Dreaming of Moshiach

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Kristallnacht

On November 9, 1938, the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels announced a government-sanctioned reprisal against the Jews. Synagogues were ravaged and then burned. Jewish shop windows were broken. Jews were beaten, raped, arrested, and murdered. Throughout Germany and Austria, the pogrom rampaged. Nazis unleashed a wave of pogroms against Germany's Jews. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. This event came to be called Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") for the shattered store windowpanes that carpeted German streets.


Jewish homes and stores were ransacked all throughout Germany and also in Vienna, with a mixture of German citizens and Stormtroops going to destroy buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows of destroyed businesses the next morning.

Picture: Jews arrested during Kristallnacht line up for roll call at the Buchenwald concentration camp. November 1938.

This pogrom damaged, and in many cases destroyed, about 1574 synagogues (constituting nearly all Germany had), many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores. Some Jews were beaten to death while others were forced to watch. More than 30,000 Jewish males were arrested and taken to concentration camps; primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The treatment of prisoners in the camps was brutal, but most were released during the following three months on condition that they leave Germany.

The number of German Jews killed is uncertain, with estimates ranging from 36 to about 200 over two days of rioting. The number killed in the rioting is most often cited as 91. There are believed to have been hundreds of suicides in addition to this, as the slim slivers of hope that remained in some Jews disappeared completely. Counting deaths at the concentration camps, around 2,000-2,500 deaths, were directly or indirectly attributable to the Kristallnacht pogrom.

The synagogues, some centuries old, were also victims of sadistic violence, with the tactics the Stormtroops practiced on these and other sacred sites were described as “approaching the ghoulish” by the United States Consul in Leipzig. Even graveyards were not spared, as tombstones were uprooted and graves violated. Fires were lit, and prayer books, scrolls, artwork and philosophy were thrown upon them, and the precious buildings were either burned or smashed until unrecognizable.

Purification of Am Israel - A true story about a Holocaust survivor and Bet Din of Shamayim.


IN MEMORY OF OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS WHO WERE MERCILESSLY MURDERED - HASHEM WILL AVENGE THEIR BLOOD!!

In the merit of all who died sanctifying HaShem's glory, b'h, we will all be zoche to see resurrection, Moshiach's arrival, the final redemption, the building of the Bet HaMikdash and live under Malchut Bet David HaMelech, Amen!

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והיה השם למלך על כל הארץ, ביום ההוא יהיה השם אחד - ושמו אחד ישתבח שמו לעד לנצח נצחים בכל העולמות Blessed is His name for eternity in all worlds אין עוד מלבדו