November 10, 2013, - 9:37 pm
75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht: Far Too Many Have Forgotten; Doomed for Repeat?
Can’t let the weekend go by without remembering that this is the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht – the “Night” of the Broken Glass” – and the official start of the Holocaust. It took place on November 9-10 of 1938.
On that night, Nazis raided, vandalized, burned down, or otherwise destroyed German Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues, while non-Jewish residents and police and fireman watched and did nothing. More than 90 Jewish people were murdered, and about 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps where they, too, would mostly face death.
Photos from Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938: Jews Arrested and Sent to Concentration Camps, Synagogues and Jewish Businesses Destroyed . . .
Anti-Semitism always dominated Europe, which is why my paternal grandfather’s immediate family left for America at the turn of the century and my paternal grandmother left not long after. But the night of November 9, 1938 marked the stark notice that this European anti-Semitism had escalated to a level of even more unspeakable horrors against Jews than previously imagined.
It was a loud disruption to the cocooned view of German Jews that they were cultured and mostly assimilated and, many of them, wealthy, and that their fellow Germans would never harm them. To date, many Jews refer to German Jews as “Yeccas,” or “Jackets,” because they were so high-cultured, so formal, and so much a part of German high society. And, yet, on that night, they learned it all meant nothing. On Kristallnacht, they finally realized that, in fact, they were not the equals in society they’d believed for centuries that they were.
Many descendants of those German Jews and their contemporaries in America are liberal Jews who voted for Barack Obama and the party dominated by anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiment, the Democrats. They are the same Jews who constantly do “outreach” to Muslims who openly hate them and praise Hezbollah and HAMAS and homicide bombings. They are also the same Jews who love to mindlessly utter the tired “Never Again” phrase, but gladly associate with those who will ensure that in a generation or two it very likely could happen again. They are the same Jews who lament what happened to those Jews now dead and completely decayed, but look the other way or do worse when it comes to the living Jews today in Israel and elsewhere around the world who face unprecedented anti-Semitism not faced since the Holocaust–most of it perpetrated by Muslims and their allies.
I’ve written about these Jews on my site frequently over the years. They are Jews like Detroit Jewish News owner Arthur Horwitz who endorsed Obama in his left-wing rag the first time and sponsored his own anti-Semitic exhibit in which he marked the then-150th anniversary of Jews in the Detroit area by insisting that the Purple Gang was THE most prominent part of Detroit Jewish history. This week, his liberal self-hating rag commemorated the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. And, at the same time, he is engaged in a commercial partnership with Hezbollah agent, Osama Siblani, owner of the Arab American News–who openly praises Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic hate and HAMAS and Hezbollah terrorist attacks on Jews, prints vile anti-Semitic editorials against Detroit-area Jews, and whose brother is an executive of Al-Manar (Hezbollah’s TV station). Horwitz has publicly bragged about trying to promote Siblani’s paper and make it more effective and lucrative.
Yes, the “comfortable” German Jews have been reborn (with apologies to the German Jews of those days who even themselves didn’t behave like the Arthur Horwitzes of today). Or, more accurately, they never really went away. Theirs is a state of mind that has unfortunately plagued a sizable part of the Jewish community throughout history. As I’ve repeatedly noted on this site over the years, only 20% of the Jews left slavery in Egypt. The rest stayed behind, content to remain enslaved and oppressed by the Egyptians. And, similarly, their counterparts today, the liberal Jews who deign to speak for me though I never chose or elected them to do so, have forgotten the sounds of the breaking glass, of the 20 Jewish suicides of that night 75 years ago, of the screams of 30,000 people arrested and sent to the camps, just because they were Jewish.
While there are no Kristallnachts here right now, and Americans from the center to the right–who are not of the Pat Buchanan bent–are largely philo-Semitic, we continue to see increasing incidents of anti-Semitism all over America and violent brutal attacks against Jews all over Europe. Again, most of these attacks are perpetrated by the group that is at once the old Nazis and the new Nazis: Muslims. Plots to infiltrate and blow up synagogues in New York: Muslims. Attacks on rabbis waiting for trains in the New York subway: Muslims. And so on.
As I’ve noted repeatedly over the years, the FBI annual statistics on hate crimes since 9/11 show a steady increase in hate crimes against Jews. But, as I’ve also repeatedly noted, the FBI refuses to identify the perpetrators of those hate crimes by religion and ethnicity. If they did, guess who would populate the majority of the perpetrators of these hate crimes against Jews? MUSLIMS.
I, myself, have endured the death, rape, and torture threats from four American residents–ALL of them Muslim. Today’s Nazis don’t wear the swastika, they wear the crescent. And they find their most vocal supporters on the left and in the party of the left and its current two-term Prez. And I would be intellectually dishonest if I did not also point out that they–the Muslims–have far too many PC-types who are also yes-men–though to a much lesser extent–in the Republican Party. Take the man the mainstream media and establishment Republicans are pimping for President in 2016: Chris Christie, or as we call him here, Chris ChrispieCreme. He’s an apologist for Islam and its most hateful factions, which is why he appointed a HAMASnik to a judgeship. Expect the same in a Halal ChrispieCreme White House.
Seventy-five years and many have forgotten. They repeat the same things over again with their Islamo-pandering.
I haven’t forgotten. I have the photos of my late maternal grandmother, Adela, and her friends in their Nazi-imposed Gold Jude star patch. And I have the memories of the many stories my late maternal grandfather, Isaac, told me over the years of his struggle to survive in the death camps and his many close calls with it as he subsisted as a bag of bones working in many camps, including Dora.
My Grandmother Adela (2nd Row, Third From Left) & Her Fellow Yellow Star Wearing Seamstress Friends
Far too many of us have forgotten. Fortunately, a few of us remember.
There are many famous pictures of what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews on that particularly night 75 years ago in Germany and for years to come all over Europe, while Muslims–including Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem–begged them to speed up the Final Solution and export it to include the Middle East and North Africa.
My late father, H.L. Schlussel, MD, used to point to the picture of a Nazi SS soldier pulling a rabbi by his beard. He would juxtapose it with his favorite photo by Allan Tannenbaum, of bearded religious Jews in Israel’s Judah and Shomron–the so-called “West Bank”–protecting their homes and lives with M-16s. “That Was Then, This is Now,” was the slogan my father would put on the makeshift copies of the two photos he put together.
Sadly, as my dad lamented, even the “now” may soon be the “then” because my fellow co-religionists, both in Israel and here in America, do not learn from history. They ignore it.
Today, there are different architects of the Final Solution, but the plan is the same. Unfortunately, our current President wants to hang out with them–the Rouhanis and Abbases (of the PLO) of the world–and they happily send him their congratulations and entreaties. We’ve reportedly already dropped our sanctions against Iran months ago, and are on the verge of making peace with these enemies of America who are not just the enemies of the Jews but the financiers of Hezbollah, which murdered hundreds of Americans in cold blood. This is the same Rouhani who recently hosted renowned racist and Jew-hater Louis Farrakhan in New York after Rouhani spoke to the U.N. That is the guy with whom we are making nice just like Neville Chamberlain did with the Nazis. And how did that turn out?
75 years ago, but that’s in the past. It could never happen now . . . . Right?
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Sir Edmund Burke
This Is Now, But it Could Soon Be “Then” . . .
Tags: Kristallnacht
Obama wanted to rush into a deal with Iran and leave Israel out to hang to dry.
It was stopped temporarily because the French doublecrossed Obama in exactly the same way he doublecrossed them on Syria earlier in the summer.
And this followed Kerry’s lashing out at Israel for not committing national suicide fast enough and openly endorsing the Arab Nazi demand to redline Jews from Judea and Samaria.
Has the world learned the lessons of Kristallnacht? In a word, no – there is a violent assault in our time upon living Jews as intense and relentless as those the Nazis launched against German Jews over 75 years ago.
History moves in the blink of an eye and despite the passage of time, the one thing that’s never really changed is the world’s attitude towards the Jews. Which is why in the end no one will really insist that Iran give up the means to produce a nuclear bomb.
Jews are still expendable and it would be a grave mistake to dismiss Kristallnacht as simply ancient history.
NormanF on November 11, 2013 at 12:51 am