Commentary by Dr. Gerhard Falk Crystal Night - Night of the Broken Glass



The Holocaust began for the Jews of Germany on January 30, 1933. It was on that day that the then President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. In April of 1932 Hitler lost the election for President of Germany to von Hindenburg. Therefore it is true, as some Germans insist, that Hitler was never elected to any office by the German voters. It is however also true that the Nazi party gained a majority in the German Parliament called the Reichstag in 1932 and that therefore no legislation could be passed nor any measures taken against Nazi riots in the streets because the majority of parliament voted against all efforts to bring civil order to Germany. Furthermore, the Nazi gangs beat any non-Nazi representative in the streets and finally succeeded in barring any non-Nazi from the Reichstag. At that point Hindendburg, age 87, at the urging of his Nazi son, appointed Hitler. Persecution of Jews began at once. Nazi troopers stood in front of Jewish owned stores and shouted at customers: “Kauft nicht von Juden” or “Do not buy from Jews.” At once gangs of young Nazi toughs rode through the streets in trucks singing such songs as “Wenn’s Judenblut vom Messer spritzt dann geht’s nochmal so gut” or “When Jew blood squirts from our knives things will go much better”. Even in 1933 Jewish stores were vandalized and Jews removed from their jobs. This was achieved by passing the first of 430 laws pertaining to the exclusion of Jews from German society. The first of these laws was the law of July 4, 1933, which was called euphemistically “Law for the Reconstruction of the Civil Service” (“Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums”). This law fired all Jews from their civil service jobs. Additional laws prohibited Jews from practicing any profession such as law, medicine, pharmacy, etc. and also specified that no Jew could teach in an “Aryan” school. In 1938 law #174 forced Jews to assume a name from a published list of names considered Jewish. Accordingly all Jewish men carried one of these Hebrew first names and all had the middle name Israel. All Jewish women were assigned the middle name Sarah. Although Americans often have Biblical names, this was not the case in Germany, where only Jews had such names. Law #195 prohibited Jews from walking about in public and #197 prohibited the use of driver’s licenses by Jews. This meant that Jews who already had a driver’s license were told that their license was no longer valid. No Jew could thereafter obtain a license. Law #234 told landlords that they could no longer rent to Jews. This made many Jews homeless, since a Jew kicked out of his home could not find any other place to rent. These Jews were then picked up by the police and sent to murder camps. Law #242 dealt with the education of Jewish children and prohibited them from attending a German school. Only Jewish schools were temporarily permitted to educated Jewish children. Jews were of course also eliminated from all colleges and universities. Later, Law #392 closed all Jewish schools, so that Jewish children received no education whatever. Law #279 decreed that all Jewish owned business had to be “sold” to a non-Jew for the cheapest ‘throw-away’ prices. The money, however, was not turned over to the Jewish seller but handed to the state, i.e. the Nazi bosses. This constituted outright theft. Law #329 ordered all Jews to wear a distinctive sign on their clothes. This was a yellow Magen David, which also had to attached to the front doors of the few homes were a few Jews were still living. These and numerous other laws dealt with every aspect of life and made it impossible for a Jew to do anything that was not against some law. Jews were also forcibly divorced from non-Jewish spouses and excluded from hospitals and other medical facilities. Finally, all Jews were seized and murdered in hundreds of camps located in Germany and Austria and later in all occupied countries. Kristallnacht was, then, the opening event of the mass murder of the European Jews, although the persecution of Jews was already five years old on November 9-10, 1938. Today, 66 years later, the Jews of Europe have reason to fear for their lives again. Once more the hatred of Jews is being pushed hard by the churches and the media. Once more Jews are beaten in the streets and once more again Jewish stores are firebombed and synagogues are burned. From Russia to England, the two and one half million European Jews see for themselves that they have no future in Europe and that they will have to move to Israel if they wish to escape from the Eurabian horrors. Shalom u’vracha.

Dr. Gerhard Falk is the author of numerous publications, including Man's Ascent to Reason (2003) & the forthcoming Football & American Identity.