However, others detested him, and Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Art, Literature, and Film History. Vietnam War. Sign Up. Cold War. Large numbers of ordinary people, including women, were involved in looting and plundering, picking up goods thrown out onto the street and benefiting from the expropriation of Jewish property.
Both young and old turned out to humiliate Jews, with whole classes of schoolchildren brought by their teachers to see sites of smoldering synagogues and join the jeering crowds. Such comments are reported in many contemporary sources and eye-witness accounts from across the Reich. First, there is the obvious point about state-ordained terror and fear.
If violence is initiated from above, in a state where active political opposition has been crushed, it is extremely difficult to engage in effective resistance. Many political activists had already emigrated, often after early spells in concentration camps, some seeking to fight on as best they could from abroad.
After years of repression, most dissenters were cowed into sullen silence. In November , though some individuals still managed to provide surreptitious assistance, many who feared severe penalties remained passively on the sidelines, whatever their sympathy for the plight of the persecuted. By , with Hitler in power for over five years, the majority of non-Jewish Germans had accommodated themselves to living under the Nazi regime.
Significant numbers were enthusiastic supporters of Hitler and his proclaimed return to national greatness; many more joined the Nazi party NSDAP or affiliated organizations for opportunistic reasons. Others compromised less willingly, performing new roles in public and muttering disagreements privately, but fearful of being denounced if they stepped too far out of line.
Whether through longstanding or newly acquired conviction, or through coerced conformity, people excluded Jews from their social lives, their friendship circles and their leisure associations, and lost contact with Jews who had been thrown out of their professions and forced to move homes. People did not need to be anti-Semitic; they did not need to be infused with hatred.
Significantly, Kristallnacht marks the first instance in which the Nazi regime incarcerated Jews on a massive scale simply on the basis of their ethnicity.
Hundreds died in the camps as a result of the brutal treatment they endured. Most did obtain release over the next three months on the condition that they begin the process of emigration from Germany. Indeed , the effects of Kristallnacht would serve as a spur to the emigration of Jews from Germany in the months to come. The Reich government confiscated all insurance payouts to Jews whose businesses and homes were looted or destroyed, leaving the Jewish owners personally responsible for the cost of all repairs.
In the weeks that followed, the German government promulgated dozens of laws and decrees designed to deprive Jews of their property and of their means of livelihood. Ensuing legislation barred Jews, already ineligible for employment in the public sector, from practicing most professions in the private sector.
The legislation made further strides in removing Jews from public life. German education officials expelled Jewish children still attending German schools. German Jews lost their right to hold a driver's license or own an automobile. Legislation restricted access to public transport.
American newspapers across the country covered the Nazi assault on Jews in front-page, banner headlines, and articles about the events continued to appear for several weeks. No other story about the persecution of the Jews received such widespread and sustained attention from the American press at any other time during the Nazi era.
German censors sought to block images of Kristallnacht from reaching newspapers in the United States. However, Life magazine was able to publish some images in its November 28, , issue. The United States was the only nation to recall its ambassador and would not replace him until after the end of the war in Other Americans called for an increase in the number of immigrants allowed to enter the country.
Despite the increasing threat faced by Jews living under Nazi rule in Germany and Austria, President Roosevelt knew that he would not be able to persuade Congress to reconsider immigration regulations. At the same November 15 press conference, a reporter asked the president if he would recommend relaxing the restrictions on immigration in order to admit the Jewish refugees from Europe. Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, whose department oversaw the Immigration and Naturalization Service, persuaded President Roosevelt to allow approximately 12, Germans, most of whom were Jews and already in the United States on visitor visas, to remain in the country indefinitely.
Although he knew extending the visas could raise congressional objection, the president made his position clear. On February 9, , Senator Robert F. Despite widespread support, the Wagner-Rogers Bill died in Congress. The quota system remained unchanged throughout the war and into the s. The events of Kristallnacht represented one of the most important turning points in National Socialist antisemitic policy.
I have a right to live and the Jewish people have a right to exist on earth. Wherever I have been I have been chased like an animal. News of the Third Secretary's death reached the leading figures of the Nazi party later that day while they were attending a dinner in Munich.
Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered an inflammatory speech, urging the assembled crowd to take to the streets. The message was clear: The German Jews would have to pay for vom Rath's death.
Later that night Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the Security Service, sent a series of orders to all State Police offices: Business establishments and homes of Jews could be destroyed but not looted; German life and property should not be jeopardized; and as soon as the events of the night permitted, officers should arrest as many Jews, particularly wealthy ones, as the local jails would hold.
The following day Goebbels announced, "We shed not a tear for them [the Jews. We can use the space made free more usefully than as Jewish fortresses. It was the culminating event in a series of anti-Semitic policies set in place since Hitler took power in
0コメント