Kristallnacht : Simon Wiesentahl Center

Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Kristallnacht
Introduction
What is Kristallnacht ?
Heydrich Orders Policy of Violence
Apathy in the Western World
The Legacy of Kristallnacht
Fact Sheet
Personalities
Leo Baeck (1873-1956), Josef Goebbels (1897-1945), Hermann Goering (1893-1946), Herschell Grynszpan (1821-19?), Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), Ernst Vom Rath (19?-1938)

Documents
- Heydrich’s Instructions, November 1938 Riots of Kristallnacht
Telegrams
- Eyewitness Accounts and Reminiscences
A Letter by a Firefighter
A Personal Memoir by Michael Bruce
Kristallnacht at the Dinslaken Orphanage Reminiscences By Yitzhak S. Herz
Speech Delivered in Cologne Synagogue
Epilogue

Introduction

What is the Kristallnacht ?
The term “Kristallnacht” (in English : ‘Night of Broken Glass’) refers to the organized anti-Jewish riots in Germany and Austria, November 9 and 10, 1938. These riots marked a major transition in Nazi policy, and were, in-many ways, a harbinger of the “Final Solution.” Nazi anti-semitic policy began with the systematic legal, economic, and social disenfranchisement of the Jews. This was accomplished in various stages (e.g. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which, among other things, stripped German Jews of their citizenship.) One of these steps involved the deportation of Polish Jews who were residing in Germany (est. 56500). On the night of October 27, 1938, 18,000 Polish Jews were deported, but were initially refused entry into Poland by the Polish authorities. Caught in between, the Jews were forced to camp out in makeshift shelters. Upon hearing that his family was so trapped, 17 year-old Herschel Grynszpan, a student in Paris, shot the third secretary of the German Embassy, Ernst vom Rath, whom he mistook for the ambassador. This assassination served as a welcome pretext for the German initiation of Kristallnacht.

Herschel Feibel Grynszpan, who decided to fight back against Nazi oppression, was born on March 28, 1921, in Hannover, Germany. He later traveled to Frankfurt am Main to study Hebrew in a Yeshivah to prepare to immigrate to Palestine. After a year he returned to his family home and looked for work as an apprentice plumber or mechanic but in vain, because he was a Jew. At the advice of a friend Herschel turned his attentions toward France and his father made arrangements for the boy to live with his uncle and aunt, Abraham and Chawa Grynszpan, in Paris while the rest of the family remained in Germany.
In the autumn of 1938 Herschel’s family in Hannover - father, mother, sister and brother - were among ten thousand Jews ruthlessly removed from their homes and deported to Poland in boxcars, but his sister Berta managed to send a postcard to Herschel in Paris, describing the torments his family went through. The youth, enraged by what he read, bought a pistol and went to the German Embassy in Paris on 7 November 1938, to take revenge and kill the ambassador, Count von Welczek. But the Third Secretary, Ernst vom Rath, was sent out to see what the young man wanted and was shot.
Herschel Grynszpan was arrested and in a poignant statement taken immediately after the arrest the young Jew told the police : ‘Being a Jew is not a crime. I am not a dog. I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on this earth. Wherever I have been I have been chased like an animal.’ He declared that he had to avenge the Jews, to draw the attention of the world to what was happening in Germany.
Herschel was never brought to a French trial but was held in custody for twenty months, longer than any juvenile in French legal history, in spite of continuous efforts to get him freed.
Herschel Grynszpan was held in prison until the French Government evacuated Paris and the Germans marched on the city in June of 1940. A month later he was in Nazi hands, illegally extradited to Germany on 18 July 1940 now being interrogated by the Gestapo in anticipation of a major show trial. But it never came off - the trial was canceled.
Herschel Grynszpan was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where the Nazis kept special prisoners such as Pastor Martin Niemoeller, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis. Later Herschel simply disappeared …

Heydrich Orders Policy of Violence

Reinhard Heydrich (the head of the Reich Main Security Office which oversaw Gestapo, police and SD (Sicherheitsdienst) operations) sent a secret telegram at 0120-H, November 10, 1938 to “all headquarters and stations of the State Police; all districts and sub-districts of the SD”. He gave instructions for the immediate coordination of police and political activities in inciting the riots throughout Germany and Austria.“…
The demonstrations are not to be prevented by the police, ”he ordered, rather, the police are“ … only to supervise the observance of the guidelines.”
The result of this policy was the first violent pogrom (riot) on Western European soil in hundreds of years. 36 Jews were killed (some authorities have this figure as high as 91); 30,000 more were deported to concentration camps; 267 synagogues were burned and over 7,000 Jewish shops, businesses and homes were vandalized and ransacked.
Immediately after the Kristallnacht, a fine of one billion marks was levied, not upon the criminals, but upon the victims, the Jewish community of Germany. Along with the fine came a decision, taken in a conference of Nazi leaders on November 12, 1938, to “Aryanize the German economy, to get the Jew out …” Nazi policy had now moved into the overt destruction of all Jewish life in the Third Reich.

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was second in importance to Heinrich Himmler in the Nazi SS organization. Nicknamed “The Blond Beast” by the Nazis, and “Hangman Heydrich” by others, Heydrich had insatiable greed for power and was a cold, calculating manipulator without human compassion who was the leading planner of Hitler’s Final Solution in which the Nazis attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe
In September of 1941, the ever-ambitious Heydrich had achieved favored status with Hitler and was thus appointed Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia in former Czechoslovakia and set up headquarters in Prague. Soon after his arrival, he established a Jewish ghetto at Theresienstadt. He also established a successful policy of offering incentives to Czech workers, rewarding them with food and privileges if they filled Nazi production quotas and displayed loyalty to the Reich. At the same time, Heydrich’s Gestapo and SD agents conducted a brutal crackdown of the Czech resistance movement.
SS Obergruppenführer Heydrich was by now a supremely arrogant young man who liked to travel between his country home and headquarters in Prague in an open top green Mercedes car without an armed escort as a show of confidence in his intimidation of the resistance and successful pacification of the population.
On May 27, 1942, as his car slowed to round a sharp turn in the roadway it came under attack from Free Czech agents who had been trained in England and brought to Czechoslovakia to assassinate him. They shot at Heydrich then threw a bomb which exploded, wounding him. He managed to get out of the car, draw his pistol and shoot back at the assassins before collapsing in the street.
Himmler rushed his own private doctors to Prague to help Heydrich, who held on for several days, but died on June 4 from blood poisoning brought on by fragments of auto upholstery, steel, and his own uniform that had lodged in his spleen. In Berlin, the Nazis staged a highly elaborate funeral with Hitler calling Heydrich “the man with the iron heart.”
Meanwhile the Gestapo and SS hunted down and murdered the Czech agents, resistance members, and anyone suspected of being involved in Heydrich’s death, totaling over 1000 persons. In addition, 3000 Jews were deported from the ghetto at Theresienstadt for extermination. In Berlin 500 Jews were arrested, with 152 executed as a reprisal on the day of Heydrich’s death.

Apathy in the Western World

The violence of the Kristallnacht aroused the world to condemn the Nazi actions. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt recalled the American ambassador from Berlin stating that he, “could scarcely believe that
such things could occur in a twentieth century civilization.” However, even the condemnations failed to change western immigration policies. With a few exceptions (e.g. En gland, which increased its absorption of refugees after the Kristallnacht), the doors to safety remained barred. As one leader of German Jewry stated two months after the Kristallnacht (January 25, 1939), “From America, nothing tangible (in immigration possibilities) has arrived.” With violent anti-semitism now institutionalized, and with few places to flee, the Jews of Germany, Austria, and later, occupied Europe, were trapped and doomed.
The Kristallnacht serves as the symbol of that destruction. The synagogues and Torah scrolls that were burned and desecrated, signified, as Rabbi Leo Baeck had earlier realized, that “the thousand year history of the Jews in Germanv had come to an end.” It is that noble history and glorious legacy of German Jewry that we remember on the Kristallnacht, a legacy of religious scholarship, intellectual creativity and scientific achievement. Nobel Prize winners and rabbinic scholars, businessmen and soldiers, government ministers and social activists all had their worlds shattered, along with the thousands of windows that gave the Kristallnacht its name.

The Legacy of Kristallnacht

There are important lessons to be drawn from the Kristallnacht, for it served as a bridge experience for both Jews and Nazis. For the Jews, there was the terrifying realization that political antisemitism can lead to violence, even in Western Civilization. It also demonstrated that apathy can still pervade the world when the lives of Jews or other minorities are threatened.
For the Nazis, the Kristallnacht taught that while the world might condemn their pogroms, it would not
actively oppose them. World opinion, however, taught the Nazis the value of secrecy in the perpetration of future actions against Jews. Added to the complaints of Germans offended by the random violence of the Kristallnacht, the stage was set for the “Final Solution” : the organized, bureaucratically efficient genocide of 6.000.000 men, women, and children.

In retrospect, the Kristallnacht was more than the shattering of windows and illusions. It portended the physical destruction of European Jewry. As such, this commemoration must be observed both as a memorial and as a warning.

Fact Sheet
Date : November 9 - 10, 1938

Sites : Jewish communities throughout Germany and Austria
Mobs of Germans and Austrians, acting under
Perpetrators :
instructions of the Nazi hierarchy
Arrested and sent to concentration camps
Damage : (Buchenwald, Dachau, Sachsenhausen) : 30000 Jews, (8000 from Austria)
36 Jews (other sources put this figure at 91) 36 more Murdered :
severely injured

Vandalized and / 7500 Jewish homes and businesses 267 synagogues or set ablaze : (76 completely destroyed)

Assassination of German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, by Polish-Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, in an Pretext :
attempt to protest the forced deportation of his family, among the others, to the Polish-German border.

Nazi policy decision based on :

1. Internal Nazi Party power struggles as segments of the party (i.e.The S.A., the propaganda section) wanted a greater role in the anti- Jewish activities
2. Urge to expedite the exclusion of Jews from German life Causes :
3. Economic factors such as the necessity to raise large amounts of money to pay for the rearmament of the German military
4. 15th anniversary of Hitler’s “Beer-Hall Putsch” of 1923 created an atmosphere that encouraged street violence

1. The Jewish community is immediately fined 1,000,000,000 Reichsmarks; Nazi government confiscates all insurance claims Aftermath :
2. Nazis expedite plan for “elimination of the Jew from (the) economic life” of Germany established as official policy, November 12, 1938

Personalities

LEO BAECK (1873-1956)

Rabbi, leader of organized German Jewry during Nazi era.Although realizing that when the Nazis took power,“the thousand year history of German Jewry had come to an end,” he refused all offers to escape, insisting that he could flee,“only when he was the last Jew alive in Germany.” He was arrested several times and finally sent to Theresienstadt, where he clandestinely taught philosophy and theology. He survived the Holocaust and died in London in 1956.

Leo Baeck was born in Lissa (Leszno) (then in the German Province of Posen, now in Poland), the son of Rabbi Samuel Baeck, and began his education near Breslau at the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary in 1894. He also studied philosophy in Berlin with Wilhelm Dilthey, served as a rabbi in Oppeln, Düsseldorf, and Berlin, and taught at the Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies).
In 1905 Baeck published The Essence of Judaism, in response to Adolf von Harnack’s The Essence of Christianity. This book, which interpreted and valorized Judaism through a prism of Neo-Kantianism tempered with religious existentialism, made him a famous proponent for the Jewish people and their faith. During World War I, Baeck was an army chaplain in the German Imperial Army.
In 1933, after the Nazis seized power, Baeck worked to defend the Jewish community as president of the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden, an umbrella organization that United German Jewry from 1933-1938. After the Reichsvertretung was disbanded during the November Pogrom, the Nazis reassembled the council’s members under the government controlled Reichsvereinigung. Leo Baeck headed this organization as its president until his deportation in January 1943.
On 27 January 1943, he was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. And after the camp was liberated by the Russians in May 1945, he became the Jewish figure head as the Elder of the Jews.
Leo Baeck did not play a decisive role in the Jewish administration of the ghetto until its last days. Yet he never ceased to be a symbol to and a leader of the Jews imprisoned in Theresienstadt. In Berlin, he had been a leader of the German Jews; in Theresienstadt, he became a spiritual leader and symbol, leader to thousands of Jews from all parts of Nazi-occupied Europe.
Up until his deportation, numerous American institutions offered to help him escape the war and immigrate to America. Leo Baeck refused to abandon his community in the camps and declined the offers.

After the war, Baeck relocated to London, taught at Hebrew Union College in America, and eventually became Chairman of the World Union for Progressive Judaism. It was during this time he published his second great work, This People Israel, which he partially penned during his imprisonment by the Nazis.
In 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute for the study of the history and culture of German-speaking Jewry was established, and Baeck was the first international president of this institute. The asteroid 100047 Leobaeck is named in his honour, as is Leo Baeck College, the Reform / Progressive rabbinical college in London.

He died on November 2, 1956, in London, England and has seven living descendants, a granddaughter, a great-grandson, and five great-great-grandchildren (four great-great-grandsons and one great-great-granddaughter.) His daughter and great-grandson are deceased.

JOSEF GOEBBELS (1897-1945)

Nazi Minister of Propaganda, who organized the Kristallnacht pogrom, asserting his power and authority in internal Nazi policies.

Joseph Goebbels was born in Rheydt, Germany, on 29th October, 1897. A good student he won a Catholic scholarship and eventually achieved a PhD from Heilderberg University. Goebbels was under five feet tall with a bad limp caused by a bone operation as a child and in 1914 was rejected by the German Army. It was later claimed that he spent the next two days crying hysterically in his room. He spent the next ten years writing novels, plays and poems. When he failed to find a publisher for his work he developed the theory that this was because the publishing companies were owned by Jews. He was also rejected as a reporter by the newspaper Berliner Tageblatt.
Goebbels joined the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) in 1926. Goebbels described one of their first meetings with Adolf Hitler in his diary : “Shakes my hand. Like an old friend. And those big blue eyes. Like stars. He is glad to see me. I am in heaven. That man has everything to be king.”
Hitler admired Goebbels’ abilities as a writer and speaker. They shared an interest in propaganda and together they planned how the NSDAP would win the support of the German people. He edited Der Angriff (The Attack) and used the daily newspaper to promote the idea of German nationalism.
In 1928 Goebbels, Hermann Goering and ten other members of the Nazi Party were elected to the Reichstag. Soon afterwards Goebbels became the party’s Propaganda Leader.
When Adolf Hitler became chancellor in January, 1933, he appointed Goebbels as Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels was under five feet tall with a bad limp caused by a bone operation as a child. Congenital birth defects was a disqualification for high office and so he told people his limp was the result of a wound suffered while fighting in the First World War.
During the Second World War Goebbels played an important role in building up hatred for the allies. He had little confidence in the abilities of other ministers in the government and made attempts to have Joachim von Ribbentrop dismissed from office.
When the Red Army made advances into Nazi Germany, Hitler invited Goebbels and his family to move into his Fuehrerbunker. On 1st May, 1945, Joseph Goebbels, his wife and six children, committed suicide.

HERMANN GOERING (1893-1946)

Commander-in-Chief, Luftwaffe, President of Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia and second in authority to Hitler. On November 12, 1938, he convened a conference to deal with the results of the Kristallnacht, at which time heavy sanctions were imposed on the Jewish community.

Göring was born at the sanatorium Marienbad in Rosenheim, Bavaria. His father Heinrich Ernst Göring (31 10 1839 – 07 12 1913) had been the first Governor-General of the German protectorate of South West Africa as well as being a former cavalry officer and member of the German consular service. Göring had among his ancestors Eberle-Eberlin, a Swiss-German family of high bourgeoisie.
Göring was a relative of such Eberle-Eberlin descendants as the German aviation pioneer Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin; German romantic nationalist Hermann Grimm (1828–1901), an author of the concept of the German hero as a mover of history, whom the Nazis claimed as one of their ideological forerunners; the industrialist family Merck, the owners of the pharmaceutical giant Merck; one of the world’s major Catholic writers and poets of the 20th century German Baroness Gertrud von LeFort, whose works were largely inspired by her revulsion against Nazism; and Swiss diplomat, historian and President of International Red Cross, Carl J. Burckhardt.
In an historical coincidence, Göring was related via the Eberle-Eberlin line to Jacob Burckhardt (1818–1897), a great Swiss scholar of art and culture who was a major political and social thinker as well an opponent of nationalism and militarism, who rejected German claims of cultural and intellectual superiority and predicted a cataclysmic 20th century in which violent demagogues, whom he called “terrible simplifiers,” would play central roles.
Göring’s mother Franziska “Fanny” Tiefenbrunn (1859-15 July 1923) came from a Bavarian peasant family. The marriage of a gentleman to a woman from lower class (1885) occurred only because Heinrich Ernst Göring was a widower. Hermann Göring was one of five children; his brothers were Albert Göring and Karl Ernst Göring, and his sisters were Olga Therese Sophia Goring and Paula Elisabeth Rosa Göring, the last of whom were from his father’s first marriage. While anti-Semitism became rampant in Germany of that time, his parents were not anti-Semitic.

Göring was sent to boarding school at Ansbach, Franconia and then attended the cadet institutes at Karlsruhe and the military college at Berlin Lichterfelde. Göring was commissioned in the Prussian army on 22 June 1912 in the Prinz Wilhelm Regiment (112th Infantry), headquartered at Mulhouse as part of the 29th Division of the Imperial German Army.
During the first year of World War I, Göring served with an infantry regiment in the Vosges region. He was hospitalised with Rheumatism resulting from the damp of trench warfare. While he was recovering, his friend Bruno Loerzer convinced him to transfer to the Luftstreitkräfte. Göring’s application to transfer was immediately turned down. But later that year Göring flew as Loerzer’s observer in Feldflieger Ableilung (FFA) 25 - Göring had arranged his own transfer. He was detected and sentenced to three weeks’ confinement to barracks. The sentence was never carried out : by the time it was imposed Göring’s association with Loerzer had been regularised. They were assigned as a team to the 25th Field Air Detachment of the Crown Prince’s Fifth Army - “though it seems that they had to steal a plane in order to qualify.” They flew reconnaissance and bombing missions for which the Crown Prince invested both Göring and Loerzer with the Iron Cross, first class.
On completing his pilot’s training course he was posted back to Feldflieger Ableilung (FFA) 2 in October 1915. Göring had already claimed two air victories as an Observer (one unconfirmed). He gained another flying a Fokker EIII single-seater scout in March 1916.
In October 1916 he was posted to Jagdstaffel 5, but was wounded in action in November.
In February 1917 he joined Jagdstaffel 26. He now scored steadily until in May 1917 he got his first command, Jasta 27. Serving with Jastas 5, 26 and 27, he claimed 21 air victories and besides the Iron Cross, he was awarded the Zaehring Lion with swords, the Karl Friedrich Order and the House Order of Hohenzollern with swords, third class. Finally in May 1918 (despite not having the required 25 air victories) the coveted Pour le Mérite.
On 7 July 1918, after the death of Wilhelm Reinhard, the successor of The Red Baron, he was made commander of Jagdgeschwader Freiherr von Richthofen, Jagdgeschwader 1.

In June 1917, after a lengthy dogfight, Göring shot down an Australian pilot named Frank Slee. The battle is recounted in The Rise and Fall of Hermann Goering. Göring landed and met the Australian, and presented Slee with his Iron Cross.
Years after, Slee gave Göring’s Iron Cross to a friend, who later died on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Also during the war Göring had through his generous treatment made a friend of his prisoner of war Captain Frank Beaumont, a Royal Flying Corps pilot. “It was part of Goering’s creed to admire a good enemy, and he did his best to keep Captain Beaumont from being taken over by the Army.”
Göring finished the war with twenty-two confirmed kills.

Because of his arrogance, Göring’s appointment as commander of Jagdgeschwader 1 had not been well received. Though after demobilisation Göring and his officers spent most of their time during the first weeks of November 1918 in the Stiftskeller, the best restaurant and drinking place in Aschaffenburg, he was the only veteran of Jagdgeschwader 1 never invited to post-war reunions.
Göring was genuinely surprised (at least by his own account) at Germany’s defeat in the First World War. He felt personally violated by the surrender, the Kaiser’s abdication, the humiliating terms, and the supposed treachery of the post-war German politicians who had “goaded the people who stabbed our glorious Army in the back, thinking of nothing but of attaining power and of enriching themselves at the expense of the people.”
Ordered to surrender the planes of his squadron to the Allies in December 1918, Göring and his fellow pilots intentionally wrecked the planes on landing. This endeavour paralleled the scuttling of surrendered ships. Typical for the political climate of the day, he was not arrested or even officially reprimanded for his action.
In 1922, Göring joined the Nazi Party and took over the SA leadership as the Oberste SA-Führer. After stepping down as SA Commander, he was appointed an SA-Gruppenführer (Lieutenant General) and held this rank on the SA rolls until 1945.
Hitler later recalled his early association with Göring thus : “I liked him. I made him the head of my SA. He is the only one of its heads that ran the SA properly. I gave him a disheveled rabble. In a very short time he had organised a division of 11,000 men.”

At this time Carin, who liked Hitler, often played hostess to meetings of leading Nazis including her husband, Hitler, Hess, Rosenberg and Röhm.
Göring was with Hitler in the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 9 November 1923. He marched beside Hitler at the head of the SA. When the Bavarian police broke up the march with gunfire, Göring was seriously wounded in the groin.
Göring returned to Germany in autumn 1927, after the newly elected President von Hindenburg declared amnesty for participants in the 1923 Putsch. Göring resumed his political work for Hitler. He became the ’salon Nazi’, the Party’s representative in upper class circles. Göring was elected to the Reichstag in 1928. In 1932, he was elected President of the Reichstag, which he remained until 1945.
His wife Carin died on 17 October 1931, aged forty-two, of tuberculosis.

Hitler became Chancellor on 30 January 1933, by a deal with the conservative intriguer Franz von Papen. Only two other Nazis were included in the cabinet. One was Göring, who was named minister without portfolio. It was understood, however, that he would be named minister of aviation once Germany built up an air force. At Hitler’s insistence, Göring also was appointed interior minister of Prussia under Papen, who doubled as Vice Chancellor of the Reich and minister-president of Prussia.
Although his appointment as Prussian interior minister was little noticed at the time, it made Göring commander of the largest police force in Germany. He moved quickly to Nazify the police and use them against the Social Democrats and Communists. On 22 February, Göring ordered the police to recruit “auxiliaries” from the Nazi party militia, and to cease all opposition to the street violence of the SA. New elections were scheduled for 5 March, and Göring’s police minions harassed and suppressed political opponents and rivals of the Nazis. He also detached the political and intelligence departments from the Prussian police and reorganized them as the Gestapo, a secret police force.
On 28 February 1933, the Reichstag building was gutted by fire. The Reichstag fire was arson, and the Nazis blamed the Communists. Göring himself met Hitler at the fire scene, and denounced it as “a Communist outrage,” the first act in a planned uprising. Hitler agreed. The next day, the Reichstag Fire Decree suspended civil liberties.
Göring ordered the complete suppression of the Communist party. Most German states banned party meetings and publications, but in Prussia, Göring’s police summarily arrested 25,000 Communists and other leftists, including the entire Party leadership, save those that escaped abroad. Hundreds of other prominent anti-Nazis were also rounded up. Göring told the Prussian police that “…all other restraints on police action imposed by Reich and state law are abolished…”
On 5 March, the Nazi-DNVP coalition won a narrow majority in the election; on 23 March, the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, which effectively gave Hitler dictatorial powers. As part of the anti-Communist campaign, in the first executions in the Third Reich, Göring declined to commute the August 1933 death sentences passed against Bruno Tesch and three other Communists for their alleged role in the deaths of two SA members and sixteen others in the Altona Bloody Sunday (Altonaer Blutsonntag) riot, an SA march on 17 July 1932.

Göring was the highest figure in the Nazi hierarchy to issue written orders for the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”, when he issued a memo to Heydrich to organise the practical details. This resulted in the Wannsee Conference. Göring wrote, “submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question.” It is almost certain however that Hitler issued an oral order to Göring in late 1941 to this effect.
In 1945, Göring fled the Berlin area with train loads of treasures for the Nazi alpine resort in Berchtesgaden. He was presented with Hitler’s testament, which he read for the first time. On 23 April, as Soviet troops closed in around Berlin, Göring sent a radiogram to Hitler, suggesting that the testament should now come into force. He added that if he did not hear back from Hitler by 10 PM, he would assume Hitler was incapacitated, and would assume leadership of the Reich.
Hitler was enraged by this proposal, which Bormann portrayed as an attempted coup d’état.
On 25 April, Hitler ordered the SS to arrest Göring.
On 26 April, Hitler dismissed Göring as commander of the Luftwaffe. In his last will and testament, Hitler dismissed Göring from all his offices and expelled him from the Nazi Party.
On 28 April, Hitler ordered the SS to execute Göring, his wife, and their daughter (Hitler’s own goddaughter). But this order was ignored.
Instead, the Görings and their SS captors moved together, to the same Schloß Mauterndorf where Göring had spent much of his childhood and which he had inherited (along with Burg Veldenstein) from his godfather’s widow in 1937. (Göring had arranged for preferential treatment for the woman, and protected her from confiscation and arrest as the widow of a wealthy Jew.)

Göring surrendered on 9 May 1945 in Bavaria. He was the third-highest-ranking Nazi official tried at Nuremberg, behind Reich President (former Admiral) Karl Dönitz and former Deputy Führer Hess. Göring’s last days were spent with Captain Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking American intelligence officer and psychologist (and a Jew), who had access to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail.
Gilbert classified Göring as having an IQ of 138, the same as Dönitz. Gilbert kept a journal which he later published as Nuremberg Diary. Here he describes Göring on the evening of 18 April 1946, as the trials were halted for a three-day Easter recess.

“Sweating in his cell in the evening, Göring was defensive and deflated and not very happy over the turn the trial was taking. He said that he had no control over the actions or the defence of the others, and that he had never been anti-Semitic himself, had not believed these atrocities, and that several Jews had offered to testify on his behalf.”

Despite claims that he was not anti-Semitic, while in the prison yard at Nuremberg, after hearing a remark about Jewish survivors in Hungary, Albert Speer reported overhearing Göring say, “So, there are still some there ? I thought we had knocked off all of them. Somebody slipped up again.”

Despite his claims of non-involvement, he was confronted with orders he had signed for the murder of Jews and prisoners of war. Göring dressed for display, along with the other war criminals, after committing suicide by cyanide.

ERNST VOM RATH (19? -1938)
Diplomat (Third Secretary) in the German legation in Paris. Neither particularly pro-Nazi nor important, his assassination provided the excuse for Kristallnacht.

Documents

Heydrich’s Instructions, November 1938 Riots of the Kristallnacht
Telegram 1
Telegram 2
Heydrich’s Instructions, November 1938 Riots of the Kristallnacht

Secret

Copy of Most Urgent telegram from Munich of November 10, 1938, 1:20 A.M. To :

• All Headquarters and Stations of the State Police
• All Districts and Sub-districts of the SA
• Urgent ! For immediate attention of Chief or his deputy !

Re : Measures against Jews tonight

Following the attempt on the life of Secretary of the Legation vom Rath in Paris, demonstrations against the Jews are to be expected in all parts of the Reich in the course of the coming night, November 9/10, 1938. The instructions below are to be applied in dealing with these events :

1.The Chiefs of the State Police,or their deputies,must immediately upon receipt of this telegram contact, by telephone, the political leaders in their areas –Gauleiter or Kreisleiter –who have jurisdiction in their districts and arrange a joint meeting with the inspector or commander of the Order Police to discuss the arrangements for the demonstrations. At these discussions the political leaders will be informed that the German Police has received instructions, detailed below, from the Reichsfuehrer SS and the Chief of the German Police, with which the political leadership is requested to coordinate its own measures :

a) Only such measures are to be taken as do not endanger German lives or property (i.e. synagogues are to be burned down only where there is no danger of fire to neighboring buildings).
b) Places of business and apartments belonging to Jews may be destroyed but not looted. The police are instructed to supervise the observance of this order and to arrest looters.
c) In commercial streets particular care is to be taken that non-Jewish businesses are completely protected against damage.
d) Foreign citizens - even if they are Jews - are not to be molested.

2. On the assumption that the guidelines detailed under para. 1 are observed, the demonstrations are not to be prevented by the Police, who are only to supervise the observance of the guidelines.

3. On receipt of this telegram Police will seize all archives to be found in all synagogues and offices of the Jewish communities so as to prevent their destruction during the demonstrations.This refers only to material of historical value, not to contemporary tax records, etc. The archives are to be handed over to the locally responsible officers of the SD.

4.The control of the measures of the Security Police concerning the demonstrations against the Jews is vested in the organs of the State Police, unless inspectors of the Security Police have given their own instructions. Officials of the Criminal Police, members of the SD, of the Reserves and the SS in general may be used to carry out the measures taken by the Security Police.

5. As soon as the course of events during the night permits the release of the officials required, as many Jews in all districts - especially the rich - as can be accommodated in existing prisons are to be arrested. For the time being only healthy male Jews, who are not too old, are to be detained. After the detentions have been carried out the appropriate concentration camps are to be contacted immediately for the prompt accommodation of the Jews in the camps. Special care is to be taken that the Jews arrested in accordance with these instructions are not ill-treated…

Signed Heydrich, SS Gruppenfuehrer

Telegram 1

TELEGRAM RECEIVED FROM JR

This telegram must be Leipzig closely paraphrased before being communicated Dated November 10, 1938 to anyone. (br) Rec’d 8:40 a.m. Secretary of State Washington. November 10, 11 a.m.
Violent anti-Semetic program pogrom in progress in Leipzig.Three synagogues in flames one next
Consulate burning but fire under control. Hundreds of shop windows throughout city smashed no American property or lives molested as yet. Fur district badly damaged.
BUFFUM HTM:DDM

Telegram 2

TELEGRAM RECEIVED FROM MY
This telegram must be Berlin closely paraphrased before being communicated Dated November 13, 1938 to anyone. (D) Rec’d 11:20 a.m. Secretary of State Washington 614, November 13:30 p.m.
Stories of violence, ill-treatment, and arrest of Jews during Thursday and Friday come to me hourly. Most of them cannot be confirmed. Last night, however, I was talking with a number of American pressmen and they told me that realizing the gravity of the measures they had reported to their papers only events which had been seen by them personally or by members of their staffs. Certain of the correspondents anticipate trouble with Goebbels but are in a frame of mind almost to welcome it as they are more than ordinarily sure of their facts and seething with indignation.
WILSON JRL KLP

US Consular Telegrams
Eyewitness Accounts and Reminiscences
A Letter by a Firefighter
A Personal Memoir by Michael Bruce
The Kristallnacht at the Dinslaken Orphanage Reminiscences By Yitzhak S. Herz
Speech Delivered in Cologne Synagogue

A Letter of a Firefighter

This letter was written by a retired fireman, who remembered “Crystal Night” in Laupheim (Germany)
- The alarm went off between 5-5:30 A.M., and as usual, I jumped on my bicycle towards the firehouse. I had a strange feeling when I got there and saw many people standing in front of it. I was not allowed to go into the firehouse to take the engines out, or even to open the doors. One of my friends, who lived next to the Synagogue, whispered to me,“Be quiet - the Synagogue is burning; I was beaten up already when I wanted to put out the fire.”
- Eventually we were allowed to take the fire engines out, but only very slowly.We were ordered not to use any water till the whole synagogue was burned down. Many of us did not like to do that, but we had to be careful not to voice our opinions, because “the enemy is listening.”
- Only after one of the party members was worried that his house was going to catch fire, were we allowed to use water. But, even then, we just had to stand and watch until the House of Prayers was reduced to rubble and ashes.
- In the meantime, the marshalls rounded up the Jews and dragged them in front of the Synagogue, where they had to kneel down and put their hands above their heads. I saw with my own eyes how one old Jew was dragged down and pushed to his knees.Then the arsonists came in their brown uniforms to admire the results of their destruction.
- Everyone seemed rather quiet and subdued… We had to stand watch at the Synagogue to make sure there were no more smoldering sparks. My turn was from 10-11 and 2-3 P.M.The brown uniforms paraded around to admire their work.
- As I was watching the destroyed Synagogue and the frail old Jews, I wondered whose turn would be next !… When would it be our turn ? Will the same thing happen to our Protestant and Catholic Churches !

A Personal Memoir By Michael Bruce

Michael Bruce, a non-Jewish Englishman, provided this eyewitness account :
- Hurriedly we went out into the street. It was crowded with people, all hurrying towards a nearby
synagogue, shouting and gesticulating angrily.
- We followed.As we reached the synagogue and halted, silent and angry, on the fringe of the mob, flames began to rise from one end of the building. It was the signal for a wild cheer.The crowd surged forward and greedy hands tore seats and woodwork from the building to feed the flames.
- Behind us we heard more shouts.Turning, we saw a section of the mob start off along the road towards Israel’s store where, during the day, piles of granite cubes, ostensibly for repairing the roads, had been heaped.Youths, men and women, howling deliriously, hurled the blocks through the windows and at the closed doors. In a few minutes the doors gave way and the mob, shouting and fighting, surged inside to pillage and loot.
- By now the streets were a chaos of screaming bloodthirsty people lusting for Jewish bodies. I saw Harrison of The News Chronicle, trying to protect an aged Jewess who had been dragged from her home by a gang. I pushed my way through to help him and, between us, we managed to heave her through the crowd to a side street and safety.
- We turned back towards Israel’s, but now the crowd, eager for fresh conquests, was pouring down a side road towards the outskirts of the city.We hurried after them in time to see one of the foulest exhibitions of bestiality I have ever witnessed.
- The object of the mob’s hate was a hospital for sick Jewish children, many of them cripples or consumptives. In minutes the windows had been smashed and the doors forced.When we arrived, the swine were driving the wee mites out over the broken glass, bare-footed and wearing nothing but their nightshirts.The nurses, doctors, and attendants were being kicked and beaten by the mob leaders, most of whom were women.

The Kristallnacht at the Dinslaken Orphanage

reminiscences by yitzhak S. Herz

- At 0700, the morning service in the synagogue of the institution was scheduled to commence. Some
people from the town usually participated, but this time nobody turned up.
- About 0730, I ordered 46 people - among them 32 children - into the dining hall of the institution and told them the following in a simple and brief address : As you know, last night a Herr vom Rath, a member of the German Embassy in Paris, was assassinated. The Jews are held responsible for this murder.The high tension in the political field is now being directed against the Jews, and during the next few hours there will certainly be antisemitic excesses.This will happen even in our town. It is my feeling and my impression that we German Jews have never experienced such calamities since the Middle Ages. Be strong! Trust in God! I am sure we will withstand even these hard times. Nobody will remain in the rooms of the upper floor of the building.The exit door to the street will be opened only by myself! From this moment on everyone is to heed my orders only !
- At 9:30 A.M. the bell at the main gate rang persistently. I opened the door: about 50 men stormed into the house, many of them with their coat or jacket collars turned up.At first they rushed into the dining room, which fortunately was empty, and there they began their work of destruction, which was carried out with the utmost precision.The frightened and fearful cries of the children resounded through the building. In a stentorian voice I shouted:“Children go out into the street immediately!”This advice was certainly contrary to the order of the Gestapo. I thought, however, that in the street, in a public place, we might be in less danger than inside the house.The children immediately ran down a small staircase at the back, most of them without hat or coat - despite the cold and wet weather.We tried to reach the next street crossing, which was close to Dinslaken’s Town Hall, where I intended to ask for police protection.About ten policemen were stationed here, reason enough for a sensation-seeking mob to await the next development.This was not very long in coming; the senior police officer, Freihahn, shouted at us:“Jews do not get protection from us! Vacate the area together with your children as quickly as possible! Freihahn then chased us back to a side street in the direction of the backyard of the orphanage.As I was unable to hand over the key to the back gate, the policeman drew his bayonet and forced open the door. I then said to Freihahn:“The best thing is to kill me and the children, then our ordeal will be over quickly!” My officer responded to my “suggestion” merely with cynical laughter. Freihahn then drove all of us to the wet lawn of the orphanage garden. He gave us strict orders not to leave the place under any circumstances.
Facing the back of the building, we were able to watch how everything in the house was being
systematically destroyed under the supervision of the men of law and order - the police.At short intervals we could hear the crunching of glass or the hammering against wood as windows and doors were broken. Books, chairs, beds, tables, linen, chests, parts of a piano, a radiogram, and maps were thrown through apertures in the wall, which, a short while ago, had been windows or doors.
In the meantime, the mob standing around the building had grown to several hundred.Among these
people I recognized some familiar faces, suppliers of the orphanage or tradespeople, who, only a day or a week earlier had been happy to deal with us as customers.This time they were passive, watching the destruction without much emotion.
At 10:15 A.M. we heard the wailing of sirens! We noticed a heavy cloud of smoke billowing upward. It was obvious from the direction it was coming from that the Nazis had set the synagogue on fire.Very soon we saw smoke clouds rising up, mixed with sparks of fire. Later I noticed that some Jewish houses, close to the synagogue, had also been set alight under the expert guidance of the fire brigade. Its presence was a necessity, since the firemen had to save the homes of the non-Jewish neighborhood.

Speech delivered in Koln (Cologne) Synagogue, 9 November 1978

A Plea for Honesty and Tolerance by Helmut Schmidt, former Chancellor,West Germany

Mr. Federal President
Dear citizens of Cologne,
Dear Jews, Christians and Free-Thinkers in Germany,

The German night, whose observance after the passage of forty years has brought us together today, remains a cause of bitterness and shame. In those places where the houses of God stood in flames,
where a signal from those in power set off a train of destruction and robbery, of humiliation, abduction and incarceration - there was an end to peace, to justice, to humanity.The night of 9 November 1938 marked one of the stages along the path leading down to hell …

epilogue

The tragedy of Kristallnacht was not the destruction. No nation has been free of violence. No nation has been free of the rowdiness of the ignorant.The tragedy, rather, was that government, which should protect the individual and his property against violence, in this instance encouraged and abetted the violence against the Jews.The violence was a joint act by the government and the populace. Early on the day of November 9 a message went out from Gestapo headquarters:“There will be very shortly in Germany actions against the Jews, especially against the synagogues.These actions are not to be interfered with.”

- Leonard Baker
- The Simon Wiesenthal Center
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