreed and did what he suggested.
You may have heard the
widespread allegation that Goebbels started the Crystal Night pogrom with a
fiery speech on that evening of 9 November. This widely accepted story is
false. The following facts will clarify this point:
1.
As Gauleiter for Berlin, Dr. Goebbels had no authority outside of his
Berlin district. Although he was also the Propaganda Minister of the German
government, this did not give him any authority over Party officials.
Furthermore, he had no authority whatsoever over the SA or the SS.
2.
Of all the National Socialist leaders, Dr. Goebbels would have understood
better than anyone else the immense damage that an anti-Jewish pogrom would
cause for Germany. On the morning of 10 November, when he first learned about
the extent of the damage and destruction of the previous night, he was furious
and shocked at the stupidity of those who had participated. There is
substantial evidence for this.
3.
How could a speech given after 9 p.m. on the evening of 9 November have
possibly incited a "pogrom" which had already begun the day before
when the first provocateurs appeared at municipal and Party offices to persuade
officials to take action against the Jews?
4.
Although we do not know exactly what Dr. Goebbels said in his supposedly
fiery speech, we do know what the Gauleiters and the SA commander did after the
speech had ended: they went to the telephones and called their espective home
offices to order their subordinates to do everything necessary to maintain
peace and order. They emphasized that under no circumstances must anyone take
part in any demonstrations. These telephone instructions were written down at
the home offices by whoever was on duty. The orders from each Gauleiter were
then passed on by telex to other offices within the Gau or district. These
telex messages are still in various records files and are available to anyone
who wishes to examine them.
Orders to Stop the Pogrom
While the Gauleiters were
calling their home offices, the head of the SA, Viktor Lutze, ordered all of
his immediate subordinates, the SA Gruppenführers, who were together with him
in Munich, to call their home offices as well. Lutze ordered that under no
circumstances could SA men take part in any demonstrations against Jews, and
that furthermore the SA was to intervene to stop any demonstrations already in
progress. As a result of these strict orders, SA men began to guard Jewish stores
that very night wherever windows had been broken. There is no doubt about this
order by Lutze because we have the postwar court testimony of several witnesses
confirming it. The SS and the police were given similar orders to restore peace
and order. Himmler ordered Reinhard Heydrich to prevent all destruction of
property and to protect Jews against demonstrators. The telex communication of
this order still exists. It is in the files of the International Military
Tribunal in Nuremberg. However, during the Nuremberg trial this telex order was
presented in three different forms, with forged amendments to change the
original meaning. In my book Feuerzeichen I undertook to restore the original
text.
Adolf Hitler joined the
midnight celebration at the Feldherrnhalle. It was only after he returned to
his apartment about one o'clock in the morning that he learned about the
demonstrations which had been taking place in Munich, during which one
synagogue had been set on fire. He was furious and immediately ordered the
police chief of Munich to come see him. Hitler told him to immediately stop the
fire and to make sure that no other outrages took place in Munich. He then
called various police and Party officials throughout the Reich to learn the
extent of these demonstrations. Finally, he ordered a telex message sent to all
Gauleiter offices. It read: "By express order from the very highest
authority, arson against Jewish businesses or other property must in no case
and under no circumstances take place." Synagogues were not specifically
mentioned, apparently because Hitler was still unaware of the burning of
synagogues, apart from the one in Munich.
How Did the SA Get Involved Despite the Orders
from Its Own Leaders?
How was it possible that in
spite of all these emphatic orders, so much damage and destruction could have
been done and that so many SA members could have participated? According to the
records, at least three of the 28 SA Groups did not obey the orders of SA chief
Lutze. Instead, they sent out their men to destroy synagogues and Jewish
buildings. In effect they did precisely the opposite of what Lutze had ordered.
What actually happened is clear from the testimony and evidence presented at
postwar trials against former SA men accused of participating in the riot. The
trials, held between 1946 and 1952, were based to a large extent on the report
of SA Brigade 50 chief Karl Lucke and begins with these words: "On 10
November 1938, at 3 o'clock in the morning, I received the following order: 'By
order of the Gruppenführer, all Jewish synagogues within the Brigade district
are to be immediately blown up or set on fire'." Lucke then included in
his report a listing of synagogues which had been destroyed by members of his
Brigade. This report has been cited by the prosecution at the Nuremberg
Tribunal and by practically all of the consensus historians ever since as proof
that the SA was given orders to destroy Jewish stores and synagogues.
The contradiction between the
orders actually given and the statement made in the Lucke report requires a
detailed explanation. On 9 November the leader of SA Group Mannheim, Herbert
Fust, was in Munich together with the other SA Group leaders and the SA Chief
of Staff, Viktor Lutze. When Lutze ordered the Group leaders to contact their
home offices to stop all anti-Jewish demonstrations, Fust, along with the other
SA leaders, did just that. He called his office in Mannheim and passed on the
orders he had received from Lutze. The man who was on duty that night at the
Mannheim SA office telephone and who received Fust's order confirmed that he
understood it and then hung up. But he never passed on the order he had
received. Instead, he transmitted precisely the opposite order. The normal
procedure would have been for the man on duty at the telephone to immediately
call the deputy group leader, Lucke, who was in nearby Darmstadt. But instead
he called SA Oberführer (senior colonel) Fritsch and asked him to come to the
office. Fritsch had a reputation for not being particularly clever. When he
arrived, the man who had received the telephone call showed him a small paper
slip with a few notes on it which said that the synagogues within the Mannheim
SA Group district were to be destroyed. The man who had received the call
explained to Fritsch that the order had just arrived from Munich. Slow-minded
as he was, Fritsch did not know what to do and called the local Kreisleiter
(district Party leader) and his deputy. These two men then arrived at the SA
office and discussed the situation, while at the same time the telephone duty
man notified other SA leaders, but still not the deputy Group leader Lucke. In
the meantime the small paper slip disappeared and the SA men now arriving at
the headquarters met only the Kreisleiter, who told them about the order which
he thought had come from Munich. No one asked for any further confirmation. The
SA men then left to begin the destruction. Hours later, when the whole action
was almost finished, the telephone guard finally called Deputy Group Leader Lucke
and passed on the false order. He also informed Lucke that the action had
already been going on for several hours. Since it was almost all over by this
time, Lucke also neglected to ask for confirmation of the order. It was already
3 o'clock in the morning. Lucke then alerted the Standartenführer of his
Brigade and carried out the destruction within the Darmstadt district.
At 8 o'clock the next morning
Lucke sat down and wrote the report which was later cited at the Nuremberg
Tribunal. In fact, as already shown, there was no order to commit arson or
carry out destruction against any Jewish property from the Gruppenführer in
Munich, but only from the telephone guard. Who he was remains a mystery. During
the postwar trials against members of this SA unit, none of the judges asked
for the name or identity of this telephone guard. This mysterious man was very
probably an agent for those who were actually behind the entire Crystal Night
Affair.
The Fine Imposed on the Jews
Early in the morning following
the Crystal Night, Propaganda Minister Dr. Goebbels announced in a radio
broadcast that any action against Jews was strictly prohibited. He warned that
severe penalties would be imposed on anyone who did not obey this order. He
also explained that the Jewish question would be resolved only by legal means.
As already mentioned, German government and Party officials were furious about
what had happened. Hermann Göring, who was responsible for Germany's economy,
complained that it would be impossible to replace the special plate glass of
the broken store windows because it was not manufactured in Germany. It had to
be imported from Belgium and would cost a great deal of precious foreign
currency. Because of the Jewish boycott against German goods, the Reich was
short of foreign exchange currency. Göring therefore decided that because this
shortage was caused by the Jews, it was they who would have to pay for the
broken glass. He imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmarks on the German Jews.
This fine is always mentioned by anyone who writes about the Crystal Night. But
historians and history writers invariably neglect to explain the reason for the
fine.
It was certainly unjust to
force Jews to pay for damage which they had not caused. Göring understood this.
However, in private he justified the fine by citing the fact that the 1933
Jewish declaration of war against Germany was proclaimed in the name of the
millions of Jews throughout the world. Therefore they could now help their
co-religionists in Germany bear the consequences of the boycott. It should also
be pointed out that only German Jews with assets of more than 5,000 Reichsmarks
in cash had to con- tribute to the fine. In 1938, when prices were very low,
5,000 Reichsmarks was a small fortune. Anyone with that much money in cash
would certainly have had far more wealth in other assets and could therefore
well afford to pay their assessed portion of the fine without being reduced to
poverty, despite what history writers have maintained.
The Consequences of the Crystal Night
It is often said that the
Crystal Night incident was the official start of the German "Final
Solution of the Jewish Question." This is quite true, but "Final
Solution" did not mean physical extermination -- it meant only emigration
of the Jews from Germany. Immediately after the Crystal Night, Hitler ordered
the creation of a central agency to organize the emigration of the Jews from
Germany as rapidly as possible. Accordingly, Göring set up the Reich Central
Office for Jewish Emigration ("Reichszentrale fuer die juedische
Auswanderung") with Reinhard Heydrich as director. This agency combined
the various government departments which had been involved with Jewish
emigration. It simplified official procedures for Jewish emigration, but its
work was severely hampered by the unwillingness of almost all countries to
admit Jews. The only country to which Jews could still easily emigrate was
Palestine, provided they possessed one thousand pounds sterling each, as
required by the British authorities there.
Despite the favorable terms of
the Haavara or Transfer Agreement, only a few German Jews were willing to
emigrate to Palestine. In those days Palestine was only at the beginning of its
development. It was still an agrarian country with very little industry. It was
only after the arrival of thousands of German Jews with their capital and
experience that industrial development really began there. The Jews in Germany
were generally employed in trade, industry, or the professions. There were
little or no oppor tunities for them in Palestine. For example, there was
virtually no financial structure in Palestine in the 1930s. There was no money
market, no stock exchange, and no investment banking. How could businessmen
operate in such an environment?
Because so few Jews wanted to
migrate to Palestine, special efforts were made to open the doors of other
countries, but this proved very difficult. Prosperous nations did not want
Jewish immigrants and poor countries were very unattractive. In the summer of
1938 an Inter-Governmental Refugee Committee was established with the American
lawyer George Rublee as its director. In January 1939 (that is, after the
Crystal Night), Rublee and the German government signed an agreement by which
all German Jews could emigrate to the country of their choice. Interestingly
enough, it was the father of a future American president and the father of a
future German president who nearly torpedoed this agreement: Josäph Kennedy,
the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and Ernst von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of
the German Foreign Office and father of the current president of the Ger- man
Federal Republic. Adolf Hitler personally intervened in the negotiating process
and saved the agreement by sending Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht to
London to negotiate with Rublee.
Rublee himself later called it
a "sensational agreement" -- and it was indeed sensational. Special
arrangements between the Inter-Governmental Committee and governments of
individual countries would guarantee the financial security of the migrating
Jews. Training camps would be established to prepare emigrating Jews for new
jobs in their future homelands. Jews in Germany who were more than 45 years old
could either emigrate or remain in Germany. If they decided to remain, they
would be exempt from discriminatory restrictions. They would be able to live
and work wherever they wanted. Their social security would be guaranteed by the
Reich government, the same as for any German citizen. As Rublee later noted,
there were practically no incidents against Jews during the time between the
signing of the agreement and the outbreak of war in September 1939.
The Reich Central Office for
Jewish Emigration, which was organized shortly after the Crystal Night, was
based on the provisions of the Rublee plan. A parallel Jewish organization, the
Reich Union of Jews in Germany ("Reichsvereinigung der Juden in
Deutschland"), was established. Its task was to advise Jews on all
questions of emigration and to act on behalf of Jews with the Reich Central
Office. The two agencies worked closely together to facilitate Jewish
emigration as much as possible. In addition, the SS and certain other National
Socialist organizations worked with Zionist organizations to facilitate Jewish
emigration. Jewish groups greatly appreciated the cooperation of the SS. For
example, the SS established training centers where prospective Jewish emigrants
learned new job skills to prepare them for their new lives.
With the help of the Transfer
Agreement and the Rublee plan, hundreds of thousands of Jews migrated from
Europe to Palestine. In September 1940 the Jewish news agency in Palestine,
"Palcor," reported that 500,000 Jewish emigrants had already arrived
from the German Reich, including Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia- Moravia, and
German-ruled Poland. Nevertheless, after 1950 it was claimed that the total
number of Jewish emigrants to Palestine from all European countries was only
about 80,000. What happened to the other 420,000 Jews? In 1940 they probably
had no idea that later on they were supposed to have been "gassed"!
Conclusion
I have tried to point out just
a few unmentioned aspects of the Crystal Night issue which, in my opinion, give
a picture of what actually happened that is entirely different than the one
generally accepted. I am convinced that neither the German government nor the
leaders of the National Socialist Party instigated the Crystal Night.
Ultimately it was not the Jews but the Germans who suffered most as a result of
this event. Even persons sympathetic to National Socialism are still appalled
when they think of the Crystal Night. Many are under the impression that murder
and arson were quite common under National Socialism and that no Jew could be
sure of his life or property. Nazi Germany was supposedly a country without any
civil rights. The Crystal Night incident was indeed one of the darkest episodes
of German history in the era of 1933 to 1945. But based on all of the available
evidence, these demonstrations were neither thought up nor organized by German
Party or government officials. In fact, they were completely suprised and
shocked when they learned of the riot and destruction. The pogrom must have
been thought up and organized by those who actually benefited from it and who
wanted to create havoc in Germany.
Who could they have been? If
we keep in mind the deep involve ment of the Jewish organization LICA in the
murder of vom Rath, we may ask: Could the Jews themselves have hoped to benefit
from a pogrom? In the aftermath of the Crystal Night, the world press became
overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Jews, which is precisely what they wanted
above all else. The Zionists in particular counted on worldwide support in
their struggle against England, which then ruled Palestine as a British
mandate. Jewish immigration to Palestine was strictly limited at that time by
the British because of vehement Arab opposition to the arrival of ever larger
numbers of Jews. As a result, the number of Jewish immigrants dropped in 1938
to the lowest level since the beginning of the century, when the Zionist mass
migration to Palestine began.
To stabilize the situation,
the British formulated a partition plan dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish
portions. Despite serious reservations, the Jews agreed to the plan, but the
Arabs did not. They responded with an uprising known as the Arab Revolt. In
March 1938 the British government sent Sir Harold MacMichaels as High
Commissioner to Palestine. He succeeded in suppressing the uprising, but to
appease the Arabs he promised to urge his government to abandon the partition
plan and halt further Jewish immigration. MacMichaels returned to London in
October 1938 to discuss his proposals with the British parliament. The
scheduled date for the final decision was 8 November 1938, the day on which the
Crystal Night violence actually began.
German Embassy Secretary Ernst
vom Rath had been shot just one day earlier, on 7 November. The conspirators no
doubt hoped that vom Rath would die immediately, in which case the anti-Jewish
demonstrations would probably have also started on the 7th. Could someone have
hoped that a pogrom in nearby Germany would influence the British to change
their Palestine policy? Or that it would induce the outside world to exert
pressure on Britain to open Palestine to the Jews who were being so terribly
treated in Germany? I cannot give any definite answers. I can only speculate as
to who conspirators behind the Crystal Night really were and as to their
motives. To me it seems entirely plausible that certain Jewish groups were
involved. The LICA was almost certainly involved in the murder of vom Rath. In
any case, the Crystal Night incident was not an expression of the will of the
German people. Nor was it organized by Dr. Goebbels or any of the other German
leaders. On the contrary, it was carefully organized by people who worked in
the shadows.
Notes
1.William P. Varga, The
Number One Nazi Jew-Baiter: A Political Biography of Julius Streicher (New
York: 1981).
2. Even Helmut Heiber, a
prominent contemporary German historian, had to admit these facts. Helmut
Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," ViertelFahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte,
5. Hg., 1957, pp. 154-172.
3. See: Werner Feilchenfeld,
Dolf Michaelis, and Ludwig Pinner, Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina
(Tuebingen: 1972); and, Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (New York
and London: 1984)
4. Ingrid Weckert,
Feuerzeichen: Die "Reichslcristallnacht," Anstifter und
Brandstifterpfer und Nutzniesser (Tuebingen: 1981), p. 225.
5. Edwin Black, The
Transfer Agreement, p. 382.
6. W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer
Nach Palaestina, p. 71.
7. Nahum Goldmann, Das
Juedische Paradox: Zionismus und Judentum nach Hitler (Cologne: 1978), p.
181.
8. Heinemann Stern, Warum
Hassen Sie Uns Eigentlich? (Duesseldorf: 1970), pp. 298-299.
9. Hermann Graml, Der 9.
November 1938 (Bonn: 1958), p. 47.
10. H. Heiber, "Der Fall
Gruenspan," p. 164.
11. H. Heiber, "Der Fall
Gruenspan," p. 172.
12. Gideon Hausner, Justice
in Jerusalem (New York: 1968), p. 41.
From The Journal of
Historical Review, Summer 1985 (Vol. 6, No. 2), pages 183-206. This item
was first presented at the Sixth IHR conference, February 1985, in Anaheim,
California.
About the Author
Ingrid Weckert is the author
of a detailed examination of “Crystal Night” and German-Jewish relations during
the 1930s that was published as a book in Germany in 1981 under the title Feuerzeichen,
and in the USA in 1991 under the title Flashpoint At the end of
the Second World War Weckert was a teenager in devastated Berlin. After
Gymnasium graduation she studied theology, including Judaic studies, in
Switzerland. She deepened her understanding of the history and character of the
Jewish people during numerous visits to Israel. Frau Weckert lived for years in
Munich, where she worked as a librarian, and then devoted considerable time to
historical research and writing.
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