The Bitterness of Recollection

West Germany’s solemn commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the infamous Kristallnacht ended on a note of national embarrassment and personal humiliation. An address to a special session of the parliament by its respected Speaker, Philipp Jenninger, proved to be widely misunderstood, not least by many who stalked from the chamber in protest as it was being delivered. Accused by opposition politicians and some within his own Christian Democratic Party of insensitivity to the crimes committed against the Jewish people, Jenninger felt compelled to resign.

Yet, as a reading of Jenninger’s speech makes clear, he was in no way trying to justify or apologize for the ineradicable crimes committed by Germany and its allies during the dozen years of Adolf Hitler’s rule. Instead, he was seeking, perhaps somewhat infelicitously but certainly sincerely, to recall the climate of opinion that prevailed in Germany in the 1930s and Hitlerism’s undeniable and tragic appeal for the mass of Germans. It was in that context that Jenninger spoke of and condemned the popular passivity and silence--the tacit tolerance--that accompanied the “torment, oppression . . . and degradation” inflicted on the Jews of Germany and Austria the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, the night of the broken glass.

That night--with its officially licensed orgy of arson, pillage, sadism and murder--is taken as an opening event in the Holocaust that, before its end in 1945, would snuff out the lives of 6 million European Jews. When the war ended and the enormity of this crime was fully revealed, most nations reacted with horror.

What must not be forgotten, though, is that before there was shock and revulsion at what Germany and its willing helpmates elsewhere did, there had been indifference and even callousness toward what was so plainly threatened. The record is clear: Free nations, not least among them the United States, had repeated opportunities from the late 1930s on to provide refuge and so assure life to hundreds of thousands of Jews from Germany, Austria, France and other continental countries. For a number of reasons--not least of which was widespread anti-Semitism at both popular and official levels--almost nothing was done, not even to save the imperiled children. With only nominal exceptions, sanctuary was denied, silence prevailed, the victims were abandoned to their fates.

The criminal responsibility for what happened has long been fixed. But no remembrance of that terrible period can overlook the moral burden that must also be shared by the countries that had the chance to limit the crime that was about to occur, but chose to do nothing. To save a single life, the Talmud says, is to save a whole world. There was a time when hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. Instead, an entire universe of worlds was lost.