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I didn't want to write about the Holocaust again. It hurts too much. Surely with so many other things happening in the world, I could just let mention of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht pass by unspoken, couldn't I? Just once?
Then I read this, reported in the Sacramento Bee about events this week:
Officials at Congregation Beth Shalom on El Camino Avenue contacted the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department about 10:40 a.m. to report that racist symbols and messages, including a swastika, had been spray painted on the sanctuary, said sheriff's Sgt. Tim Curran.
The vandalism included the "SS" lightning bolts - the symbol of the Nazi security forces; a swastika and the message "Kristallnacht still lives," Curran said.
But it did not just happen there. In Dresden, Germany, this week, this happened :
Swastikas have been daubed on the wall of the New Synagogue in the eastern German city of Dresden on the eve of the 71st anniversary of the Nazi's ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom in 1938. The interior minister of the state of Saxony, Markus Ulbig, condemned the desecration. “We will not allow such things to happen. In Saxony, there is no place for anti-Semitism,” he said. Uhlig paid a visit to Dresden’s Jewish community on Monday.
And as if that were not enough, then I saw the UPI report about an event in Florida:
CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., Nov. 10 (UPI) -- Swastikas and the words "Jews shall die" were found painted on the walls of the Soref Jewish community center in Coral Springs, Fla., police said.
So, yes, I do have to write about this anniversary -- an anniversary which is called "Kristallnacht", an anniversary of the terrible night that the Holocaust officially began. Hitler and his Nazi thugs hatched a plan to send up a sort of test balloon for larger acts of horror. If the populace of Germany and Austria did not attempt to stop the events of Kristallnacht, and if the world leaders did not take action, they saw it as a sign that they could proceed on unimpeded in geometrically larger acts of systematic evil and hatred.
And so it began. Kristallnacht. The Night of Broken Glass.
Seventy-one years ago, Kristallnacht began all over Germany and Austria and also in other Nazi controlled areas. It was an organized and methodical attack on Jewish neighborhoods. It was, in every sense, a pogrom. Shops and department stores all had their windows smashed and their contents destroyed. Synagogues were directly targeted for destruction and burning, including the deliberate desecration of Torah scrolls. Hundreds of synagogues burned while local officials stood by, or while local fire departments prevented the fire from spreading to non-Jewish buildings. Every single synagogue in Austria was attacked that night.
Estimates are that about 25-30,000 Jewish men and boys were taken to concentration camps that night. Over 700 synagogues were destroyed.
Jodie calls Kristallnacht a "timeless lesson" and adds:
Thus Kristallnacht should have removed the blinders from the eyes of the Western world as to what awaited them a few short months later from Germany — a world war that would destroy tens of millions and destroy Europe for generations. Part of the tragedy of Kristallnacht is that it did not send the necessary wake-up call to those who could have yet stood up to Germany. And so the deluge arrived.
The deluge arrived. And if we listen closely, it is not over. It re-appears in the obvious ways, when a synagogue is targeted with blazing swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti -- but it echoes as well in any act of intolerance, any act of hatred because of race or religion or national origin or gender or sexual preference.
And it is hard to look at. It hurts. It feels awful. Hatred can make us frantic with hope that it will just go away. Or perhaps someone else will handle it. Isn't that why we elect people? Or, worse yet, because it is not happening to me, or in my neighborhood, or town or school, or job -- then it is OK to stand back.
But when we do that, when we remain silent, we are like the citizens in Vienna, or Berlin that day who woke up, had breakfast, walked outside and saw streets full of broken glass, terrified Jewish neighbors, still-smoking synagogues and just simply reported to work at their offices.
Songbird speaks about Mitzvot - acts of human kindness -- and Kristallnact:
today was Mitzvah Day at our synagogue. It's a special day focused on doing mitzvahs....
we wrote greeting cards to be mailed
