Genocide as a Political Science : <i> Kristallnacht </i> Formula Haunts Today’s Unwanted

Its portents make 1938 an ugly year to remember.

In March, after long months of intimidation and threats supported by Austrian Nazis, Adolf Hitler occupied that nation without resistance while the world watched. Soon afterward, a young SS officer, Adolf Eichmann, appeared in Vienna. His task was to hasten the emigration of Austria’s Jews, and his success added significantly to the world’s refugee problem.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt called for an international conference on refugees, which convened in early July at the French resort town of Evian. Thirty-two nations sent delegates, but, as far as concrete results to alleviate Jewish suffering were concerned, the Evian conference amounted to little. Europe’s Jews were rapidly becoming a surplus people, unwanted in the Third Reich and not welcome elsewhere, either.

In late September, with a world war less than a year away, Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced the achievement of “peace in our time.” Its price was the annexation of much of Czechoslovakia by Germany, which brought more unwanted Jews under German control.

Meanwhile the presence of nearly 70,000 Polish Jews in German territory remained an embarrassment for the Nazis’ promise of Judenrein (a state “cleansed” of Jews). By late October, these Jews, rounded up by the Gestapo, were being deported to the Polish frontier. The Poles, however, were not ready to accept them. Blocked from Poland, unable to return to Germany, detained in hideous conditions, these unwanted Jews found themselves in a hapless no-man’s land. Among them were the parents of a 17-year-old student who was living in Paris at the time.

Learning of his parents’ plight, Herschel Grynszpan took action. In his wildest fantasies he could scarcely have anticipated what his determination would produce. Apparently Grynszpan’s intention was to assassinate the German ambassador to France, but in the early morning of Nov. 7, 1938, his bullets found instead Ernst vom Rath, a secretary in the German Embassy.

Under Joseph Goebbels’ direction, on Nov. 9 the German press editorialized that Jews as a community ought to be held responsible for Vom Rath’s death.

That night, Kristallnacht , the night of broken glass, ensued throughout the Third Reich. Hundreds of synagogues were torched. Plundering and looting of Jewish shops went unchecked. By the thousands, Jews were placed under arrest and sent off to concentration camps. Property damage totaled hundreds of millions of marks.

The action was the work of radical elements in the National Socialist Party who had been turned loose by a Goebbels speech in Munich during the 15th anniversary celebration of Hitler’s 1923 “beer hall putsch.”

Hard-hit though it left the German Jews, the rape of Nov. 9-10, 1938, proved minor in comparison to what emerged from the renewed power struggle that Kristallnacht set off among the Nazi leadership. Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goering, among others, were caught off guard by Kristallnacht , but, in addition to wanting to block a Goebbels power play, they were also convinced that street violence was counterproductive, not least of all economically. The Goering-Himmler argument carried the day. As the influence of Goebbels and the radical wing of the party declined, the Reich’s need for a decisive, coordinated and rational anti-Jewish policy became ever clearer.

There was no repetition of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany. Renewed emphasis fell on forced emigration for Jews, with Reinhard Heydrich directed to implement in Germany a program like the one established by Eichmann, his subordinate, in Austria. Experts in the controlled use of terror and bureaucratic pressure had finally suppressed the drives that resulted in random violence.

When policies of forced emigration proved insufficient to solve the Jewish question, those same experts would move on to organize the Final Solution. Thus, the ultimate significance of Kristallnacht was that it hastened the approaches to Auschwitz.

Kristallnacht --the event itself, the conditions that brought it on and, even more important, the results it produced--should provoke reflection 50 years later. For early November, 1988, has its portents, too. Some of them can be seen in Israel’s election returns, which signify a turn to the right, religiously and politically.

Peace for Israel in exchange for land, the hope of a viable Palestinian state on soil voluntarily relinquished by Israel--such possibilities are less likely now that Israel has voted. Instead, Israeli voices advocating a purely Jewish state are going to be more determined and strident than ever. Among them are those of the Moledet (Homeland) Party, which advocates the “transfer” of Palestinian Arabs from the occupied territories.

Kristallnacht happened because a political state decided to be rid of people unwanted within its borders. It seems increasingly clear that Israel would prefer to rid itself of Palestinians if it could do so. Their presence in Gaza and the West Bank is a liability and a threat to many Israeli intentions. Thus, the voice of Moledet, euphemistic and muted though it may be, is not to be taken lightly. This is particularly true when it seems equally clear that not many other nations in the world want the Palestinians, either. As much as any other people today, they are being forced into a tragic part too much like the one played by the European Jews 50 years ago.

The anniversary of Kristallnacht has become an occasion for reasserting “Never again!” That cry signals commitment to ensure the safety of Jews wherever they may be. At its best, “Never again!” signifies that and much more. It is a cry to forestall tragedy wherever people are unwanted. As a Holocaust scholar, as one who has lived and taught in Israel and who loves that country deeply, during this year’s remembrance of Kristallnacht my thoughts are on Palestinian plight at least as much as on Israeli security.