Eighty years after the Kristallnacht pogrom, every German can ask: How did my family react at the time? DW's Felix Steiner takes a personal look at how his family experienced the Night of Broken Glass.
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Image: Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart
My father was a walking encyclopedia of local history. And he could tell a really exciting story. Everything I know about the region I grew up in and my origins comes from him.
Among other things, he told me several times about his experiences on November 10, 1938 — in the southwestern German town of Gernsbach where I grew up, the nationwide Kristallnacht pogrom didn't take place on the evening of November 9, but during the early afternoon of the next day.
DW's Felix Steiner
At the time, my father was in first grade at school, and when lessons were over, the children were advised by their teacher to take detours on their way home to avoid the synagogue and houses where Jews lived, because it could be dangerous there.
Of course, my father and his friends, as typical 6 or 7-year-olds, treated this kindly meant piece of advice from their teacher as a direct invitation to find out what could be so dangerous in their provincial backwater in the middle of the day.
They came upon a burning synagogue that the fire brigade wasn't dealing with and encountered smashed shop windows and wrecked Jewish-owned shops. And they saw with their own eyes how the entire contents of an apartment belonging to a Jewish family were thrown onto the street from the second-floor windows.
My father, Franz Steiner, on his first day of school in 1938Image: Privat
What were my grandparents thinking?
The things that went on back then in this little town with its barely 30 Jewish residents have now been thoroughly documented for all to read. But what I would like to ask my father once more is this: How did my grandparents react to the account given to them by their eldest son about what had happened in broad daylight in the town center?
Did they try to explain to him something that now seems inexplicable? Did they comment on the fact that barely 300 meters from our house, the door was kicked open on women and children — the Jewish men had already been arrested in the early hours of November 10 and transported to the concentration camp in Dachau on a special train — and all the furnishings smashed to pieces?
Jewish businesses in Gernsbach were damaged or destroyedImage: Stadtarchiv Gernsbach
If I am completely honest with myself, I don't really want to find out. And I don't need to ask, because I basically know the answers. No — my grandparents weren't staunch Nazis; I know that for sure. But like millions of other Germans, they looked the other way and remained silent. Parents of four small children rarely make good material for heroes or martyrs.
And they had known that the concentration camp in Dachau existed and what happened there ever since the mayor and several Social Democrat councillors were arrested over the course of several weeks in 1933. Anyway, it was about the Jews — as Catholics, what did we have to do with them? Should we take risks because of them?
Jews began to be systematically excluded and deprived of their rights well before November 1938. Just a few weeks after Hitler took power, "Don't buy from Jews" was first smeared on the display windows of Jewish shop-owners; Jewish public servants were fired and doctors, lawyers and journalists banned from working. Then there were the Nuremberg Race Laws, expropriations and much more.
But November 9-10, 1938, was the transition to open terrorism in full view of the entire population.
And my family was among those to look on without saying anything. That is something that unsettles me and makes me ashamed — even 80 years on.
Looking back on the Nazis' anti-Jewish pogroms
On November 9-10, 1938, Nazi Germany launched an anti-Jewish pogrom throughout the German Empire. The November Pogrom was the start of the systematic annihilation of Jewish life in Europe.
Image: picture-alliance/AP/M. Schreiber
What happened on November 9-10, 1938?
Anti-Semitic mobs, led by SA paramilitaries, went on rampages throughout Nazi Germany. Synagogues like this one in the eastern city of Chemnitz and other Jewish-owned property were destroyed, and Jews were subject to public humiliation and arrested. According to official records, at least 91 Jews were killed — though the real death toll was likely much higher.
Image: picture alliance
What's behind the name?
The street violence against German Jews is known by a variety of names. Berliners called it Kristallnacht, from which the English "Night of Broken Glass" is derived. It recalls the shards of shattered glass from the windows of synagogues, homes and Jewish-owned businesses. Nowadays, in German, it's also common to speak of the "pogrom night" or the "November pogroms."
Image: picture alliance/akg-images
What was the official reason for the pogrom?
The event that provided the excuse for the violence was the murder of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew. Vom Rath was shot at close range at the German Embassy in Paris on November 7, and died days later. Grynszpan wasn't executed for the crime; no one knows whether he survived the Third Reich or died in a concentration camp.
Image: picture-alliance/Imagno/Schostal Archiv
How did the violence start?
After vom Rath's death, Adolf Hitler gave Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels permission to launch the pogrom. Violence had already broken out in some places, and Goebbels gave a speech indicating the Nazis would not quash any "spontaneous" protests against the Jews. The SS were instructed to allow "only such measures as do not entail any danger to German lives and property."
Image: dpa/everettcollection
Was the violence an expression of popular anger?
No — that was just the official Nazi party line, but no one believed it. Constant references to "operations" and "measures" in Nazi documents clearly indicate the violence was planned ahead of time. It's unclear what ordinary Germans thought of the mayhem. There is evidence of popular disapproval, but the fact that the couple in the left of this picture appear to be laughing also speaks volumes.
In line with their racist ideology, the Nazis wanted to intimidate Jews into voluntarily leaving Germany. To this end, Jews were often paraded through the streets and humiliated, as seen in this image. Their persecutors were also motivated by economic interests. Jews fleeing the Third Reich were charged extortionate "emigration levies," and their property was often confiscated.
Image: gemeinfrei
Did the pogrom serve the Nazis' purpose?
After the widespread violence German Jews were under no illusions about Nazi intentions, and those who could left the country. But such naked aggression played badly in the foreign press and offended many Germans' desire for order. Later, further anti-Jewish measures took more bureaucratic forms, such as the requirement that Jews wear a visible yellow Star of David stitched to their clothing.
Image: gemeinfrei
What was the immediate aftermath?
After the pogroms, the Nazi leadership instituted a whole raft of anti-Jewish measures, including a levy to help pay for the damage of November 9-10, 1938. The second-most powerful man in the Third Reich at the time, Hermann Göring, famously remarked: "I would not want to be a Jew in Germany."
Image: AP
What is Kristallnacht's place in history?
In 1938, the beginning of what became known as the Holocaust was still two years away. But there is an obvious line of continuity from the pogrom to the mass murder of European Jews, in which the Nazi leadership would continue to develop and intensify their anti-Semitic hatred. In the words of one contemporary historian, the pogrom was a "prelude to genocide."
