Kristallnacht – Night of Broken Glass (speech given 2013)

The source of the name Kristallnacht, is the failure of the world to prevent the worst crime in history that man ever committed against his fellow man. Let me explain:

During the night between the 9th and the 10th of November 1938, a so called ‘spontaneous’ pogrom started in the streets of Germany.    During this pogrom, over one thousand Synagogues were destroyed. The shards of glass from their windows and chandeliers covered the floors– this is the source of the romanticized name Kristallnacht.  As if to say, it was just a bunch of uncontrolled radicals, misbehaving in the streets.

The truth is, this is an example of the world’s sin of keeping silent, of acting normally, in non-normal times, at the beginning of a dark time in history.

 

By referring only to the broken glass, ignores the facts that over 90 Jews were murdered, and over 30,000 more were sent to concentration camps, denied their freedom, stripped of their dignity, and in most cases losing their lives. The name Kristallnacht removes the focus, from the most troubling things that happened, or more accurately did not happen; there was no outcry, no protest from the rest of the world. The world sinned, by letting it pass, with only silence.

But there is an excuse; it was spontaneous!?

 

But how spontaneous could it have been, capturing 30,000 Jews in one single night, by following accurate lists with names and addresses and having transport trains ready to go.

Read the newspapers of that time. Not one country recalled its ambassadors or dismissed the German ambassador assigned to them.

–          No German embassies were stoned;   no repercussions were taken, not even by the Jewish people at that time.

The world sinned, by letting it pass, with silence; the sin of silence.

 

This night marked the beginning of the Holocaust! when the world did not protest, and by not doing so, gave a green light to Hitler and his Nazis to proceed with their plans, with the knowledge, that the world would not interfere.
The sounds of broken glass, succeeded in overcoming the cries of the murdered and exiled; for them, it became the night of silence.