Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht or the 'night of broken glass' occurred on the night of November 9-10, 1938. The pogrom was carried out all across Germany. Jews were beaten to death, stores and homes destroyed and Jewish men were rounded up with 30,000 of them sent to concentration camps. Almost 1,600 synagogues were damaged or destroyed. As bad as it was, it was only the beginning. Last night in Germany, community leaders and Jewish residents of the Eastern city of Frankfurt on Oder laid wreaths on the site of one of the destroyed synagogues.
And the neo-Nazis came to trample the wreaths and desecrate the site.
A police spokeswoman said the group had launched an attack on Thursday evening, shortly after a memorial service by community and Jewish leaders at a monument where a synagogue once stood.
She said the neo-Nazis trampled floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone to the synagogue in the Polish border city that was destroyed 68 years ago in the Nazis' Kristallnacht or "Night of Broken Glass."
They threw away candles left at the memorial, which had been attended by about 200 people. When police arrived, some of the neo-Nazis shouted "Sieg Heil," police said. Authorities stayed on guard at the memorial site through the night.
"We are still investigating but at this stage I can say we will at a minimum be raising charges of using illegal symbols," state prosecutor Michael Neff told Reuters.
A total of 16 people, aged 16-24, were detained after the attack, police said.
Frankfurt on Oder is on the opposite side of the country's financial capital in Frankfurt on the Main river. There are about 200 Jews living in Frankfurt, a city of 63,000. There were about 800 in 1933.
Anti-Semitism is on the rise in Germany (and Europe in general) again. The entire structure of the West is under assault both from within and from without. Europe is further along the path than the US.
Germany's BKA federal police released figures last month showing attacks by far-right groups rose 20 percent to 8,000 in the first eight months of 2006 compared to the same 2005 period.
In July, far-rightists in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt burned the diary of Holocaust victim Anne Frank, causing outrage among German politicians and anti-racist groups.
In another incident last month, teenagers in the same state forced a 16-year-old classmate to parade round school wearing a sign with an anti-Semitic Nazi-era slogan.
For all the good intentions of the West, Kristallnacht is coming again.
World news | Gaius Friday, 10 November , 2006
By Arlo, Friday, 10 November , 2006 @ 10:28 am
Here’s a thoughtful comment on anti-semitism by David Gottfried on the NY Times Empire Zone blog this morning:
1) The sort of borsht belt humor evinced by lines such as “Is it good for the Jews†is tiresome, and I wonder how non Jewish America views such parochial, stupid humor. It’s a really dumb line because i) these Jewish electees were not elected as Jews; they were elected to be American legislators expected to serve the interests of America, and ii) everything, for various reasons, is starting to go South for the Jews for reasons too numerous to go into but which include the following:
a) I think our gentile neighbors are beginning to formulate the idea that American foreign policy has been hobbled and hijacked by excessive obedience to Israel;
b) Americans may tire of Americans fighting wars in the mideast, allegedly in Israel’s interest, when so few Jewish Americans fight in the US armed forces;
c) the growing affluence of Israel will harm Israel because wealthy Israelis might reason that they should not fight for Israel when they can retire to their swimming pools in LA — more and more Israelis are immigrating to America (consider the IDF’s shockingly weak performance in the Summer’s battle with Hezbollah);
d) many, many Americans are beseiged by globalization and the anti-alienist sentiment this has generated goes hand in hand with anti semetism as so many Americans see so many wealthy Israelis buy assets and influence in this country;
e) and large throngs of smiling, rich, liberal Jewish Democrats on TV on election night are not going to avert a potential antisemetic storm of cataclysmic proportions. Remember: Before Hitler, some of the happiest Jews in Europe were often said to reside in Germany. Years ago, when a Jew was said to be happy, one would at times say that he is as happy as a Jew under Franz Joseph, in light of the often affluent and good position of Jews in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.