Only Connect: Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass"

November 09, 2010

Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass"

German bystanders view smashed windows
Kristallnacht, November 9–10, 1938

It is the 73rd anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass, or Kristallnacht.

On November 9–10, 1938, the Nazis launched in Germany vicious pogroms — state sanctioned, organized anti-Jewish persecution and riots.

The Nazis plundered and destroyed synagogues and Jewish-owned stores, community centers, and homes. The shattered windows carpeting the grounds inspired the German word Kristallnacht to identify those pogroms. (German: Kristall, crystal, which refers to the appearance of the broken glass; and Nacht, night).

Poet, professor, and diarist Karen Alkalay-Gut's parents caught the last bus out of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) the night Hitler invaded Poland on August 31, 1939. She dedicates Night Travel to them.

Night Travel
for my parents

On that night in Danzig the trains did not run
You sat in the bus station till almost dawn
knowing that if you could not get out,
the invaders would find you, grind you among the first
under their heels.

Toward morning an announcement came of a bus,
and without knowing where it would go
you raced to the stop.
But the Nazis were there first, and you watched
as they finished their search -
checking each traveler for papers,
jewelry, a Jewish nose.

Among the passengers you recognized
a familiar face - a German woman - sitting
with someone else you'd seen
in the neighborhood.
They winked a greeting,
waited for the soldiers to leave,
and jumped out -
pushing you up in their place.

Thus you escaped to Berlin, remaining alive
by keeping silent through the long train ride
from Berlin to Cologne in a car filled with
staring German soldiers -

And arrived the next day in Holland,
black with fear and transportation.

— from Ignorant Armies by Karen Alkalay-Gut
Merrick, N.Y: Cross-Cultural Communications, 1994