Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
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Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#2My father is 96 years old and grew up in Nazi Germany in a small town called Bautzen. I did several hours of interviews with him about his experiences growing up, which I am turning into a book. This is what he said about Kristallnacht:
"I remember Kristallnacht. I was 11 years old. You heard that on this street a house burned down or that there are rambunctious people coming. There may have been five buildings vandalized in Bautzen. I saw a house with some damage, mainly windows broken. People were going in and out of the house. It did not seem significant at the time. They didn’t even talk about Kristallnacht in the paper. It just seemed to me like, “Well some people don’t like other people.” I didn’t even realize it was against the Jews. There was no specific graffiti on those vandalized houses. In a small town like Bautzen, there wasn’t much of a Kristallnacht but when you went to bigger cities there probably was. But I didn’t know about it at the time. I only realized the magnitude of it after the war.
What was more noticeable was Nazi propaganda. There were banners that read something like, “Jews are our misfortune.” There were signs on almost all shops indicating whether they were Jewish or not. Most of them were not Jewish. This was a big thing!"
Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#3My father is 96 years old and grew up in Nazi Germany in a small town called Bautzen. I did several hours of interviews with him about his experiences growing up, which I am turning into a book. This is what he said about Kristallnacht: "I remember Kristallnacht. I was 11 years old. You heard that on this street a house burned down or that there are rambunctious people coming. There may have been five buildings vanda…
> It just seemed to me like, “Well some people don’t like other people.” I didn’t even realize it was against the Jews.
This is one of the most fascinating parts of the Nazi rise to power to me. The sheer mundanity of it all. So many questions.
- what events today seem like ‘not a big deal’ but will go down in history like kristalnacht?
- Hitler is a byword for evil now, but at the time he was just another mundane talking head. We remember him as a frothing monster, but he was just a man, nothing special: Bavarian postmaster. Which talking head alive today will carry that legacy?
- Could it have been prevented? How do you stop the mundane effectively? Is it happening right now? Could we even tell?
Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#4[dead]
Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#5[dead]
Analagous to The 1619 Project. I wonder if many other countries have movements to define themselves by the worst aspects of their history.
Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#6Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#7Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#8My father is 96 years old and grew up in Nazi Germany in a small town called Bautzen. I did several hours of interviews with him about his experiences growing up, which I am turning into a book. This is what he said about Kristallnacht: "I remember Kristallnacht. I was 11 years old. You heard that on this street a house burned down or that there are rambunctious people coming. There may have been five buildings vanda…
> It just seemed to me like, “Well some people don’t like other people.” I didn’t even realize it was against the Jews. This is one of the most fascinating parts of the Nazi rise to power to me. The sheer mundanity of it all. So many questions. - what events today seem like ‘not a big deal’ but will go down in history like kristalnacht? - Hitler is a byword for evil now, but at the time he was just another mundane ta…
Not really an event, but I think factory farming may be seen as an overlooked evil in the future.
Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#9[dead]
Analagous to The 1619 Project. I wonder if many other countries have movements to define themselves by the worst aspects of their history.
it's not about defining, it's about owning that the present is the way it is because of harms inflicted on certain groups. and, knowing that, perhaps finding ways to make amends so that the best ideals of the present can be applied to everyone. some groups still do not have opportunities or possibilities because of the ripples of the past.
to take your 1619 Project example. generational wealth has vast differences between black families and white families because of Jim Crow. as a society that supposedly prides itself on equal opportunity for all, we have not lived up to that and it creates a dissonance in the ways in which we say we hold certain ideals but act counter to those ideals.
since this is HN, if a CEO said one thing and behaved differently, you'd lose faith in that CEO. same thing applies to national image and national identity.
Re: Night of Broken Glass Ended Jewish Life in Germany
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It just seemed to me like, “Well some people don’t like other people.” I didn’t even realize it was against the Jews. This is one of the most fascinating parts of the Nazi rise to power to me. The sheer mundanity of it all. So many questions. - what events today seem like ‘not a big deal’ but will go down in history like kristalnacht? - Hitler is a byword for evil now, but at the time he was just another mundane ta…
Not really an event, but I think factory farming may be seen as an overlooked evil in the future.
I so hope it will