The real reason for the Night of Broken Glass

Nov. 9, 2015, was the 77th Anniversary of Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass,” the term applied to the night of Nov. 9- 10, 1938, when, across Nazi Germany and German-annexed Austria, 91 Jews were murdered, tens of thousands of Jews were placed in Concentration Camps, and 267 Synagogues and 7,500 Jewish owned shops and businesses were destroyed by gangs of Nazis and other anti-Semitic persons. The news of the brutalization was known around the world, but no national government was willing to help the Jews under Nazi rule. The understanding of the underpinnings of the event commonly told around the world is grossly wrong and enables such atrocities to continue.

A Lexicon entry for Kristallnacht produced by Yad Vashem, the Israeli national Holocaust museum, reads in part as follows: “Officially, Kristallnacht was launched in retaliation for the assassination on November 7 of a German embassy official in Paris - named Ernst vom Rath - by a young Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan. On November 9 vom Rath died of his injuries.” The Times of Israel ran a “This Day in History” feature on the Nov. 9, 2015, which read much the same, and across the Holocaust commemoration community, the language still pervades that “Grynszpan’s assassination of Vom Rath led to the Night of Broken Glass.”

No—Vom Rath’s death did not lead to the Night of Broken Glass. As the night identified by many as the beginning of the Shoah, neither did Vom Rath’s death lead to the Shoah and the death of millions upon millions of mothers, fathers and children or to the shootings of huge numbers of Jews at a time and their burial in unmarked mass graves. Saying otherwise gives a justification and a humanization to the Nazis and the Shoah as somehow within the confines of a normal human existence. No, the Shoah lives in a realm of perverted humanity into which the world has presently been thrust. The rules of violence and the death of the importance of the individual life matter in the world of perversion.

As an illustration of the point here made, observe the Western response to the Fall 2015 Palestinian terror wave that has resulted in the deaths of 12 Israelis as of Nov. 10, 2015. From the halls of Western governments: “The terrorists are representative of the frustration in Palestinian society at the lack of a political horizon for a two-state solution.” No—the terrorists are not absolved of responsibility in some juvenile “everyone just get along now.” They are responsible, and the reason for their actions is that, through actions of their own, life and the individual no longer matters. In fact, the individual is in the way of the greater good, which in the case of Islamism means in some cases the establishment of the Caliphate.

Suggesting that there is any sort of reasonable connection between a so-called cause and effect leading to the murder of almost 100 people in the short term and millions in the long term is ludicrous. Vom Rath’s death did not lead to the Holocaust or even the Night of Broken Glass. The hate-filled murder of the status of care and concern for the individual- the same sickness infecting the world today- led to Kristallnacht. Neither the Nazis nor the Palestinian terrorists operate within the confines of normal humanity- in fact, their operating space is actually the very absence of humanity. If there is no recognition of the true cause of the terror from the Nazis to the Palestinians, then it will continue to grow, since no consequences are administered and no one is held accountable.

This article appeared on Global News Breakdown on Nov. 10, 2015. Caleb R. Newton is a global affairs analyst living in Central Florida. Find him at the Times of Israel, Dissecting Society, and Global News Breakdown. Contact him at calebrnewton@globalnewsbreakdown.com.