KRISTALLNACHT 86 YEARS LATER

TODAY IS THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE HOLOCAUST. THE HISTORICAL EVENT WE SHOULD PERHAPS BE FOCUSED ON HAPPENED FOUR MONTHS EARLIER.

Today is the 86^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass.”

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, a planned pogrom, intended to look like a spontaneous uprising, took place against Jews across Nazi-controlled Germany and Austria.

Hundreds of synagogues were set on fire. Jewish homes and shops were attacked, vandalized and looted. About 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. At least 91 Jews were murdered, with more dying later due to their injuries and by suicide.

German police and firefighters did not intervene. Firefighters, for instance, stood in place hosing down adjacent non-Jewish properties while allowing infernos to continue to engulf Jewish property.

While historians disagree, as historians do, many view Kristallnacht as the formal beginning of the Holocaust, the moment when legal and social discrimination veered into unrestrained violence and murder.

We cannot change the past. But the study of history is irreplaceable for, among other things, endowing human beings with the potential to create a better future. This is possible only if we take these lessons and govern ourselves based on what they tell us.

There are many lessons from Kristallnacht. One lesson is that, by the time Kristallnacht happened, it was too late for the world to do much. Germany under the Nazis and the lands they would conquer had spiraled into dystopia and there was little the rest of the world could do by that point.

Only the unprecedented cataclysm of the Second World War would put an end to the horrors – and then only after two in every three European Jews had been murdered.

History is too often used in a ham-fisted way. It is, for example, almost always inappropriate to compare current events to the Holocaust. To do so almost always diminishes the magnitude of that event. It almost always cheapens the memory of the murdered for crude political ends.

The parallel of the horrific attacks on Israeli football fans in Amsterdam Thursday and the anniversary of Kristallnacht invited such comparisons.

Israel’s prime minister, for example, said: “Tomorrow, 86 years ago, was Kristallnacht, when Jews on European soil were attacked for being Jews. This has now recurred.”

He’s not wrong. And who the hell am I, ultimately, to take issue with the head of the Jewish state when speaking about violent attacks on Jews?

I would just point out the most important differentiator.

Kristallnacht was a government-initiated attack on Jews. The violence on Thursday was condemned by (I believe) everyone in any position of moral or political authority.

The Dutch King Willem-Alexander apparently told Israel’s President Isaac Herzog: “We failed the Jewish community of the Netherlands during the Second World War and last night we failed again.”

This was a profound admission from the king of historic and contemporary culpability. It is a meaningful gesture of solidarity and commitment to do better.

It is also a fundamental reversal of the reality from the Nazi era. In this case, those in power are not perpetrating the violence but condemning it in the most forthright terms.

That does not, of course, erase the fact that the horrible violence occurred. But it is an essential recognition that this is a society with an antisemitism problem – not a society universally poisoned by antisemitism at the highest levels. That is a vital thing to distinguish.

One of the concerns I have around any allusions to the Holocaust in the context of current events, even well-intentioned ones those like the words of Netanyahu and the Dutch king, is that they may weirdly create a false sense of security.

Dara Horn wrote about this in her provocative book, People Love Dead Jews. If we promote the idea that we must stand against antisemitism because it could lead to a holocaust, we may have the opposite of our intended effect.

People can tell the difference between the Holocaust and what happened in Amsterdam Thursday.

We can understand the temptation to draw parallels, especially given the proximity with the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

I fear, though, that any equation or comparison may make people conclude that, if we are drawing parallels, this is not that. Therefore, this is nothing to get too worked up over.

That is a real problem.

Jews being beaten on the streets of Europe (or anywhere) is a very big problem. But if we compare it – even in the most oblique way – reasonable people may look at the two events, conclude Well, we’re not at that point yet, and return to the football game.

As I said, by the time Kristallnacht occurred, the world had waited too long to confront the Nazis’ explicit objective of eliminating the Jews from the world.

That is the lesson we should be focused on here.

Given this, the historical event to which we should be devoting more attention is something far less well-known that Kristallnacht. (Surveys show that many young people know little to nothing of the Holocaust. These kids have almost certainly never heard of Kristallnacht. But for those of us a little more engaged, even the following history is probably obscure.)

Four months before Kristallnacht, 32 free countries met at Évian-les-Bains, France, convened by US President Franklin Roosevelt, to consider how they could save the imperiled Jews of Europe.

Their almost unanimous conclusion: Do nothing.

Of the 32 countries, 31 agreed to take no refugees at all. The head of Canada’s immigration department, when asked how many Jews our country should accept, famously responded, “None is too many.”

Only the Dominican Republic was willing to accept any Jewish refugees. But by the time the conference ended, the Nazis had slammed the door of Jewish emigration.

Hitler took a clear message from Évian. The free world sent a green light to Hitler for Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. Overwhelmingly, democratic countries sent the message that they had no concerns about what the Jews faced.

That was the moment the world could have taken a stand. It was the time when they could have sent the message to the Nazi regime that the architecture of genocide they were constructing would make them a pariah people.

Having warned against making inappropriate or overwrought historical comparisons, I may be going out on a limb here. Perhaps I am not heeding my own advice.

But it seems to me that maybe the historical event we should be focused on right now is not Kristallnacht so much as Évian.

Kristallnacht is a lesson about perpetrators who had been given a green light by the world to implemented their malevolent plans.

Évian was a very different moment. It was a time when the world had a chance to preempt that catastrophe, at least to some extent. Even a single refugee accepted by one of those countries would have been one universe saved.

The world couldn’t even bring itself to do that.

Without invoking the memory of the Holocaust, perhaps we should be reflecting more modestly on standing for what is right not because it could result in genocide, but because Jews being attacked and beaten is reason enough to stand with them.

We should demand a tempering of incendiary, hateful language against Jews and the Jewish state. We should bring down upon the perpetrators the fullest possible legal remedies so that we send the message that this will not be tolerated. We should stand with the Jewish people now – not because tomorrow may be too late, but because today is as bad as it should have to get.