Kristallnacht

By RABBI JOSEPH H. PROUSER

Kristallnacht was a coordinated series of devastating attacks on the Jewish community throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland on November 9-10, 1938.  In the rampage, perpetrated by Nazi forces abetted by German civilians, 267 synagogues were destroyed or damaged, some 7500 Jewish businesses were vandalized and looted, and tens of thousands of Jews were subjected to summary arrest.  The number of Jews killed and brutalized on Kristallnacht is a matter of continuing debate.

Kristallnacht (literally, “Chrystal Night”) is also referred to as the “Night of Broken Glass” – in reference to the countless windows smashed during the riotous attacks… and the ubiquitous, scattered, crystalline shards that remained.

Commemorated each year on the anniversary of the atrocities, Kristallnacht is simultaneously to be viewed as a prelude to the Holocaust… and as the last, most devastating pogrom of Medieval Europe.  The barbarous depravity of the attacks strengthened international disdain for Nazism, and effectively undermined American isolationism.  Former German Kaiser Wilhelm II responded to Kristallnacht by saying, “For the first time, I am ashamed to be German.”

Yehuda Bauer, renowned Israeli historian of the Holocaust and antisemitism, now age 96, made the moral legacy of Kristallnacht crystal clear: “Thou shalt not be a victim; thou shalt not be a perpetrator; but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.”

Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser is the rabbi of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey and the editor of “Masorti: The New Journal of Conservative Judaism.”