Twenty years ago, on November 13, 2003, the following editorial entitled, From the past, a warning, appeared in The CJN. That it is as relevant today as it was then, is piercingly sad.
•••
“Jewish history is such that there is nothing left to shock our sensibilities. Jews have been vilified, abused and maligned in every imaginable manner of human depredation. The horrific, dark nadir of depredation came in the last century.
Sixty-five years ago this week, on Nov. 9-10, violence against the Jews of Europe became more than an ominous Nazi threat. It became real, very horribly real.
In his book, The Holocaust, (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), eminent historian Martin Gilbert described some of the events that unfolded on that terrible day. “Bonfires were lit in every neighbourhood where Jews lived. On them were thrown prayer books, Torah scrolls and countless volumes of philosophy, history and poetry. In thousands of streets, Jews were chased, reviled and beaten up.
“In 24 hours of street violence, 91 Jews were killed. More than 30,000 – one in 10 of the remaining Jewish population – were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Before most of them were released two to three months later, as many as 1,000 had been murdered, 244 of them in Buchenwald. A further 8,000 Jews were evicted from Berlin: children from orphanages, patients from hospitals, old people from old peoples’ homes. There were many suicides, 10 at least in Nuremburg, but it was forbidden to publish death notices in the press.
“It was not by the killing however, not by the arrests or the suicides, that the night of Nov. 9 was to be remembered. During the night, as well as breaking into tens of thousands of shops and homes, the Stormtroops set fire to 191 synagogues; or, if it was thought that fire might endanger nearby buildings, smashed the synagogues as thoroughly as possible with hammers and axes. The destruction of the synagogues led the Nazis to call that night Kristallnacht, or night of broken glass: words chosen deliberately to mock and belittle.”
It is important for us to recall that day. Seven years later, European Jewry would be almost entirely destroyed, and millions of men and women from the Allied fighting forces, underground and partisan fighters would sacrifice their lives in a cruel, harsh war to defeat Kristallnacht’s planners and executioners. Remembering, therefore, is a profound moral and existential debt we owe to the victims of the Shoah and to the vanquishers of the Nazis.
One of the most unsettling aspects of the terrorist war launched against Israel some three years ago, is the anti-Semitism that has resurfaced in Europe in its wake and that appears ubiquitous, alas, throughout the Muslim world. Indeed, in many respects, Muslim authorities have simply swallowed whole the crude anti-Semitism of Medieval Europe and are now spitting out the familiar, bitter bile at their own peoples.
Although some people today are very worried about signs and images of anti-Semitism they see recurring from the last century, there is no parallel. But we are wise to view the events of 65 years ago as a warning, lest we become complacent.”
•••
Despite our knowledge of Jewish history, it appears that a great deal yet remains within the heated hatred of Jews that can indeed shock our sensibilities anew. The events of October 7 proved this with terrible force.
But because of our knowledge of Jewish history, we know that the best way to respond to the haters who would deprive Jews of our lives and the world of Jews, is for Jews to celebrate our Judaism and for us all to “do Jewish”, for our own sakes as well as for the sake of the world.
•••
Legal scholar and human rights activist, Adam Hummel, ties the bloodletting of Kristallnacht to that of October 7 in a moving article on Catch entitled, Commemorating Pogroms.
Readers can find the article at:
•••
Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel Lives and will always.
Shabbat shalom
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education (GAJE)
November 10, 2023
Grassroots for Affordable Jewish Education 