I never heard of Krystallnacht when I was growing up in Boulder, Colorado, in the 1950s.
My Weekly Reader told me about efforts to end segregation in the South; I knew about slavery and the Civil War.
We scrambled under our desks for "Civil Air Defense drills," so I knew about the Cold War. My father had fought in World War II and still put on his Army uniform once a month and went to do something with the National Guard.
We had lived in Tokyo for three years before I started kindergarten, so I was vaguely aware of the Korean War. I had heard about Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. When we kids were jumping off a bed, we'd throw our arms up and shout banzai as if we were fierce warriors.
But I never heard about Krystallnacht, the night of November 9, 1938, when a thousand synagogues and seven thousand Jewish businesses were destroyed in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, followed by rounding up 30,000 Jews and sending them to concentration camps. This event marked the beginning of Nazi genocide on a large scale.
Thank you to Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit that has protected refugees since its founding in 1881, for his eye-opening op-ed piece in the New York Times today:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hetfield-kristallnacht-refugees-20131108,0,7964340.story#axzz2kJ3GkEZw
This year marks the 75th anniversary of this horror, leading us into a string of 75th anniversaries to come in the next seven years.
I first heard about Krystallnacht in the 1990s or first decade of the 21st century by watching a television documentary, perhaps marking fifty years since the violence.
What a well-kept secret. Why didn't I learn about it in high school in the 1960s?
When I visited Berlin in 1967, the German family I stayed with was reluctant to talk about World War II. I wanted to see that famous landmark, the Berlin Wall, but my hosts were not keen to take me.
I read The Diary of Anne Frank several times, starting in the 1950s, but no one ever told me that Anne's family made many attempts to get visas to join her uncles in Boston while the US refused. There was no right to seek asylum until the UN passed the Refugee Convention in 1951.
The arbiters of our culture pick and choose as much of history as they think we can stomach--or perhaps as much as they can bear to view.
Even Elie Wiesel could not write Night until ten years after being released from a concentration camp.
Now that we are safely 75 years beyond Krystallnacht, this horror is getting some attention, and stolen art treasures are being returned to the descendants of those who lost them.
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-germany-nazi-art-20131105,0,4039020.story#axzz2kJ3GkEZw
Hallelujah--a broken Hallelujah.
One way to learn about the continuing impact of Krystallnacht is to read the short story by Irene Dische titled "Die Juden" ("The Jewess"). It takes place in 1980 as an American of Jewish heritage travels to Berlin to claim his inheritance, now being returned by the German government.
It's in International Women's Stories ed. Kate Figes (Penguin, 1996).
My Weekly Reader told me about efforts to end segregation in the South; I knew about slavery and the Civil War.
We scrambled under our desks for "Civil Air Defense drills," so I knew about the Cold War. My father had fought in World War II and still put on his Army uniform once a month and went to do something with the National Guard.
We had lived in Tokyo for three years before I started kindergarten, so I was vaguely aware of the Korean War. I had heard about Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. When we kids were jumping off a bed, we'd throw our arms up and shout banzai as if we were fierce warriors.
But I never heard about Krystallnacht, the night of November 9, 1938, when a thousand synagogues and seven thousand Jewish businesses were destroyed in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, followed by rounding up 30,000 Jews and sending them to concentration camps. This event marked the beginning of Nazi genocide on a large scale.
Thank you to Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, an international Jewish nonprofit that has protected refugees since its founding in 1881, for his eye-opening op-ed piece in the New York Times today:
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-hetfield-kristallnacht-refugees-20131108,0,7964340.story#axzz2kJ3GkEZw
This year marks the 75th anniversary of this horror, leading us into a string of 75th anniversaries to come in the next seven years.
I first heard about Krystallnacht in the 1990s or first decade of the 21st century by watching a television documentary, perhaps marking fifty years since the violence.
What a well-kept secret. Why didn't I learn about it in high school in the 1960s?
When I visited Berlin in 1967, the German family I stayed with was reluctant to talk about World War II. I wanted to see that famous landmark, the Berlin Wall, but my hosts were not keen to take me.
I read The Diary of Anne Frank several times, starting in the 1950s, but no one ever told me that Anne's family made many attempts to get visas to join her uncles in Boston while the US refused. There was no right to seek asylum until the UN passed the Refugee Convention in 1951.
The arbiters of our culture pick and choose as much of history as they think we can stomach--or perhaps as much as they can bear to view.
Even Elie Wiesel could not write Night until ten years after being released from a concentration camp.
Now that we are safely 75 years beyond Krystallnacht, this horror is getting some attention, and stolen art treasures are being returned to the descendants of those who lost them.
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-germany-nazi-art-20131105,0,4039020.story#axzz2kJ3GkEZw
Hallelujah--a broken Hallelujah.
One way to learn about the continuing impact of Krystallnacht is to read the short story by Irene Dische titled "Die Juden" ("The Jewess"). It takes place in 1980 as an American of Jewish heritage travels to Berlin to claim his inheritance, now being returned by the German government.
It's in International Women's Stories ed. Kate Figes (Penguin, 1996).
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