Nevertheless, on 10 November, 1938, Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich ordered the attacks to begin. Beginning from around 10. 30 p. m. , members of the Gauleiters, the SA and the SS, mostly wearing civilian clothing, stormed the streets of Germany’s major cities, destroying Jewish property with sledgehammers and axes. The soldiers had received instructions not to harm German civilians or to endanger German property. Where a Jewish building stood next to a German one, it was smashed rather than burnt to the ground. In addition, the troops were ordered to arrest all Jews, especially healthy young men, and wealthy families. The authorities did not actually order the troops to beat or assault Jews, but this happened on many occasions, and the authorities turned a blind eye.
In the morning, there was glass everywhere on the streets of Germany’s cities. Vienna, the capital of Austria was also awash with glass. Almost the entire total of German and Austrian synagogues had been destroyed in a single night: that is, around 1,600. Over 7,000 Jewish shops were destroyed, some of them large department stores. Scores of Jews had been killed, and several Gentiles who had been mistaken for Jews. Many Jews had committed suicide, realizing that the game was now up, and that anti-Semitic persecution had now reached epic proportions. In addition, over 30,000 Jewish men had been arrested and taken to concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Here, they met with brutal treatment. However, they were released three months later on condition that they leave the country immediately. Overall, the death toll was estimated to be around 2,500.
One of the most disturbing aspects of the pogrom, besides the loss of life and the destruction of property, was the sick way that the Nazis and their civilian sympathizers desecrated the synagogues and cemeteries belonging to the Jews. Graves were raided, tombstones smashed and bonfires lit in the graveyards, onto which were thrown prayer books, scrolls, statues, paintings and other religious artefacts. Even the smallest synagogues in little rural villages were razed to the ground, both in Germany and Austria. Not only this, but the Jews themselves were often forced to clear up the damage, being taunted by erstwhile friends and neighbours as they did so.
Not surprisingly, the events of Kristellnacht prompted outcry from abroad. In London newspapers, there were reports of the anti-Semitic violence on the streets, as well as an account of what had happened to interned Jews at Sachsenhausen, where 62 Jewish men had been beaten so badly by police that 12 of them died.
However, despite public opinion abroad and the diplomatic repercussions for the German government, the Nazi leaders were determined to continue with their policy of persecuting the Jews. In fact, Kristellnacht seemed to mark a turning point: the Nazis’ violent anti-Semitism was now out in the open, and, moreover, had ignited a deep vein of anti-Jewish feeling within the German population. Hitler’s right-hand man, Hermann Göring, called a meeting of top Nazi officials ‘to coordinate and solve the Jewish question once and for all, one way or another’. With these sinister words, the Nazis ushered in new phase of persecution, in which Jews were to be further hounded into extinction.
First, a collective fine of one billion marks was to be levied against the Jews for the murder of vom Rath. The government also decided to avail itself of all the insurance money that should have gone to the Jewish owners of properties destroyed on Kristallnacht, as ‘damages’ due to the German nation.
Realizing that life in Nazi Germany was going to be made impossible for them, many Jews left the country: in total, in the ten months after the events of Kristallnacht, over one million Jews emigrated. Many found homes in other European countries, such as France, only to find themselves victims of persecution there later on in the war. Others went to the USA and to Palestine, and even to China.
After Kristallnacht, many European nations condemned the Nazi government. However, what was significant to the leaders of the Third Reich was that no one country actually came forward to oppose what was going on in Germany. After the events of World War I, none of the European nations was keen to involve its civilians in another horrific world war. Thus, Hitler and his henchmen were allowed to continue with their campaign of terror. They became aware that they could get away with whatever they wanted to, safe in the knowledge that neither Europe, nor the USA, would intervene.
Thus, Kristallnacht had a dual significance: signalling to the citizens of Germany that they could indulge their racist sentiments without fear of punishment from the government, indeed with encouragement from the authorities; and signalling to the rest of Europe that the Nazis were now in total control, and that Germany could be left undisturbed to carry out its cruel, inhuman programme of persecution and slaughter of the Jewish people.
Some historians have argued that had Kristallnacht provoked stronger opposition in Europe, German anti-Semitisim might have been nipped in the bud and the Holocaust might never have happened. However, through a combination of fears about another world conflict, and possibly a measure of anti-Semitism as well, the European powers left Hitler to his task of committing the greatest crimes against humanity that the world has ever known.
The Serbian Massacres
The mass genocide of European Jews by the Nazis in World War II is well known. However, today many people do not know that, in the Balkans, fascist elements in Croatia and elsewhere persecuted and killed over one million Serbs, either interning them in concentration camps, where most met their deaths, or torturing and murdering them in their own villages and towns in the most unspeakably brutal way. This persecution had its roots in a long enmity between the different ethnic and national groups, and after the war, the wholesale slaughter of the Serbs was to have many repercussions, resulting in renewed conflict in 1991 in Bosnia.
The main perpetrators of the atrocities in Yugoslavia were the Croatian Ustase army, which was a militia created by the pro-fascist government under Prime Minister Ante Pavelic. One of the first massacres they committed was on 28 April, 1941, when Ustasa troops appeared at the villages of Brezovica and Gudovac. The soldiers rounded up the villagers, singled out those of Serbian nationality, and ordered them either to convert to Roman Catholicism or to go back to their native land. During the raid, they killed 234 Serbs. Next, 520 villagers, including women and children, were attacked at Blagaj. They were beaten about the head until they died in a frenzy of violence that shocked even the most hardened inhabitants.
The violence continued at various areas around Livno, where over 3,000 Serbs were killed. At the Koprivnica Forest and the Risoveda Greda Forest, soldiers went on a rampage, hacking the bodies of women and children to pieces and throwing the bodies into ravines. Tales were told of terrible sadism, such as children being decapitated and their heads thrown at their mothers. Another instance of dreadful brutality occurred on 10 July at the small town of Glina, where 700 Serbs had gathered at a church to renounce their faith and convert to Catholicism. Instead, the Ustase attacked them, beating them to death with mallets, clubs and rifle butts, or stabbing them with bayonets. After this frenzied attack, members of the congregation were left to die, and the church was torched to the ground.