Kristallnacht 75 Years Ago -Very Little Has Changed

Do Not Stand Idly By While Your Neighbor Bleeds~ Vayikra (Levitucus) 19:16 

Kristallnacht also known as Night of Broken Glass was an anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9th-10th 1938. Kristallnacht was the day Hitler's final solution "came out of the closet" It is viewed by many historians as the beginning of the final solution, leading to the genocide of the Holocaust.

In a coordinated attack on Jewish people and their property, 99 Jews were murdered and 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps. 267 synagogues were destroyed and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked. This was done by the Hitler Youth, Gestapo,and the SS. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews. Kristallnacht was part of a broader Nazi policy of antisemitism and persecution of the Jews. Kristallnacht was followed by further economic political persecutions and horrible genocide.

Throughout  the world we remember Kristallnach, the night the Nazi's began the Holocaust in earnest. Its amazing how little has changed in seven and a half decades. In Arab countries children textbooks are filled with anti Jewish hatred while others call them "moderates. "Islamic Clerics throughout the world call for the death of Jews.

At my dinner table on Friday night, a holocaust survivor admits that she is trying to persuade her son to take his family out of Europe to America, Canada, Australia, Canada, Australia, Israel...’They say they can’t leave me, but I tell them: “Go, get out. My parents left my grandparents behind in Berlin and brought me to safety in England. Now I want you to leave so that my grandchildren will be safe.”’ There is an unbearable desperation in her plea. But she has a point.

As tens of thousands of demonstrators march through the streets of Europe, the chants are modified but the message remains substantially intact: ‘Hamas, Hamas, Hamas — Jews to the Gas’. Or, more simply: ‘Death to the Jews’. Many European Jews, even well-established, affluent Jews, have been checking the suitcase they keep packed under the bed. They have been here before and many are (albeit reluctantly) reading the writing on the wall.

To some extent I thought I was inured. I grew up in postwar apartheid South Africa where a subtle undercurrent of anti-Semitism was a fact of everyday life. So while I was disturbed by manifestations of mob anti-Semitism, I was also less vulnerable to shock. That’s just how people are. Living in genteel, leafy Hampstead Garden Suburb provides an additional layer of protection from such crass outbursts.

But my sanguine state ends abruptly when I am out walking on Saturday. A hundred yards from my front door, I encounter the slogan, freshly painted in yellow, across the pavement: ‘Kill the Filthy Jews’. I am shocked. And shocked that I am shocked. The message is too close for comfort. The leafy gentility is, after all, an illusion.

Source:The terrible warning of a Holocaust survivor 

Sadly Davis' tale is not unique, mainstream politicians the United States  rail against the "Jewish influence on foreign policy" a meme take from Anti-Semitic texts, TV commentators complain about the number of Jews on the Supreme Court. College campus' have become a safe haven for anti-Semitic professors, a man who led two Anti-Semitic pogroms in NYC advises the president and gets his own show on MSNBC.

Despite its rampant Antisemitism,  the Occupy Wall Street protests were supported by the major labor unions, the Democratic Party Leadership in Congress and even the President of the United States.

Today when Israel is attacked by terror, the rest of the world turns their head away just as they did during Hitler's final solution.

FDR refused to allow Jews to escape to American shores, the British not only refused them entry into England but also closed down their access to the holy land, they could have saved millions but wouldn't.  They were only Jews. The president of France calls the Israeli Prime Minister a liar and the President of the United States complains about having to deal with  Binyamin Netanyahu for the same reason.  They are trying to make the Israeli leader and his country  a little less than human, their reason is the same as it was for FDR and Churchill, they are only Jews.

The Nazi's even got support from the Jews. The Jewish-owned NY Times  ignored the Holocaust while it was happening, just as today they extol a bias against the Jewish State today. The AJC discouraged open talk of the Holocaust while it was happening, fearing that activism would create an anti-Semitic backlash. This was documented in Naomi Wiener Cohen’s book Not Free to Desist: The American Jewish Committee, 1906-1966, published in 1972.

Nothing has changed, today  the Jew haters work with the ADL to prevent Jews from speaking out against an Anti-Israel President of the United States. Jewish politicians walk blindly behind their party's Anti-Israel President and damn the Jewish people with their silence  just to be able to move up the political ladder will not be able to silence us either.

Last week the Secretary of State John Kerry appeared on Palestinian television and incited violence against Israeli Jews. Jewish politicians like Chuck Schumer, Steve Israel, and Jerrold Nadler were silent.

We owe it to the people who died during the Holocaust to speak out while they remain silent.
 May the memory of what started 75 years ago today be a reminder of what happens when the world is silent. May there always be people to speak out against the silence.

May the memories of the victims of the Shoah always be for a blessing