Kristallnacht Crystal Night

Have you ever heard about the “Night of Broken Glass”? Well, we have to call it by the original name “Kristallnacht” that’s a German word that its significance it’s literally “Crystal Night”. Now, what was the “Crystal Night”? In simple words “Kristallnacht” was one of the many pogroms that were to come toward the Jewish community (at first) in Germany on World War 2. In the city of Paris, France on November 7 1938, a young German-born Polish Jew called Herschel Grynszpan (Sometimes Greenspan) murdered the German diplomat (and secretary of the German embassy on that city) Ernst vom Rath. Now, the Nazis were looking for an excuse to attack the Jewish community. What they did? They used the murder of vom Rath as an excuse to attack them. The Kristallnacht consisted on breaking and damaging Jewish-owned properties and synagogues. Later that night, 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and about 90 Jews died due to the beatings the Germans gave them. That night marked something, that night marked the beginning of a worse era for the Jews, the beginning of the holocaust.
Since that night, Jews were stripped completely of their rights.
The “Crystal Night” was followed by additional economic and political persecution of Jews. Some historians believed that that was the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. The “Crystal Night” ignited international outrage. It also discredited pro-Nazi movements in parts of Europe and North America, leading to eventual decline of their support. After the Kristallnacht Salvador Allende, Gabriel González Videla among others from the “National congress of Chile” sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler denouncing the persecution of Jews. Can you believe that also in 1939, a composer named Michael Tippett created a musical play (oratorio, melodrama) called “A Child of Our Time” which is based on the
“Kristallnacht”. I believe and it’s a fact that each and every one of us is different. Being different is not something bad or punishable, that marks who you are. During the “Crystal Night” families were torn apart just by being different (by being from a lower race, when it’s not true because there’s only one human race). I personally agree with Yehuda Bauer’s quote that says: “Thou shall not be a victim, Thou shall not be a perpetrator, but, above all, Thou shall not be a bystander”. We cannot afford to be indifferent but most of all we cannot afford to be a “bystander”.