The Bizarre Story of

Kristallnacht

The Bizarre Story of Kristallnacht

Crystal Night' 1938:
The Great Anti-German Spectacle
INGRID WECKERT

(Paper Presented to the Sixth International Revisionist Conference)

"Crystal Night" is the name that's been given to the night of 9-10 November 1938. In
almost all large German cities and some smaller ones that night, store windows of
Jewish shops were broken, Jewish houses and apartments were destroyed, and
synagogues were demolished and set on fire. Many Jews were arrested, some were
beaten, and some were even killed. The "Reich Crystal Night" (Reichskristallnacht) was
one of the most shameful events of National Socialist Germany. Although the Jews
suffered initially, the greatest harm was ultimately done to Germany and the German
people.
Even people who are sympathetic to National Socialism cannot understand how this
event could have happened. Julius Streicher, the so-called "number one Jew baiter" [1]
for example, was shocked when he first learned about the demonstrations and
destruction the next morning.
The all-important question is: Who was responsible for the incident? It is generally
accepted, especially by contemporary historians, that the Nazi gang organized and
carried out the pogrom, and that the chief instigator was Propaganda Minister Dr.
Joseph Goebbels.
The truth of the matter is that Adolf Hitler was so disgusted by the incident that he
forbade anyone from discussing the matter in his presence. Dr. Goebbels complained
that he would now have to explain this terrible affair to the German people and the
world, and that he simply did not know what kind of credible explanation to give. If he
had actually been responsible for the Crystal Night, he surely would have had a well-
prepared explanation. The explanation he gave on the morning of the 10th was
extremely unconvincing and was generally not believed by the German public.

During my study of this subject, which resulted in my book on the Crystal Night,
Feuerzeichen, I found many facts which do not agree with the generally accepted
thesis. On the contrary, the evidence which I have found gives a completely different
picture.

The Story We Are Given

The generally accepted sequence of events, according to most writers on the subject, is
this:
In early October 1938 the Polish government announced that all Polish passports would
become invalid at the end of the month unless they received a special stamp before
then, obtainable only in Poland. This measure was meant to rid Poland effectively for all
time of all Polish Jews living in foreign countries, most of whom were in Germany. Many
of the approximately 70,000 Polish Jews living in the Reich at the time had arrived after
the First World War. Of course, the German government now feared that it would have
to permanently accept these 70,000 Jews. The German government tried to negotiate
this issue with the Poles, but they flatly refused.

On 28 October, just two days before the deadline, German police rounded up between
15,000 and 17,000 Polish Jews, mostly adult males, from across the Reich and
transported them to the German-Polish border. The deportees traveled in regular
German passenger trains with more than adequate space. Contrary to some claims,
they were not crammed into cattle cars. The deportees were well provided with food and
medical care. Red Cross personnel and medical doctors accompanied them on the
trains. [2]

The Polish border officials were surprised when the first trainloads arrived at the border,
and they let the Jews enter Poland. At about the same time, the Polish government was
deporting German Jews back to Germany. The next day, 29 October, the Polish and
German governments suddenly agreed to stop the deportations of their respective
Jewish populations to each other's countries. The deportations were completely halted
that night.

Among the Polish Jews deported was the family of Herschel Feibel Grynszpan
(Gruenspan), a l7-year-old then living Paris. What followed next is generally reported
either incorrectly or very one-sidedly. On 7 November Grynszpan went to the German
Embassy in Paris and shot Embassy Secretary Ernst vom Rath. It is said that
Grynszpan did this because he was furious over the deportation of his family. The truth
about his motivation is very different. It is also claimed that the German population,
upset by the news of vom Rath's death on the 9th, organized anti-Jewish
demonstrations, destroyed Jewish stores, and demolished or set on fire all the
synagogues in Germany. Demonstrations and destruction did take place, but the truth is
that they were not organized by the German people and did not affect most of the
synagogues in the Reich. Finally, it is claimed that the Crystal Night was the beginning
of the extermination of the Jews in Germany. This is entirely false.

German-Jewish Relations Prior to the Crystal Night

Before explaining how the events surrounding the Crystal Night differ from what is
generally believed, I must first give some background information about the peaceful
years in Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933. Anyone who is aware of the true
situation in Germany during the Third Reich era recognizes that the Crystal Night
episode was quite extraordinary. It was a radical abberation from the normal pattern of
daily life. The outburst was not in keeping with either the official National Socialist
Jewish policy nor with the general German attitude towards the Jews. The Germans
were no more anti-Semitic than any other people. In fact, Jews who had to leave other
European countries preferred Germany as a place to live and work.

Within the National Socialist-Party itself there were two distinct anti-Semitic factions.
One was scholarly and one was vulgar. The scholarly faction was centered around the
Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question. It published several journals and gave
lectures to civic and political groups. Its activities were consistent with the policy of
peacefully removing the Jews from Germany and resettling them elsewhere. The SS
was totally committed to this policy and rejected vulgar anti-Semitism. The vulgar anti-
Semitic faction tried to influence popular feeling. The chief exponent of this approach
was Julius Streicher, who published the unofficial monthly Der Stuermer. It used crude
caricatures to portray Jews in the most horrible way in an effort to convince readers that
the Jews were as evil as Satan. For years the motto "The Jews Are Our Misfortune"
appeared on the front page of every issue. The Stuermer often employed improper and
undignified means to make its point.
German National Socialism basically regarded the Jews as non-German aliens who had
proven themselves destructive to any nation that permitted them to dominate.
Therefore, the only way to prevent further problems was to separate the Jews from the
Germans. In other words, they had to emigrate. On this point the National Socialists and
the Zionists were in full agreement. Although the Jews made up less than one percent
of the total German population in 1933, they had power and influence in finance,
business, cultural affairs and scientific life far out of proportion to their small numbers.
Jewish influence was very widely regarded as harmful to German recovery after the
First World War. No legal measures were taken against the Jews in Germany until after
the international Jewish "Declaration of War" against Germany, as announced, for
example, on the front page of the London Daily Express of 24 March 1933. This
"declaration" took the form of a worldwide boycott of German goods. A week later there
was an officially sanctioned boycott of Jewish shops and stores throughout Germany.
This action was in direct response to the international Jewish boycott of German goods
already in effect.

However, the German response was a rather absurd affair and it was therefore limited
to a single day, the first of April 1933. Hitler and Goebbels privately recognized that the
German counter-boycott was a failure and would only turn people against the new
government. Furthermore, this one-day action came on a Saturday, the Jewish sabbath.

Religious Jews took malicious pleasure at the discomfort of the Jews who normally kept
their stores open on Saturdays and were now, in effect, forced by the government to
obey the Jewish law against work on the sabbath. The National Socialist regime
thereafter sought to diminish Jewish influence and power by strictly legal means. The
first German law which could be considered anti-Jewish was dated 7 April 1933.
Although the legal status of the Jews was restricted, each and every Jew knew what his
legal rights were and to what he was still entitled. There were no secret or extra-legal
measures against the Jews.

Ironically, it was precisely the official discrimination policy against the Jews which
reduced the effectiveness of anti-Semitic propaganda to almost nothing. The Germans
are a generally fair-minded people. When Germans saw their Jewish neighbors being
treated unjustly, they considered that far worse than the dangers which the Jews
supposedly represented simply because they were Jewish. Furthermore, the examples
of Jewish criminality and pervsersion described in the Stuermer were widely regarded
as exceptions to normal Jewish behavior.

The average German was convinced that the Jews whom he knew personally were
completely unlike the criminal types sometimes described in newspapers. In my home
town of Berlin most of the doctors and lawyers were still Jewish. And even the public
health officer for children in the district of Berlin where my family lived was a Jew who
kept this job throughout the war. I still remember one day when my mother returned
from her Jewish doctor. She told us that she hadn't been able to see him because he
was no longer there. He had been taken away - hauled off the previous night. My
mother was very upset. A crowd of people had gathered outside his house. They were
all shocked, and they discussed the injustice of this measure quite openly. My parents
later talked about what had happened, and they both agreed that the doctor had never
really done anything wrong. Their reaction was typical. A few days later our family
pediatrician, who was also Jewish, was likewise taken away.

At the time I did not know what it meant to be taken away. It was only many years after
the war, when I started reading the Holocaust literature, that I learned that I was
supposed to believe that to be taken away meant deportation to a concentration camp
and probable death. But like so many thousands of others, these two doctor families
were not exterminated. One summer day in 1973, as I was walking through the streets
of the German quarter in Tel Aviv, I came upon the name plates of both doctors on the
doors of two houses. I immediately tried to visit them and found out that both families
had migrated to Palestine in 1939. Although one of them had died in the meantime in
Israel, I was able to speak to the other. He remembered my father very well and
explained that when he and his family were arrested, they were taken to a camp and
given the choice of either signing a document declaring their intention of emigrating
from Germany or being taken to a labor camp. He and his family chose to emigrate. In
fact, most German Jews survived the anti-Semitic measures quite well. That does not
mean that those measures were not unfair to individual Jews, but they could usually
manage to live with them.

The Haavara Agreement

As already mentioned, the main goal of Germany's Jewish policy was to encourage the
Jews to emigrate. After the beginning of the international Jewish boycott against
German goods in March 1933, the Jewish community in Palestine contacted the
German government and offered a break in the boycott as far as Palestine was
concerned provided it was combined with Jewish emigration from Germany. As a result,
the "Haavara" or "Transfer" agreement was signed by the Germans and Jews in May
1933. [3] The Jewish community thus concluded an extremely beneficial agreement with
the National Socialist government only a few months after its formation. This agreement
was a crucial phase in the creation of the State of Israel. When I made this claim in my
book Feuerzeichen, which appeared in 1981, some readers considered it outrageous.
[4] But then this same claim was made in The Transfer Agreement, a book by Edwin
Black published in 1984. The final paragraph of his book concludes with the statement
that the continuing economic relationship between the Jewish community of Palestine
and National Socialist Germany was "an indispendable factor in the creation of the State
of' Israel." [5]
The Haavara agreement made it possible for any Jew to emigrate from Germany with
practically all of his possessions and personal fortune provided that Jews could deposit
all of their assets in one of two Jewish-owned banks in Germany which had branch
offices in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Upon arrival in Palestine they could withdraw their
assets according to the terms of the agreement. The German capital of these two
Jewish banking firms was guaranteed by the German government. Even after the war
these assets were fully available to the Jewish owners or their representatives If a Jew
did not wish to emigrate immediately he could transfer all of his personal assets to
Palestine where they would be safeguarded by a trustee while he remained in Germany
for an indefinite period with emigration as his eventual goal. In the meantime his
personal fortune was safe outside of Germany.

Even poorer Jews who did not possess 1,000 English pounds were able to emigrate to
Palestine with credits provided through the Haavara. The British authorities generally
required minimum assets of 1,000 pounds for each immigrant to Palestine if he was not
entitled to a so-called worker's certificate. Only a limited number of these certificates
were available and they were issued only to persons with special job skills. In addition,
Jews emigrating to Palestine were exempt from the so-called "Reich flight tax," which all
emigrating Germans normally had to pay. However, the Jewish companies which
arranged the transfers charged the emigrants a fixed percentage of their total assets.
The Haavara agreement remained in operation until the end of 1941 when the United
States entered the war.

National Socialist Ethical Standards

I am always amazed whenever I read books about the Third Reich published after the
war. Most give an almost totally false impression of the reality of the Third Reich. The
Germany of Adolf Hitler was not the Germany described by such books. It was quite
different. I was brought up during the Third Reich. Along with my entire generation, I
received an education of the highest ethical standards. We were brought up to love and
respect our country and people. We were taught to be proud of its great history. The
heroes of Germany's past represented our great ideals. They spurred us to honesty and
responsibility in our own lives. In my opinion, the youth of Adolf Hitler's Germany was
the finest of all Europe and perhaps of the entire world.

The same ethical standards applied to the SS and SA. The SA stormtroopers were not
sophisticated men. They usually preferred to use their fists before using their heads, but
they acted according to the ideals which they had been taught: honor, faithfulness,
honesty and devotion to their people and country. They were not at all the sadistic
beasts portrayed by so-called historians. It was their faithfulness and gallantry which
saved Germany from chaos and Communism. It is sheer stupidity to describe the SA
men as blood-thirsty killers, as is widely done today. Although some individual SA men
may have committed acts of brutality, it is nonsense to blame the entire organization or
the whole German people and its government for such behavior. Individual SA men
were indeed involved in the Crystal Night incident. But far fewer actually participated
than has been claimed. Of the 28 SA Groups which existed in Germany at the time, the
available evidence indentifies only three as having actually received orders to join the
anti-Jewish demonstrations.[6???]

What Really Happened During the Crystal Night

Now let us look at what really happened during that fateful night. After 1945 any harm
ever done to any Jew in National Socialist Germany has been described in great detail
in many publications and combined with other stories to give exaggerated figures which
have then become the so-called "historical truth." How strange it is then that despite the
passage of more than forty years, no one has established the true extent of the damage
done to the Jews during the Crystal Night. All one can learn from history writers is that
"all" synagogues were demolished and that "all" shop windows were destroyed. Aside
from this vague description, one is given almost no details.
On the basis of the so-called "historical truth" about the Crystal Night, the President of
the World Jewish Congress, Nahum Goldmann, had the chutzpah in 1952 to claim 500
million dollars from German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer as reparation payment for the
damage done during that November night. When Adenauer asked Goldmann for his
justification for this enormous request, Goldmann replied: "You find the justification
yourself! What I want is not the justification but the money." [7] And he got his money!
Goldmann may have interpreted the willingness of the German Chancellor to pay a half
billion dollars as proof for the claim that all synagogues had been destroyed. Why else
would Germany be so foolish as to pay for something which never happened? All the
same, the "historical truth" that "all" German synagogues were destroyed is a lie.
In 1938 there were approximately 1,400 synagogues in Germany, of which only about
180 were destroyed or damaged. Furthermore, Jews owned approximately 100,000
shops and department stores in Germany in 1938. Of this number, only about 7,500 had
their windows broken. These figures show just how much the so-called "historical truth"
differs from what actually happened. The damage and destruction that did actually
occur was, of course, a terrible shame, but the exaggerations, especially by German
historians who use them to condemn their own people, are also a shame.

History writers tell us that during the Crystal Night all the Jews were frightened, meekly
accepted whatever happened to them and watched the destruction of their property with
no resistance. The contrary is true. While going through the files on this subject, I found
many documents which report precisely just the opposite of what is claimed. The fact is
that in many cases Jews and their German neighbors fought together against the
attackers, pushing them down staircases. Street mobs were beaten up and chased
away in more than one case. Police and Party officials were generally on the side of the
Jews. Some Jewish community leaders went to police stations the next morning and
asked the police to investigate the damage done to their synagogues. The resulting
police reports are still available in the files today.

Also contrary to what we have been told, most Jews were not directly affected by these
events. In Berlin, for example, all of the teachers and pupils of the city's largest Jewish
school, which served the entire Berlin area, appeared in their classes the next morning
without having noticed anything unusual during the previous night. Heinemann Stern,
the Jewish principal of that school, wrote in his postwar memoirs that he noticed a
burning synagogue on his way to the school on the morning after the Crystal Night, but
he thought it was just an accidental fire. It was only after he arrived at the school that he
received a telephone call informing him of the destruction of the previous night. He then
went on with his classes of the day and only during the first recess did he take the
trouble to inform the entire student body about what had happened. [8]
How can such evidence be reconciled with the claim by Herman Graml, a prominent
German historian and associate of the Munich Institute of Contemporary History, who
wrote: "Every single Jew was beaten, chased, robbed, insulted and humiliated. The SA
tore the Jews from their beds, mercilessly beat them in their apartments and then ...
chased them almost to death ... Blood flowed everywhere." [9] Is it conceivable that
thousands of Jewish children would be have been sent to school by their parents on the
morning after that fateful night if the attacks against Jews had been so horrific or
extensive? Would any parents have let their children go to school if they had thought
there was even the slightest danger of them being attacked by roving gangs of SA
men? I think the answer is clearly no! Deplorable things did indeed happen which were
bad enough, but the fantasies of modern historians and history writers such as Graml
are simply inexcusable.

The Grynszpan Story

It was Herschel Feibel Grynszpan (Gruenspan) who initiated the entire Crystal Night
affair by shooting the Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath.
History writers tell us that the 7-year-old Grynszpan was merely a poor Jewish boy who
had been driven to despair by the injustice done to his family and who, in his deep
depression, shot the young German diplomat. The fact, however, is that Grynszpan had
not shown any previous interest in his family's fate. He had wanted to be free of them
and had gone to Paris to live on his own.

When the French police asked Grynszpan why he had shot vom Rath, he gave several
contradictory explanations:

Version 1: He did not mean to kill vom Rath. He had wanted to kill the German
ambassador but because he did not know the ambassador personally, he shot vom
Rath instead by mistake.
Version 2: He had only wanted to kill himself, but wanted to do so directly beneath a
portrait of Adolf Hitler. In this way he hoped to become a symbol for the Jewish people,
who were being murdered daily in Germany.
Version 3: He had not intended to kill anyone. Although he had a pistol in his hand, he
did not know how to handle ithow to handle it properly and it simply went off
accidentally.
Version 4: He could not remember what had happened while he stood in vom Rath's
office. All he remembered was that he was there, but did not remember why.
Version 5: He couldn't understand the question at all. He must have had a complete
blackout because he no longer remembered anything.
And finally, version 6, which he gave several years later to German officials: Whatever
the French police had written down about his reason was nonsense. The true story is
that he used to procure young boys for the German embassy secretary because vom
Rath had been a homosexual. And he shot vom Rath because he had not been paid for
his services. This is the only explanation which he later retracted during interrogation.

However, none of these explanations is correct.

The true story is far less heroic. Grynszpan had left his family in Hannover, Germany, in
1936 after finishing elementary school but without graduating. His father had been a
piece-work tailor who had moved from Poland to Germany after the First World War.
Herschel had a reputation for disliking work and he hung out at the homes of his uncles
in Brussels and Paris. In February 1938 his Polish passport expired and the French
government refused to renew his residence permit. As a direct result, his Paris uncle
insisted that Herschel leave his home because he was afraid of getting into touble with
the law. And now the story begins to get extremely interesting. Although Grynszpan had
no job or money (his uncle refused to support him), he was nevertheless able to move
into a hotel. His hotel happened to be just around the corner from the offices of an
important and influential Jewish organization, the International League Against Anti-
Semitism, or LICA. The questions which now arise are: Who supported him after
February 1938 and who paid for his hotel room? Although he had no apparent means of
support or even valid identity papers between February and November 1938,
Grynszpan was nevertheless able to purchase a handgun for 250 francs on the morning
of 7 November 1938 and then, about an hour later, go to the German Embassy and
shoot vom Rath.

Grynszpan was arrested at the scene and was taken to a police station. Although he
was a totally obscure Polish Jew with no money and no apparent supporters,
nevertheless one of France's most famous lawyers, Moro Giafferi, appeared at the
police station a few hours after the shooting and told the police that he was Grynszpan's
attorney. Nothing could possibly have appeared about the shooting in any newspaper
before his arrival. How then could Moro Giafferi have possibly known about the
shooting? Why was he so eager to defend this young foreigner? And finally, who was
going to pay his attorney fees? As it turned out, Giafferi took good care of Grynszpan
during the following years. Before the Grynszpan case could come before a French
court, the war broke out. After the Germans occupied France, he was turned over to
them by the French authorities. He was taken to Germany where he was interrogated
many times, but no trial ever took place. Moro Giafferi, who had moved to Switzerland in
the meantime, still managed to take good care of Grynszpan.

Many German officials were actively interested in the case. They wanted Grynszpan
brought to trial, but this never happened. Rumors circulated. A trial date was scheduled
but then postponed again and again and again. Whenever any official asked why
Grynszpan had not been brought to trial, he was given a different answer each time.
The veil of mystery surrounding this case was lifted only slightly many years after the
war when a note was discovered among the many hundreds of pages in the Grynszpan
file. This single short note stated simply that the trial against Grynszpan would not take
place for "other than official reasons." [10] It gave no further explanation. Although the
National Socialist regime supposedly committed the greatest imaginable crimes against
the Jews, the murderer Grynszpan survived the war and returned to Paris. Why to
Paris, where he could still have been arrested and tried for murder? But instead he
received a new name and new identity papers there. [11] From whom? Who was in
Paris to help him and once again take such good care of him?

Incidentally, the Grynszpan family also survived the war. The young man's father,
mother, brother and sister were deported to Poland as a result of the Polish passport
affair and shortly thereafter were somehow able to emigrate to Palestine. Amazingly
enough, this took place at a time when immigration to Palestine was limited to persons
who possessed at least 1,000 English pounds in cash. Grynszpan's father, a poor
piece-work tailor, certainly never had a fortune of 4,000 English pounds. Many years
after the war the father testified at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem that he and his family
had to give up all of their money except for ten marks per family member when they
arrived at the German-Polish border in October l938. [12] How did they ever raise the
4,000 English pounds only a short time later for their migration to Palestine? Who
organized their move?

Perhaps the answer to all of these questions is ... Moro Giafferi! He was not a sorcerer,
but someone even more powerful: he was the legal counsel of the LICA. The LICA was
founded in Paris in 1933 by the Jew Bernard Lecache and operated as a militant
propaganda organization against real or imagined anti-Semitism. Its main office is still in
Paris at the same address it was at in 1938. (Now known as the LICRA, it
unsuccessfully sued Robert Faurisson a few years ago.) Moro Giafferi was well worth
the fees LICA paid him as its legal counsel. He apparently enjoyed spectacular scenes.
He had already achieved international renown at a mass meeting in Paris following the
Berlin Reichstag fire of February 1933. Without knowing at all what had happened, he
nevertheless delivered a spiteful speech against National Socialist Germany in which he
accused Hermann Goering of setting the fire. In February 1936 Giafferi hurried to
Davos, Switzerland, where the Jew David Frankfurter had shot and killed Wilhelm
Gustloff, the head of the Swiss branch of the German National Socialist Party. During
the subsequent trial it was clearly established that Frankfurter had been a hired
murderer with backing from an unidentified but influential organization. All clues pointed
to the LICA, but with Moro Giafferi as his defense counsel, Frankfurter remained silent
about who, if anyone, had hired him. Amazingly enough, Frankfurter's answers to
questions about the shooting showed the same pattern as Grynszpan's answers almost
three years later after Giafferi arrived to help following the shooting of Ernst vom Rath.

Who Could the Provocateurs Have Been?

Like a medal, the Crystal Night has two sides. One side lies in the shining glare of
historical research while the other remains in the shadows. Until now no one (at least as
far as I know) has tried to examine the hidden side.
In the wake of the Crystal Night, almost everyone wanted to know who the culprits were.
Dr. Goebbels had to give an official explanation which was, in effect, that the German
people had been so enraged by the murder of Ernst vom Rath that they wanted to
punish the Jews and therefore started the pogrom. But Goebbels did not really believe
this story himself. To several persons he expressed his suspicion that a secret
organization must have instigated the entire affair. He simply could not believe that
anything so well organized could have been a spontaneous popular outburst.

One must understand the broad popularity of the National Socialist regime at that time
to realize how incredibly difficult it was to imagine that any secret, well organized
opposition movement could have instigated such a pogrom. We now know about some
of these so-called resistance organizations. But at that time such well-organized
opposition groups seemed preposterous, so overwhelming was the popularity and self-
confidence of Hitler and the National Socialist government. Although the National
Socialists were probably more aware of the danger of Jewish power and influence than
anyone else, they nevertheless totally underestimated it. In a real sense, they were far
too naive. One consequence of this enormous popularity and self-confidence was that
the Party leaders themselves simply could not imagine that it was not one of their own
colleagues behind the whole affair. Among the Party leaders fingers were being pointed
in all directions. Apparently to avoid internal wrangling and the harm that this would do
to their public image, an investigation to determine the instigators never took place.
Hitler believed that Dr. Goebbels, his closest confidant and the one man he could never
abandon, had been the instigator.

The only persons actually punished were individual SA men who had participated
directly in the pogrom and been accused in German courts of murder, assault, looting or
other criminal acts by Jewish or German witnesses to these crimes. But before any of
these cases ever actually came to trail, Hitler issued a special decree ordering the
postponement of all such cases until after the accused individuals were first prosecuted
by the Supreme Party Court, an internal court concerned with discipline within the
National Socialist Party organization. The most severe punishment which the Court
could impose was expulsion from the Party. In this way the Party hoped to remove any
guilty members from its own ranks before they appeared as defendants in the criminal
courts. In February 1939 the Chief Judge of the Supreme Party Court, Walter Buch,
reported his findings to Hermann Goering. From an examination of the Buch report as
well as many documents from some of the thousands of trials of so-called Nazi
criminals held after the war, and corroborating testimony by thousands of defendants
and witnesses, I have been able to gain a detailed and accurate understanding of what
actually happened during those fateful days and nights of November 1938.

Already on 8 November 1938, one day before the Crystal Night, strange persons who
had never been seen there before suddenly appeared in several small towns in Hessen
near the French-German border. They went to mayors, Kreisleiters (district Party
leaders) and other important officials in these towns and asked them what actions were
being planned against the Jews. The officials were rather startled by these questions
and replied that they didn't know of any such plans. The strangers acted as if they were
shocked to hear this. They shouted and complained that something had to be done
against the Jews and then, without further explanation, they disappeared. Most of those
who were approached by these strangers reported the incidents to the police or
discussed them with friends. They usually regarded the strangers as crazy anti-Semites
and promptly forgot about the incidents - until the next evening. Some of these
apparently crazy individuals really outdid themselves. In one case two men, dressed as
members of the SS, went to an SA Standartenfuehrer (Colonel) and ordered him to
destroy the nearby synagogue. To understand the absurdity of this one must know that
the SS and SA were completely separate organizations. A real SS member would never
have tried to give orders to an SA unit. This case shows that the strangers were
foreigners who did not even understand the distinctions of German authority. The SA
Standartenfuehrer rejected the demands of the self-styled SS men and reported the
incident to his superiors.

When the provocateurs realized that their efforts were not working with local officials,
they changed their tactics. Instead they tried to incite directly the people in the streets.
In another town, for example, two men appeared at the market place and began making
speeches to the people there, trying to incite them against the Jews. Eventually some
people did indeed storm the synagogue, but by then the two provocateurs had, of
course, disappeared. Similar incidents occured in several towns. Unidentified strangers
suddenly appeared, gave speeches, started throwing stones at windows, stormed
Jewish buildings, schools, hospitals, and synagogues, and then disappeared. These
unusual incidents had already started on the 8th of November, that is, before Ernst vom
Rath was dead. His death was only reported late on the evening of the 9th. The fact that
this strange pattern of incidents had already begun one day earlier proves that the
death of vom Rath was not the reason for the Crystal Night outburst. Vom Rath was still
alive when the pogrom began.
And this was only the beginning. Well organized and widespread incidents began on the
evening of 9 November. Groups of generally five or six young men, armed with bars and
clubs, went down the streets smashing store windows. They were not Jew-hating SA
men, enraged over the murder of a German diplomat. They operated too methodically
to have been motivated by anger. They carried out their work without any apparent
emotion. Nonetheless, it was their destruction that encouraged certain other individuals
from the lowest social classes to become a mob and continue the destruction.

There is another mysterious aspect to all this. Several district and local Party leaders
(Kreisleiters and Ortsgruppenleiters) were awakened from their sleep in the middle of
the night by telephone calls. Someone claiming to be from the regional Party
headquarters or the regional Party propaganda bureau (Gauleitung or
Gaupropagandaleitung) would ask what was happening in the official's town or city. If
the Party official answered "Nothing, everything is quiet," the telephone caller would
then say in German slang that he had received an order to the effect that the Jews were
going to get it tonight and that the respective official should carry out the order. In most
cases the Party leader, disturbed from his sleep, did not even understand what had
happened. Some simply dismissed the call as a joke and went back to bed. Others
called back the office from where the telephone voice had pretended to be calling. If
they managed to reach someone in charge, they were often told that nobody knew
anything about such a call. But if they reached only a lower official they were often told:
"Well, if you got that order, you'd better go ahead and do what you were told." These
telephone calls caused considerable confusion. All this came out months later during
the trials conducted by the Supreme Party Court. The Chief Judge concluded that in
every case a misunderstanding had arisen in one link or other of the chain of command.
But when they were confronted with apparently genuine orders to organize
demonstrations against the Jews that night, most of the Party leaders had simply not
known what to do.
The pattern of seemingly sporadic anti-Jewish incidents in small towns, followed only
later by a carefully planned outburst in many large cities throughout Germany, clearly
suggests the work of a centrally organized group of well-trained agents. Even shortly
after the Crystal Night, many leading Party officials suspected that the entire affair had
been centrally cordinated. Significantly, even Hermann Graml, the only West German
historian who has written in detail about the Crystal Night, carefully distinguished
between provocateurs and people who were simply carried away by their emotions and
spontaneously took part in the riot and destruction. Without providing the slightest shred
of real evidence, Graml claims that the provocative agents were directed bv Dr.
Goebbels.

Munich on the Ninth of November

While all this was happening across the Reich, a special annual commemoration was
being held in Munich. Fifteen years earlier, on 9 November 1923, a movement led by
Adolf Hitler, Erich von Ludendorff (a leading First World War General), and two major
figures in the Bavarian government tried to depose the legal government and take
responsibility themselves as a new national government. The uprising or putsch was put
down and 16 rebels were shot down next to the Feldherrnhalle, a famous old monument
building in central Munich. Accordingly, the 9th of November had been commemorated
every year since 1933 as the memorial day for the martyred heroes of the National
Socialist movement. Adolf Hitler and the Party veterans, as well as all of the Gauleiters
(regional Party leaders) met every year in Munich for the occasion. Hitler would usually
deliver a speech to a select audience of Party veterans at the famous
Buergerbraeukeller restaurant on the evening of the 8th. On the morning of the 9th
Hitler and his veteran comrades would reenact the 1923 "March to the Feldherrnhalle."
On the evening of the 9th the Fuehrer always held an informal dinner at the Old Town
Hall ("Alte Rathaus") with old comrades as well as all the Gauleiters. At midnight young
men who were about to enter the SS and the SA were sworn in at the Feldherrnhalle.
All of the Gauleiters and other guests participated in this very solemn ceremony. After it
was over they left Munich and returned to their homes throughout the Reich.

It is clear that the 9th of November date was chosen very cleverly. The annual
commemoration ceremony of that day insured that almost all of the Gauleiters would be
away from their home offices when the anti-Jewish demonstrations began. In other
words, the actual decision-making responsibilities that were normally carried out by the
Gauleiters were temporarily in the hands of lower-ranking individuals with less
experience. Between 8 and 10 November, subordinate officials stood in for the
Gauleiters who were either in Munich or en route to or from the annual commemoration
there. This temporary transfer of decision-making authority is very important because it
contributed to much of the subsequent confusion and thus helped the provocateurs.
Another contributing factor was the fact that no one expected any trouble. At that time
Germany was one of the most peaceful countries in the world. There was no reason to
expect any kind of unrest. It was only during dinner at the Old Town Hall that the first
sporadic reports of riot and destruction reached Munich from some of the Gauleiter's
home offices. At the same time it was learned that Ernst vom Rath had died in Paris
from his wounds.

What Was Goebbels Doing?

After the dinner was over, the Fuehrer left at about 9 p.m. and returned to his
apartment. Dr. Goebbels then stood up and spoke briefly about the latest news. He
informed the audience that vom Rath had died and that, as a result, anti-Jewish
demonstrations had spontaneously broken out in two or three places. Goebbels was
renowned for his passionate and inspiring speeches. But what he gave that evening
was not a speech at all but only a short and very informal announcement. He pointed
out that the times were over when Jews could kill Germans without being punished.
Legal measures would now be taken. Nevertheless, the death of vom Rath should not
be an excuse for private actions against Jews. He suggested that the Gauleiters and the
head of the SA, Viktor Lutze, should contact their home offices to make sure that peace
and order were being maintained. It's very important to understand that Dr. Goebbels
had no authority to give any orders to the others present.
As fellow Gauleiters they were colleagues of equal rank. Anyway, what he said was
apparently considered so reasonable that the others agreed and did what he suggested.

You may have heard the widespread allegation that Goebbels started the Crystal Night
pogrom with a fiery speech on that evening of 9 November. This widely accepted story
is false. The following facts will clarify this point:

As Gauleiter for Berlin, Dr. Goebbels had no authority outside of his Berlin district.
Although he was also the Propaganda Minister of the German government, this did not
give him any authority over Party officials. Furthermore, he had no authority whatsoever
over the SA or the SS.

Of all the National Socialist leaders, Dr. Goebbels would have understood better than
anyone else the immense damage that an anti-Jewish pogrom would cause for
Germany. On the morning of 10 November, when he first learned about the extent of
the damage and destruction of the previous night, he was furious and shocked at the
stupidity of those who had participated. There is substantial evidence for this.

How could a speech given after 9 p.m. on the evening of 9 November have possibly
incited a "pogrom" which had already begun the day before when the first provocateurs
appeared at municipal and Party offices to persuade officials to take action against the
Jews?

Although we do not know exactly what Dr. Goebbels said in his supposedly fiery
speech, we do know what the Gauleiters and the SA commander did after the speech
had ended: they went to the telephones and called their respective home offices to
order their subordinates to do everything necessary to maintain peace and order. They
emphasized that under no circumstances must anyone take part in any demonstrations.
These telephone instructions were written down at the home offices by whoever was on
duty. The orders from each Gauleiter were then passed on by telex to other offices
within the Gau or district. These telex messages are still in various records files and are
available to anyone who wishes to examine them.

Orders to Stop the Pogrom

While the Gauleiters were calling their home offices, the head of the SA, Viktor Lutze,
ordered all of his immediate subordinates, the SA Gruppenfuehrers, who were together
with him in Munich, to call their home offices as well. Lutze ordered that under no
circumstances could SA men take part in any demonstrations against Jews, and that
furthermore the SA was to intervene to stop any demonstrations already in progress. As
a result of these strict orders, SA men began to guard Jewish stores that very night
wherever windows had been broken. There is no doubt about this order by Lutze
because we have the postwar court testimony of several witnesses confirming it. The
SS and the police were given similar orders to restore peace and order. Himmler
ordered Reinhard Heydrich to prevent all destruction of property and to protect Jews
against demonstrators. The telex communication of this order still exists. It is in the files
of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. However, during the Nuremberg trial
this telex order was presented in three different forms, with forged amendments to
change the original meaning. In my book Feuerzeichen I undertook to restore the
original text.

Adolf Hitler joined the midnight celebration at the Feldherrnhalle. It was only after he
returned to his apartment about one o'clock in the morning that he learned about the
demonstrations which had been taking place in Munich, during which one synagogue
had been set on fire. He was furious and immediately ordered the police chief of Munich
to come see him. Hitler told him to immediately stop the fire and to make sure that no
other outrages took place in Munich. He then called various police and Party officials
throughout the Reich to learn the extent of these demonstrations. Finally, he ordered a
telex message sent to all Gauleiter offices. It read: "By express order from the very
highest authority, arson against Jewish businesses or other property must in no case
and under no circumstances take place." Synagogues were not specifically mentioned,
apparently because Hitler was still unaware of the burning of synagogues, apart from
the one in Munich.

How Did the SA Get Involved Despite the Orders From Its Own Leaders?

How was it possible that in spite of all these emphatic orders, so much damage and
destruction could have been done and that so many SA members could have
participated? According to the records, at least three of the 28 SA Groups did not obey
the orders of SA chief Lutze. Instead, they sent out their men to destroy synagogues
and Jewish buildings. In effect they did precisely the opposite of what Lutze had
ordered. What actually happened is clear from the testimony and evidence presented at
postwar trials against former SA men accused of participating in the riot. The trials, held
between 1946 and 1952, were based to a large extent on the report of SA Brigade 50
chief Karl Lucke and begins with these words: "On 10 November 1938, at 3 o'clock in
the morning, I received the following order: 'By order of the Gruppenfuehrer, all Jewish
synagogues within the Brigade district are to be immediately blown up or set on fire'."
Lucke then included in his report a listing of synagogues which had been destroyed by
members of his Brigade. This report has been cited by the prosecution at the
Nuremberg Tribunal and by practically all of the consensus historians ever since as
proof that the SA was given orders to destroy Jewish stores and synagogues.

The contradiction between the orders actually given and the statement made in the
Lucke report requires a detailed explanation. On 9 November the leader of SA Group
Mannheim, Herbert Fust, was in Munich together with the other SA Group leaders and
the SA Chief of Staff, Viktor Lutze. When Lutze ordered the Group leaders to contact
their home offices to stop all anti-Jewish demonstrations, Fust, along with the other SA
leaders, did just that. He called his office in Mannheim and passed on the orders he had
received from Lutze. The man who was on duty that night at the Mannheim SA office
telephone and who received Fust's order confirmed that he understood it and then hung
up. But he never passed on the order he had received. Instead, he transmitted precisely
the opposite order. The normal procedure would have been for the man on duty at the
telephone to immediately call the deputy group leader, Lucke, who was in nearby
Darmstadt. But instead he called SA Oberfuehrer (senior colonel) Fritsch and asked him
to come to the office. Fritsch had a reputation for not being particularly clever. When he
arrived, the man who had received the telephone call showed him a small paper slip
with a few notes on it which said that the synagogues within the Mannheim SA Group
district were to be destroyed. The man who had received the call explained to Fritsch
that the order had just arrived from Munich. Slow-minded as he was, Fritsch did not
know what to do and called the local Kreisleiter (district Party leader) and his deputy.
These two men then arrived at the SA office and discussed the situation, while at the
same time the telephone duty man notified other SA leaders, but still not the deputy
Group leader Lucke. In the meantime the small paper slip disappeared and the SA men
now arriving at the headquarters met only the Kreisleiter, who told them about the order
which he thought had come from Munich. No one asked for any further confirmation.
The SA men then left to begin the destruction. Hours later, when the whole action was
almost finished, the telephone guard finally called Deputy Group Leader Lucke and
passed on the false order. He also informed Lucke that the action had already been
going on for several hours. Since it was almost all over by this time, Lucke also
neglected to ask for confirmation of the order. It was already 3 o'clock in the morning.
Lucke then alerted the Standartenfuehrer of his Brigade and carried out the destruction
within the Darmstadt district.

At 8 o'clock the next morning Lucke sat down and wrote the report which was later cited
at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In fact, as already shown, there was no order to commit
arson or carry out destruction against any Jewish property from the Gruppenfuehrer in
Munich, but only from the telephone guard. Who he was remains a mystery. During the
postwar trials against members of this SA unit, none of the judges asked for the name
or identity of this telephone guard. This mysterious man was very probably an agent for
those who were actually behind the entire Crystal Night Affair.

The Fine Imposed on the Jews

Early in the morning following the Crystal Night, Propaganda Minister Dr. Goebbels
announced in a radio broadcast that any action against Jews was strictly prohibited. He
warned that severe penalties would be imposed on anyone who did not obey this order.
He also explained that the Jewish question would be resolved only by legal means. As
already mentioned, German government and Party officials were furious about what had
happened. Hermann Goering, who was responsible for Germany's economy,
complained that it would be impossible to replace the special plate glass of the broken
store windows because it was not manufactured in Germany. It had to be imported from
Belgium and would cost a great deal of precious foreign currency. Because of the
Jewish boycott against German goods, the Reich was short of foreign exchange
currency. Goering therefore decided that because this shortage was caused by the
Jews, it was they who would have to pay for the broken glass. He imposed a fine of one
billion Reichsmarks on the German Jews. This fine is always mentioned by anyone who
writes about the Crystal Night. But historians and history writers invariably neglect to
explain the reason for the fine.

It was certainly unjust to force Jews to pay for damage which they had not caused.
Goering understood this. However, in private he justified the fine by citing the fact that
the 1933 Jewish declaration of war against Germany was proclaimed in the name of the
millions of Jews throughout the world. Therefore they could now help their co-
religionists in Germany bear the consequences of the boycott. It should also be pointed
out that only German Jews with assets of more than 5,000 Reichsmarks in cash had to
contribute to the fine. In 1938, when prices were very low, 5,000 Reichsmarks was a
small fortune. Anyone with that much money in cash would certainly have had far more
wealth in other assets and could therefore well afford to pay their assessed portion of
the fine without being reduced to poverty, despite what history writers have maintained.

The Consequences of the Crystal Night

It is often said that the Crystal Night incident was the official start of the German "Final
Solution of the Jewish Question." This is quite true, but "Final Solution" did not mean
physical extermination - it meant only emigration of the Jews from Germany.
Immediately after the Crystal Night, Hitler ordered the creation of a central agency to
organize the emigration of the Jews from Germany as rapidly as possible. Accordingly,
Goering set up the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration ("Reichszentrale fuer die
juedische Auswanderung") with Reinhard Heydrich as director. This agency combined
the various government departments which had been involved with Jewish emigration. It
simplified official procedures for Jewish emigration, but its work was severely hampered
by the unwillingness of almost all countries to admit Jews. The only country to which
Jews could still easily emigrate was Palestine, provided they possessed one thousand
pounds sterling each, as required by the British authorities there.

Despite the favorable terms of the Haavara or Transfer Agreement, only a few German
Jews were willing to emigrate to Palestine. In those days Palestine was only at the
beginning of its development. It was still an agrarian country with very little industry. It
was only after the arrival of thousands of German Jews with their capital and experience
that industrial development really began there. The Jews in Germany were generally
employed in trade, industry, or the professions. There were little or no opportunities for
them in Palestine. For example, there was virtually no financial structure in Palestine in
the 1930s. There was no money market, no stock exchange, and no investment
banking. How could businessmen operate in such an environment?

Because so few Jews wanted to migrate to Palestine, special efforts were made to open
the doors of other countries, but this proved very difficult. Prosperous nations did not
want Jewish immigrants and poor countries were very unattractive. In the summer of
1938 an Inter-Governmental Refugee Committee was established with the American
lawyer George Rublee as its director. In January 1939 (that is, after the Crystal Night),
Rublee and the German government signed an agreement by which all German Jews
could emigrate to the country of their choice. Interestingly enough, it was the father of a
future American president and the father of a future German president who nearly
torpedoed this agreement: Joseph Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and Ernst
von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of the German Foreign Office and father of the
current president of the German Federal Republic. Adolf Hitler personally intervened in
the negotiating process and saved the agreement by sending Reichsbank President
Hjalmar Schacht to London to negotiate with Rublee.

Rublee himself later called it a "senational agreement" - and it was indeed sensational.
Special arrangements between the Inter-Governmental Committee and governments of
individual countries would guarantee the financial security of the migrating Jews.
Training camps would be established to prepare emigrating Jews for new jobs in their
future homelands. Jews in Germany who were more than 45 years old could either
emigrate or remain in Germany. If they decided to remain, they would be exempt from
discriminatory restrictions. They would be able to live and work wherever they wanted.
Their social security would be guaranteed by the Reich government, the same as for
any German citizen. As Rublee later noted, there were practically no incidents against
Jews during the time between the signing of the agreement and the outbreak of war in
September 1939.

The Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which was organized shortly after the
Crystal Night, was based on the provisions of the Rublee plan. A parallel Jewish
organization, the Reich Union of Jews in Germany ("Reichsvereinigung der Juden in
Deutschland"), was established. Its task was to advise Jews on all questions of
emigration and to act on behalf of Jews with the Reich Central Office. The two agencies
worked closely together to facilitate Jewish emigration as much as possible. In addition,
the SS and certain other National Socialist organizations worked with Zionist
organizations to facilitate Jewish emigration. Jewish groups greatly appreciated the
cooperation of the SS. For example, the SS established training centers where
prospective Jewish emigrants learned new job skills to prepare them for their new lives.

With the help of the Transfer Agreement and the Rublee plan, hundreds of thousands of
Jews migrated from Europe to Palestine. In September 1940 the Jewish news agency in
Palestine, "Palcor," reported that 500,000 Jewish emigrants had already arrived from
the German Reich, including Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia-Moravia, and German-
ruled Poland. Nevertheless, after 1950 it was claimed that the total number of Jewish
emigrants to Palestine from all European countries was only about 80,000. What
happened to the other 420,000 Jews? In 1940 they probably had no idea that later on
they were supposed to have been "gassed"!

Conclusion

I have tried to point out just a few unmentioned aspects of the Crystal Night issue which,
in my opinion, give a picture of what actually happened that is entirely different than the
one generally accepted. I am convinced that neither the German government nor the
leaders of the National Socialist Party instigated the Crystal Night. Ultimately it was not
the Jews but the Germans who suffered most as a result of this event. Even persons
sympathetic to National Socialism are still appalled when they think of the Crystal Night.
Many are under the impression that murder and arson were quite common under
National Socialism and that no Jew could be sure of his life or property. Nazi Germany
was supposedly a country without any civil rights. The Crystal Night incident was indeed
one of the darkest episodes of German history in the era of 1933 to 1945. But based on
all of the available evidence, these demonstrations were neither thought up nor
organized by German Party or government officials. In fact, they were completely
suprised and shocked when they learned of the riot and destruction. The pogrom must
have been thought up and organized by those who actually benefited from it and who
wanted to create havoc in Germany.

Who could they have been? If we keep in mind the deep involve ment of the Jewish
organization LICA in the murder of vom Rath, we may ask: Could the Jews themselves
have hoped to benefit from a pogrom? In the aftermath of the Crystal Night, the world
press became overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Jews, which is precisely what they
wanted above all else. The Zionists in particular counted on worldwide support in their
struggle against England, which then ruled Palestine as a British mandate. Jewish
immigration to Palestine was strictly limited at that time by the British because of
vehement Arab opposition to the arrival of ever larger numbers of Jews. As a result, the
number of Jewish immigrants dropped in 1938 to the lowest level since the beginning of
the century, when the Zionist mass migration to Palestine began.

To stabilize the situation, the British formulated a partition plan dividing Palestine into
Arab and Jewish portions. Despite serious reservations, the Jews agreed to the plan,
but the Arabs did not. They responded with an uprising known as the Arab Revolt. In
March 1938 the British government sent Sir Harold MacMichaels as High Commissioner
to Palestine. He succeeded in suppressing the uprising, but to appease the Arabs he
promised to urge his government to abandon the partition plan and halt further Jewish
immigration. MacMichaels returned to London in October 1938 to discuss his proposals
with the British parliament. The scheduled date for the final decision was 8 November
1938, the day on which the Crystal Night violence actually began.

German Embassy Secretary Ernst vom Rath had been shot just one day earlier, on 7
November. The conspirators no doubt hoped that vom Rath would die immediately, in
which case the anti-Jewish demonstrations would probably have also started on the 7th.
Could someone have hoped that a pogrom in nearby Germany would influence the
British to change their Palestine policy? Or that it would induce the outside world to
exert pressure on Britain to open Palestine to the Jews who were being so terribly
treated in Germany? I cannot give any definite answers. I can only speculate as to who
conspirators behind the Crystal Night really were and as to their motives. To me it
seems entirely plausible that certain Jewish groups were involved. The LICA was
almost certainly involved in the murder of vom Rath. In any case, the Crystal Night
incident was not an expression of the will of the German people. Nor was it organized
by Dr. Goebbels or any of the other German leaders. On the contrary, it was carefully
organized by people who worked in the shadows.

Notes
1. William P. Varga, The Number One Nazi Jew-Baiter: A Political Biography of Julius
Streicher (New York: 1981).
2. Even Helmut Heiber, a prominent contemporary German historian, had to admit
these facts. Helmut Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," Vierteljahrshefte fuer Zeitgeschichte,
5. Hg., 1957, pp. 154-172.
3. See: Werner Feilchenfeld, Dolf Michaelis, and Ludwig Pinner, Haavara-Transfer nach
Palaestina (Tuebingen: 1972); and, Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (New York
and London: 1984)
4. Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen: Die "Reichskristal1nacht," Anstifter und
Brandstifterpfer - Opfer und Nutzniesser (Tuebingen: 1981), p. 225.
5. Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 382.
6. W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer Nach Palaestina, p. 71.
7. Nahum Goldmann, Das Juedische Paradox: Zionismus und Judentum nach Hitler
(Cologne: 1978), p. 181.
8. Heinemann Stern, Warum Hassen Sie Uns Eigentlich? (Duesseldorf: 1970), pp. 298-
299.
9. Hermann Graml, Der 9. November 1938 (Bonn: 1958), p. 47 f.
10. H. Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," p. 164.
11. H. Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," p. 172.
12. Gideon Hausner, Justice in Jerusalem (New York: 196 ), p. 41.
Source: Reprinted from The Journal of Historical eview, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 183-206.

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