Kristallnacht anniversary: ​​Never again?

Eighty-five years ago, on the night between November 9 and 10, 1938, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels launched on his own, through local leadership National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) burning synagogues throughout Germany, smashing Jewish institutions and shops, arresting, harassing and sometimes killing citizens of Jewish origin. Not only the police and the Gestapo secret police, but also the SS units were not informed about it. Surprised, they did not interfere, they waited for orders from above. Because of the piles of broken glass that covered the streets after the windows of Jewish shops were smashed, this outpouring of violence directed against the Jews is remembered as the "Kristallnacht of the Empire"..

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Until then, since the Nazis came to power in 1933, there had been individual persecution of Jews, taking them to concentration camps, laws were passed that prohibited Jews from performing certain jobs, sexual relations between Jews and Aryans, and the like, but there were no mass atrocities. The pogrom began with the murder of several hundred, and ended with the loss of the lives of around six million Jews. Exactly six million?

That figure is generally accepted as correct. I am not sure if there were perhaps a little less or even a lot less victims, but I know for sure that my parents were killed, that my father was taken as a hostage to his death from the Topovske šupa camp near the Autokomanda, that my mother was suffocated in a truck-dushegupka that started from the Old Fairground and drove through the center of my Belgrade towards Jajinci, that my paternal grandparents committed suicide, suspecting the extermination of the Jews in Nedić's Serbia after the occupation, that not I will list all the other relatives who were killed throughout Yugoslavia.

De-Jewishization of Germany

Heinrich Himmler, who held the title of "imperial leader of the SS", requested in 1937 the "de-Jewishization" of Nenačka. "Don't shop with Jews" posters were plastered on the windows of Jewish-owned stores. In May 1938, the chief of the police in Berlin, Wolf Heinrich von Heldorff, gave the officers an order: "Our slogan does not rest in legislation, but in chicanery, the Jews must be pushed out of Berlin."

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Seventeen-year-old Herschel Greenspan, a Jew of Polish origin who lived in Paris, learned that his family had been expelled from Germany, and therefore on October 9, 1938, he intercepted the secretary of the German embassy in France, Ernst Eduard von Rath, and killed him with a pistol that had been fired the day before. got that. It was said that Von Rath and Greenspan knew each other before that, met in a homosexual environment, that the killer was therefore informed about the movements of his victim, but this was never seriously investigated, and it was never proven.

Goebbels certainly intended to launch a major action against the Jews, the murder of a German diplomat was an excellent reason for him. He ordered all the German press to cover the assassination. Von Rath, who was unknown to the public until then, was portrayed as a great fighter for Germany, he was posthumously promoted to advisor first class.

In addition to the position of minister, Goebbels had his people in the Nazi party organizations and the SA paramilitary organization (Death Department). He skillfully organized actions against Jews to be "spontaneously" launched in cities with a larger Jewish population throughout the country. During the night of November 9, and especially before dawn on November 10, there were attacks on Jewish institutions. The riots were not organized from the headquarters, they were supposed to look like a spontaneous outburst of popular anger.

During that night, about 1300 Jews were killed, about 30.000 were arrested or deported to concentration camps, and 1406 temples and headquarters of Jewish organizations were burned. The fire service was ordered to intervene only if the fire threatens to spread to wider areas, and the police not to interfere. Several thousand shops owned by Jews were broken into and stolen.

It is hard to imagine that people could sleep near the horror, but no one tried to help the sufferers, to stand up to the bullies. Some German citizens feared for their lives and property, others approved of the destruction of competition.

Photographs and recordings of "Kristallnacht" are very rare, the Nazis forbade photography and recording because they were still afraid of international reactions.

Jews to pay for damages

On November 10, Hitler already ordered Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and Goebbels to remove the Jews from the German economy and cultural life, to disappear from the sight of the Germans. In order to carry out the order, Goering, formally in charge of economic affairs, called a meeting where he turned to Goebbels and began to shout: "I am fed up with these kinds of demonstrations." You are not harming the Jews, but me, who needs to unify our economic life at the highest level. It would have been better if you had killed a few hundred more without causing material damage.''

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Goebbels replied: "Let the Jews themselves pay for the damage!" And Göring retorted: "Yes, but we don't have enough raw materials, the glass you broke will have to be bought abroad."

It was decided that the German Jews must collect a billion marks as a ransom.

Never again?

A two-day international scientific conference "80 years of the concept of genocide - Case study: Genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH" was opened in Belgrade on Wednesday in the Palace of Serbia. part of my family also died. I don't understand why the opportunity was missed to at least briefly and with due reverence mention the beginning of the pogrom 85 years ago, which was the announcement and the beginning of the holocaust, of which Jasenovac was a terrible part. I did not notice that anywhere in Serbia there was a reference to that date.

I was nine years old when the era of pogroms began, I had no idea about it, it came to me six years later when I was "transported" to Auschwitz - that was the word that was used.

Yesterday, the highest dignitaries of Germany gathered in a synagogue in Berlin, in addition to the president of the state, the prime minister and others, a 102-year-old lady who experienced and survived the days of evil also spoke. With great effort she stammered, "That must never, never, never happen again!"

What else is there to say? I am not an optimist.

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