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The 1938 pogrom provoked sharp criticism, but little action.
Mobs throw bricks. Mass arrests. Synagogues burned. Broken glass. Between 9 and 10 November 1938, the pogrom known as Kristallnacht resulted in the destruction of more than 7,500 Jewish businesses and 1,000 synagogues, as well as any sense of security felt by the Jewish people in Germany and its territories facing the Nazi domination and the rising tide. of anti-Semitism.
Kristallnacht is now considered the first act of what will eventually become the Holocaust. But did the world see the writing on the wall in 1938?
If you had read an American newspaper in the days and weeks after the pogrom, you might have thought so. As news of the pogroms went to the United States, the newspapers first filled with descriptions of the violence, then terrified reactions to furious. "Jewish stores MOBS WRECK in BERLIN", launched a headline Chicago Daily Tribune. "Nazi riot in Wild Orgy," reported the Los Angeles Times.
During Kristallnacht, a wave of pogroms that took place from 9 to 10 November 1938, antisemitic rioters terrorized Jews throughout Germany and its territories. & Nbsp; A fire devastated the synagogue of Landau, Germany, the night of the attacks.
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Crowds burst synagoguesvandalizing their interiors, smashing everything they could find. View of the former synagogue of Aachen after its destruction at Kristallnacht.
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More than 1,000 places of worship have been burned down, including the Aachen synagogue in Germany. & Nbsp;
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About 7,500 Jewish-owned shops and businesses were attacked during Kristallnacht. & Nbsp;
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View of the destroyed interior of the Hechingen synagogue in the aftermath of Kristallnacht.
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Aerial view of a synagogue in Bad Hersfeld, Germany after its destruction.
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German children play among the ruins of the Peter-Gemeinder-Strasse synagogue in Beerfelden which was destroyed during Kristallnacht.
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The Germans pass in front of the broken window of a Jewish-owned company that was destroyed during Kristallnacht.
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A man examines the damage done to Lichtenstein's leather goods shop after Kristallnacht's pogrom.
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View of a synagogue that was & nbsp; the only synagogue that was not destroyed in Vienna during Kristallnacht. A sign on the door indicates when religious services are being held. & Nbsp;
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Immediately, commentators and national leaders began to denounce violence, often calling for a common humanity. "People outside Germany who still value tolerance, understanding and humanity can no longer be silent about what has just happened, so they could face it. to any other barbarism, "wrote the president. Hartford Current. "Not to express would be to deny their deepest instincts as civilized human beings."
the New York Times D & # 39; agreement. The pogroms have produced "scenes that no one can look without shame for the degradation of his species", writes the newspaper written in an editorial. At the same time, the country's religious leaders have spoken out against intolerance. They drew attention to the anti-Semitism that motivated the attacks and called on their congregations to pray and support Jews in Germany and the United States.
But not everyone condemned the violence or blamed it for anti-Semitism. the New York Daily News had a theory for which the Germans were so eager to participate in looting: economic insecurity. "We think that … Hitler can no longer control his people," writes the paper in an editorial, "he is losing his grip on the born thief in a formerly super-orderly and over-policed Germany." The Germans were hungry and suffering from the reparation that they had been forced to pay for the First World War, the paper concluded: "Let's not fly aside."
Others took a step further on the theory of economic insecurity, insisting that the German government was at the root of the violence because it had to align its coffers using both the property of the German Jews and the fine he inflicted on them subsequently. "Under the pretext of burning revenge," writes the New York Times, "… the government is making a cool effort to increase its funds."
Father Charles Coughlin, an influential Catholic priest whose weekly radio broadcasts reached tens of millions of listeners, blamed the violence on the Jews themselves. Because the Jews did not do enough to rid Germany of communism, he told their listeners, they had forced the Germans to take revenge for their actions.
A demonstration near the German steamship SS Bremen in New York, after the US ambassador to Germany, Hugh Wilson, was recalled following Kristallnacht, 1938.
GFP / Hulton Archive / Getty Images
The citizens of the United States reacted quickly to Kristallnacht. However, their government has been much slower to respond. Ocean remote from Hitler and released from the real threat of a German invasion, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt has been repugnant to condemn the pogroms. At a press conference on November 11, he was asked if he had anything to say about the violence. "No, I do not think so," he replied. "You'd better handle this through the State Department."
It took four days – and more and more criticism – for the president to act. On November 15, he announced that he had withdrawn the US ambassador to Germany. "I, myself, could not believe that such things could happen in a twentieth-century civilization," he said. But the president said that it was not planned to support Jews who wanted to leave Germany, nor to directly condemn Hitler for the pogroms.
FDR's answer to Kristallnacht was an omen of things to come. Although it may have looked like an awakening to the world, Kristallnacht ended up awakening a public feeling that quickly faded away. In the end, writes historian Rafael Medoff, "the words of condemnation were not always accompanied by calls for action". And, according to historians, even Jewish groups have hardly mobilized public opinion for their European counterparts.
When the General Jewish Council, a group representing the largest Jewish organizations in the country, publicly addressed Kristallnacht four days after the pogroms, advised "there should be no parades, public demonstrations, or demonstrations by the Jews." And although some Jewish groups are lobbying the Roosevelt government for it to change US immigration policy in order to admit more Jews, their efforts are in vain.
The United States had responded to Kristallnacht, but did nothing to confirm their comments. In a few years, the Nazis had exterminated six million European Jews and America's chances of moving to the shocking first step of the Holocaust had long since disappeared.
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