Kristallnacht: Germany 1938, UK 2008
In July 1939, my wife’s family fled from Berlin. 8 months previously, their Synagogue had been destroyed during Kristallnacht. 24 hours of orchestrated pogroms saw thousands of Jewish prayer houses burnt, books from Jewish academics and authors left in cinders, and tens of thousands deported to camps.
In the evening of November 9th 1938, Mr David Weiler returned from his tour of destruction and took out his Bible. The weekly reading referred to Abraham, receiving an instruction to leave the land of his birth and go to the land of Israel. The father of the Jewish nation packed his bags, and Mr Weiler prepared to do the same.
Flash forward 70 years. One of Mr Weiler’s great grandchildren, my son, also called David, yesterday returned from a week-long tour of the concentration camps in Poland. He is 17.5 years old and went with his school.
The stories he has come back with are not so easy to digest. At Maidjenek, he photographed a memorial containing 7 tons of embers of dead souls. At Treblinka, they toured a camp built for the singular purpose of mass, efficient slaughter. In Warsaw, they stood at the spot where Jews were violently rounded up and then sent on a free trip to hell.
They met good Poles. They were also insulted by elderly pensioner. Even a 10 year old threw a piece of rotten fruit at them.
Back in Israel, the group went straight from the airport to the Wailing Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. They held morning prayers, sang the national anthem, danced to celebrate their freedom, and went home with their thoughts. 2 miles to the north, on the Mount of Olives, lies the tomb of my great grandfather. He had come to Palestine to retire, passing away in 1943, as the Warsaw ghetto was being raised.
It is 70 years since Kristallnacht. Congo, Rwanda, Cambodia and even Poland in 1968 show how we have yet to learn the true lessons of the Holocaust.
In parallel, in the comfort of London’s sheltered academia, we can look out towards the student’s union at Goldsmith’s College. This week, they are hosting an event to compare the horrors of the Holocaust to the current state of Gaza. The union will call for a boycott of Israeli organisations, just as the Nazi Party organised on Kristallnacht. The poverty of Palestinians will be compared to those who were systematically sought out, rounded up, and gassed because of their religion. Hamas literature today refers to such events, positively.
The union’s language of hate and mockery will find a haven behind a wall of political correctness, the wall Nazis built to defend their Aryan race.
For those, who still do not know the difference between Warsaw in the early 1940s and Gaza today, I publish here a simplified table.
|
Issue |
Warsaw Ghetto |
Gaza Strip |
|
How did they get there? |
Forcibly round up and sent there |
Lived there for generations Arrived there after wars with Israel Went there to escape from Egypt |
|
Allowed out? |
Under no circumstances – under threat of death |
Israel allows 10s of thousands every day to work in Israel. Israel allows in medical cases. Egypt maintains a blockade. |
|
Supplies allowed in? |
No |
Israel sends in continuous supplies, 5 days a week. Mass smuggling campaign. Egypt has closed its border. |
|
Has other housing been provided? |
No |
Israel vacated the Gaza Strip in 2005. Not one person has been relocated from the camps since then. |
|
Do people die of hunger? |
Hundreds – daily |
No |
|
Is there an end in sight? |
Yes – liquidation and slaughter |
When Hamas agrees to recognize Israel, then peace can come quickly. |
|
Resistance? |
Pathetic – and directed against troops |
Daily rocket fire directed randomly against civilian targets in Israel. |
|
Human rights |
The world ignored the slaughter of 100s of thousands. |
Hamas rejects freedom of press, persecutes Christians, and subjects women to second class status |
Can you spot the similarity?
Tags: Goldsmiths, Holocaust, Jerusalem, Kristallnacht
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November 11, 2008 at 7:47 am
Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, commented on the 70th anniversary of Krystallnacht (This is a direct quote from his office – MH)
“The awful events of Krystallnacht, the Night of the Broken Glass, in 1938 should never be forgotten.
At least 91 Jews were murdered and up to 30,000 were arrested, most of whom were sent to concentration camps. Synagogues were burnt down, businesses, shops and houses were ransacked, and cemeteries were desecrated throughout Germany, Austria and the occupied Sudetenland.
It is our duty as citizens of this world to keep up our guard against antisemitism and all forms of racism infiltrating our societies, and do our upmost ensure that similar horrors do not occur in the future.”
November 12, 2008 at 1:08 pm
The largest synagogue in Germany has reopened after restoration to its condition before Kristallnacht, a night of anti-Jewish violence in 1938.
One of the guests at the reopening was Rabbi Leo Trepp, who preached there in the 1930s, The Jerusalem Post reported. The rabbi, now 94, was sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
The synagogue was heavily damaged on Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass but was not burned, apparently because a fire would have spread to nearby buildings. The congregation continued to hold services there until 1940.
http://www.arcamax.com/religiousnews/s-440916-967045
November 13, 2008 at 11:08 am
Since writing this piece, it as been picked and used to explain the problems with the comparison to student leaders at Goldsmiths’ College (part of the University of London) after they ran an event involving Holocaust relativism and antisemitic lableing of Israel as Nazis. The letter set by someone who witnessed the events can be seen at Zionism On The Web: http://www.zionismontheweb.org/zionism_commentary/Goldsmiths_Gaza_and_the_Warsaw_Ghetto.htm