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Are New ‘Kristallnachts’ Coming?
In these days of worldwide anti-Semitic demonstrations, I am reminded of a person with whom I became friends while living at a retirement community here in Oregon. This lady, whom I will call Esther (not her real name), was a Jewish refugee who came to the United States in the 1940s. This is her story as she told it to me. It is a demonstration of what can happen when the anti-Semites gain control of a society.
She was born in 1925 in the small German town (population about 30,000) of Suhl, in the Thüringen Mountains about 50 miles southwest of Berlin. Esther was the only child of Alfred and Elise, and her father was the general manager of a large department store.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany and began programs to eliminate the Jewish citizens, Alfred was dismissed from his job and forced into the German Jewish population of the unemployed and unemployable. Esther and her family were able to remain in their home until 1939, when the home was confiscated, and Alfred and Elise were arrested and transported with other Jews of Suhl to a holding camp near Berlin.
Before their arrest, her parents found a place for the 14-year-old Esther in the household of an influential Rabbi (his wife was a member of the German nobility, Ester thinks). Her place with the Rabbi’s family was not that of a guest, though, but of a servant. The Rabbi and his invalid wife had a large home with spacious grounds and included a building that housed their large collection of exotic chickens from all over the world. As the sole household staff, Esther’s duties included caring for the chickens, the grounds, the housekeeping, cooking, and tending to the bedridden wife – all by a young girl accustomed to the privileges of an only child in a prosperous household. She remembered this time, in part, as one of never getting enough sleep and always being very tired.
From the time of her parents’ arrest in the middle of the night, Esther never learned of their fate. For a time, the Nazi propaganda machine maintained the fiction that arrested Jews were merely being “relocated” to lands to the east (conquered Poland) where they would be settled and allowed to resume normal lives. She lived in the hope that she and her parents would reunite any day.
To his great credit, the Rabbi worked diligently for nearly three years to obtain an exit visa and an entry permit that would allow Esther to leave Germany for America. After many false starts and failed attempts, Esther was finally notified to report to a local office to receive her exit visa. She arrived outside the government office early in the morning of the appointed day and joined a large crowd waiting on the sidewalk. Finally, late in the afternoon, after waiting all day with no movement, the crowd was notified that they should return the next day. This waiting was repeated for two more days before Esther finally returned home with a visa to leave Germany. After more effort, the Rabbi was able to locate a Jewish family in New York who would sponsor Esther and pay her fare. The Rabbi did all this, spending the influence he had within the Nazi hierarchy through his wife’s family, even though without Esther, he would have no household help or assistance in caring for his wife.
The now 17-year-old Esther, speaking no language other than German, traveled third-class on a steamship during wartime to New York to meet a family who would hold her fate in their hands. During the journey, Esther was tormented by the thought that her parents could not locate her to join them in their new home in the East. She was met at the dockside in New York and taken to the apartment home of a large, three-generation family and learned that she would be expected to work as a maid for another family in the city. She was given her own bedroom in the sponsors’ crowded apartment, but the grandfather was in the habit of wandering about in the nude. Esther said she didn’t get much sleep for fear he would come into her room.
She had been given the address of a relative of her mother who lived in Iowa, so in desperation, Esther wrote to this cousin asking her to send her train fare so she could leave New York. About a month after landing in New York, she found herself traveling cross-country to visit a relative whom she had never met and with whom she had not even a common language. The cousin’s family didn’t have a lot to share, but they did provide Esther with a place to live and helped her find work. They also knew an older Jewish businessman who was looking for a wife. Arrangements were soon made for a wedding that Esther described as a ‘business agreement’ that had nothing to do with romance.
The couple made a home in Iowa and raised a son and daughter. Esther, who still had difficulty with the English language when I knew her, told me very little about her married life other than that she was a widow, her son became a physician in the Midwest and her daughter, from whom she was largely estranged, lived in Oregon.
Even though Esther, who was 90 when I met her, had a life of extreme hardship and heartbreaking disappointments. Still, she was a very positive, generous person who was always eager to help others and was possessed of a remarkable sense of humor. She did not have a “victim” mentality, but did tell me that her one regret in life was never having been able to learn the fate of her parents.
I had read of the remarkable work the American Holocaust Memorial Museum does in tracking individual victims of the Holocaust, so I volunteered to contact them to see if they could provide information on the fate of Esther’s parents. Esther agreed, and gave me her parent’s places and dates of birth, which I gave to the Museum. After a few exchanges, they provided me with photocopies of the actual German records of the transport and final disposition of Esther’s parents. By the time I received this information, Esther had moved to a nearby assisted living facility.
With the documents in hand, and taking along a mutual friend for moral support, I visited Esther and asked if she was sure she wished to know about her parents, knowing that the information would be distressing. She insisted that she did want to know, so I gave her the awful truth: When they were arrested, they were taken to a camp near Berlin, where they remained together for about one year. They were then separated, and Elise was sent to the “killing fields” of Lithuania and immediately murdered. Alfred was in the Berlin camp for an additional year and was then also sent east to the “killing fields” and murdered.
I gave Esther the documents I had obtained, and my friend and I did what we could to comfort her in her tears and distress. Esther thanked us and left the room. When I attempted to visit her later, she refused to speak to me except to say, regarding the information I had given her, “My son could have done that!” I’m still not sure if she was dismissing my efforts or if she was mourning the fact that her son, the doctor, hadn’t obtained the information for her years earlier. I never saw Esther again.
“Esther” lives in my memory as a noble exemplar of the resilience of the human spirit. Despite the traumatic events she had gone through, she remained a positive, generous-spirited, and fun-loving person … who still played a mean game of Yahtzee.
I see on today’s news that last night in Paris, there were widespread instances of people painting Stars of David on their neighbors’ storefronts and homes. Are we headed for more “Kristallnachts?”
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What a good soul you were to help Esther, even though she was distressed in the end. I’m quite sure you’re right–she was hurt that her own son didn’t try to get the information about his grandparents.
I worry about what lies ahead, too, Jim. Time will tell. . .
Jim, if you would have asked me three weeks ago, I would have said no way.
Now, I don’t know; I just don’t know.
I think the danger (in the West) will be from nations denying protection out of depraved indifference, willful denial, or incompetence, rather than being state-supported and instigated. The effect will essentially be the same; the European corporate oligarchies are invested in massive and sustained Muslim immigration no matter the assimilation concerns of citizens, and the Leftist parties largely depend on them (not to mention their sympathizers) for their political fortunes, so they are not going acknowledge or address the problem sufficiently to prevent it.
I’m really concerned that you are right; we’re in for difficult times ahead.
Yes. And Jews are not the only targets.
Probably, but not against Jews.
I think we are seeing it play out. What it lacks is the organization of the Nazis. For them Kristalnacht was a way to solidify their cultural hold on Germany by stoking antisemitism to unify the people. What we see now is worse in many ways because it is, mostly, organic hatred of Jews as opposed to coordinated hatred.
To the contrary I think it’s very organized, just without an official sponsor if you will. Money has been flowing to antisemitic (and other anarchic) organizations for decades and people are in the right places with resources to put destructive barbarians in the streets. Worse – it’s not localized in one country as it was in Germany. It’s metastasized and is in every (previously) first world country. Every demonstration seems choreographed and coordinated to maximize the evil. Transportation, signs and tshirts don’t come cheap. Think the BLM riots and the strategically delivered pallets of brick and other destructive materials.
And you’re just delusional enough to believe that, it seems.
I see on today’s news that last night in Paris, there were widespread instances of people painting Stars of David on their neighbors’ storefronts and homes. Are we headed for more “Kristallnachts?”
This happened in Berlin, too. Thankfully, the German government has already taken measures and is taking measures to arrest those promoting and performing anti-Jewish violence here, and to deport any asylum-seekers who do not affirm Israel’s right to exist. I wrote earlier this month that the German government has banned Samidoun and Hamas. More bans are coming, according to Interior Minister Faeser. Vice-Chancellor Habeck responded to requests from 300 Jewish businessmen in Germany to cancel his appearance at a meeting of the Web Summit in Portugal in response to anti-Israel remarks made by the organisation’s CEO, Paddy Cosgrave. The Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland reports that there are increased security protections around all synagogues and other Jewish institutions nation-wide.
It’s unreal and unnerving. As my wife put it this morning, “I can’t believe we are praying for protection of synagogues in Germany on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, but we are.” Which is true, we have been every day since 10/7.
You’re a hoot! Which other group had millions of people in the streets calling for their extermination? That is what “from the river to the sea” means.
Marx … and the Left is increasingly Marxist… authored one of the classic antisemitism documents of all time – On the Jewish Question. So it’s no surprise that the Left is on this road.
You’re a hoot! Which other group had millions of people in the streets calling for their extermination? That is what “from the river to the sea” means.
Marx … and the Left is increasingly Marxist… authored one of the classic antisemitic documents of all time – On the Jewish Question. So it’s no surprise that the Left is on this road.
And with Antifa and other black-bloc groups, the Left has adopted the street tactics of the old Brownshirts. “No streets but OUR streets!!!”
Couple this with their embrace of radical Islam in the guise of the Free Palestine crowd and it’s much closer than we think.
I assume that Zafar is talking about an anti-Muslim Kristallnacht/Holocaust.
I don’t think it’s likely, but it isn’t impossible. That is, when (I wish I could say “if”) there are terrorist events in Europe and the U.S. that resemble, in lethality and viciousness, the 10/7 attacks, the remaining intersectional illusions on the left could fall away.
If people were as reasonable, rational and inclined to turn-the-other-cheek in the aftermath of a 10/7-style assault on Chevy Chase or Brookline as, say, Israel is expected to be, the result might well be mass deportations not just of Hamas supporters/Islamists but of all recent Muslim immigrants, or even (depending) all Muslims. Stranger things have happened. Of course, unlike the Jews of Europe in the 40s, such immigrants would, in theory have someplace to go back to (Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan etc.) so deportation would not inevitably be a euphemism for massacre. Still, it isn’t difficult to predict the creation of camps in which soon-to-be expellees are…um…concentrated…and since the immigrants are likely to resist…and MENA countries might not wish to take their brother Muslims back into the bosom of the Umma (note the reluctance of Jordan and Egypt to take in the Palestinians) things could and probably would become …ahem…kinetic. And horrible.
At least in the short term, however, it seems more likely that there will be more attacks on synagogues, Jewish schools and institutions and individual Jews, or persons perceived to be Jews, while our craven leaders fret loudly and publicly about the looming threat of Islamophobia.
Not just in theory: Many of these immigrants maintain strong connections in the countries they came from, traveling back and forth and even maintaining homes there.
“Most of my ancestors had moved to America with the intention of becoming Americans—or, at the very least, of having children and grandchildren who’d be Americans. Many Muslim immigrants arrive in Europe with very different ambitions. All want a share in Western prosperity; fewer care to adapt to Western ways. Their connections to their homelands remain very strong. Unlike my Polish grandmother, who died seventy-five years after emigrating to America without ever having left New York State, many European Muslims travel regularly back to their homelands: at this writing there are as many direct flights every week between Oslo and Pakistan as there are between Oslo and the United States.”
–Bruce Bawer, While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, Chapter 1 Before 9/11: Europe in Denial (published 2006)
Kristallnachts are more likely to be perpetrated by Muslims against Jews (and Christians and gays):
Having myself lived a very comfortable life in the United States, it has always been hard for me to imagine being driven to take the risks of a perilous journeys to a new place and culture, as you have related Esther did. I had in my younger days mostly heard such stories from people who left communism, which cemented my negative views of communism. So thank you for also bringing in a Jewish experience.
I do not know enough to comment on the current experience of European Jews.
I think in the United States a true “Kristallnacht” is very unlikely. But, I am concerned that actual Jew-hatred has appeared openly in the United States. I had been confident that in the United States actual Jew-hatred had been relegated to dark recesses of society. So to hear and see it expressed openly in elite institutions and among elected politicians surprised me. I still think the number of people who would carry out a “Kristallnacht” in the United States is so small that the risk is minimal, the risk is not as close to zero as I thought it was just a few months ago.
I think Muslims and Arab-Americans in the United States could help themselves and reduce any theoretical anti-Muslim or anti-Arab violence by themselves condemning the Jew-hatred being expressed by some Muslims and Arab-Americans. That few have is a bit concerning.
That is true. Last time I checked, there were 600 U.S. citizens in Gaza. Why were they there if conditions were so terrible? If they were “imprisoned,” unable to move in and out of an “occupied” country?
The reason I think it could happen is that it wouldn’t necessarily be formally instigated by the government, but by pro-Palestinian mobs. Remember the protests a couple of summers ago? Only this time it would be directed at Jewish businesses. And if a non-Jewish owned business is next door, well, too bad. There are Jewish communities which mainly have Jewish businesses, too, and they would be prime targets. Think Fairfax in Los Angeles.
A lot of them probably have family there, people who left for the U.S. but wanted to visit. Bad timing.
I think a Kristallnacht is no more likely than the 2020 Summer of Love.
See my comment #19. Great minds, and all that . . .
Interesting choice of the pseudonym Esther for your friend.
A few months ago I urged an online Bible Study in which I participate to study the books of Ruth and Esther in the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible). I find the stories of those books fascinating. We are now in Esther. I expected our discussion to breeze through the book in a very few weeks, but the parallels to the current circumstances has led to some extensive discussions.
Once the order written at the direction of Haman (the bad guy in the story) to exterminate the Jews, what were the Jews to do? Queen Esther (of undisclosed Jewish heritage) took risks to get the order countermanded. After Haman is deposed and executed, Mordecai the Jew is elevated and causes to be issued a mirror order to exterminate the attackers.
The Biblical story of Esther has provided more fodder for discussion than I expected for our Christian Bible Study group. Was the mirror order was really the most effective response? Could there have been a less violent response? The Biblical story takes place in a different time and different culture than we live in, especially those of us in the United States. Or is it really that different? Is it different for people in the Middle East today than it was 3 or 4 thousand years ago? And is it different for people today in the Middle East than it is for us in the United States? Does Jesus and His teachings and example change anything for those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ?
If there were a Kristallnacht in the United States, what would be an appropriate response? By the Jews? By the Christians?
Yes, but my point was that if conditions were as terrible as the Hamas supporters have made them out to be, they wouldn’t be there. Plus, clearly the Muslims absolutely keep close ties with other Muslims. There’s a deep supremacist chauvinism in Muslim communities. Most of them will never feel a special allegiance to countries to which they have moved because they were driven out of their home Arab countries by poverty or war.
And certainly, there must be a lot of freedom of movement in the Gaza strip if Gazans and their relatives from other countries were there and there was so much traveling back and forth.
The lies the media tells about Gaza are . . . normal for the press, unfortunately.
Who is the “they” you’re referring to? Many Gazans have been there a long time; some of them were there before the 1948 war and stayed through the war.
I saw this after I wrote. :)
And yes, there does seem to be an unfortunate precedent with smashing windows in cities across the US. And they are highly organized and funded. And yes, they seem to go unpunished by the government (which is silent endorsement).
Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” also came out in 2006. And The Best Interview Ever On Any Subject with Steyn was on Northern Alliance Radio Network in December 2006.
Most people have been ignoring these problems for a long time, and continue to do so.
Before the larger-scale Israeli retribution began, I saw some YouTube videos pop up of American (raised, at least) people in Gaza complaining about lack of water, they didn’t seem to be captives.
I worry whether enough people would get involved in defending against it.
Lots of NGO’s in Gaza, I’m sure.