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"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" 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...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.[note 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 (in) 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 8th,  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 inGermany. 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  aberration 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. Der 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 perversion described in  Der 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. [note 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.[note 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."[note 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.

                                                     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

Nosember 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 17‑

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 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.

[end]

Tomorrow:  Who Could the Provocateurs Have Been? ‑

Part III

=====

Courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review

'Crystal

Night' 1938: The

Great Anti‑German Spectacle ‑ Ingrid Weckert

(Paper Presented to the Sixth International

Revisionist

Conference.)

This and other Revisionist articles are posted, among

many

other websites,

at www.ihr.org and www.vho.org

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Give me a fruitful error any time, full of seeds,

bursting

with its own

corrections."

(Vilefredo Pareto)

=====

=====

=====

Dr. Ingrid Rimland is a well‑known novelist, keynote

speaker, and

owner of the Zundelsite.  For further information,

please

visit

www.zundelsite.org

Subject:

       ZGram ‑ 2/27/2001 ‑ "Kristallnacht" ‑ Part III

   Date:

       Tue, 27 Feb 2001 05:10:55 ‑0800 (PST)

  From:

       [email protected]

    To:

       [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2001 ‑ Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram ‑ Where Truth is Destiny

February 27, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Part III focuses on the very odd persona of

"Grynszpan", a

young Jewish

hoodlum who was to play such a crucial part in the

unfortunate events of

"Kristallnacht":

[start]

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."t

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.

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.l2   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 Sociatist

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.

[end]

Tomorrow:  Munich on the Ninth of November ‑ Part IV

=====

Courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review

'Crystal

Night' 1938: The

Great Anti‑German Spectacle ‑ Ingrid Weckert

(Paper Presented to the Sixth International

Revisionist

Conference.)

This and other Revisionist articles are posted, among

many

other websites,

at www.ihr.org and www.vho.org

=====

Thought for the Day:

(EZ, can you write a small paragraph that it is LYCA

which

still makes

French Revisionists' lives miserable to this day?)

=====

=====

=====  Dr. Ingrid Rimland is a well‑known novelist,

keynote

speaker, and

owner of the Zundelsite.  For further information,

please

visit

www.zundelsite org

Subject:

       Subject: ZGram ‑ 2/28/2001 ‑ "Kristallnacht" ‑ Part IV

   Date:

       Wed, 28 Feb 2001 07:40:38 ‑0800 (PST)

  From:

       Ingrid Rimland <[email protected]>

    To:

       [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2001 ‑ Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram ‑ Where Truth is Destiny

February 28, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

In Part IV, Ingrid Weckert tells of the strange story

of

"strangers"/imposters pouring into Germany across the

borders of France and

Belgium at an opportune moment to incite the populace

against the German

Jews:

[start]

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 contimue

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 8th 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 vnm Rath had died in Paris from his

wounds.

What Was Goebbels Doing?

After the dinner was over, the Fuehrer left at about

g 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.

[end]

Tomorrow:  Orders to Stop the Pogrom ‑ Part V

=====

Courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review

'Crystal

Night' 1938: The

Great Anti‑German Spectacle ‑ Ingrid Weckert

(Paper Presented to the Sixth International

Revisionist

Conference.)

This and other Revisionist articles are posted, among

many

other websites,

at www.ihr.org and www.vho.org

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Tar‑baby ain't sayin' nuthin', and Brer Fox, he lay

low."

(Joel Chandler Harris)

=====

=====

=====

Dr. Ingrid Rimland is a well‑known novelist, keynote

speaker, and

owner of the Zundelsite.  For further information,

please

visit

www.zundelsite.org

Subject:

       Subject: ZGram ‑ 3/1/2001 ‑ "Kristallnacht" ‑ Part V

   Date:

       Thu, 1 Mar 2001 05:12:49 ‑0800 (PST)

  From:

       [email protected]

    To:

       [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2001 ‑ Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram ‑ Where Truth is Destiny

March 1, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

In Part V there is embedded a story that bothers me

in this

overall

thought‑provoking tale ‑ and that is that Germany

asked the

vandalized Jews

to pay for their own destroyed windows.  It is a

story that

simply does not

fit and has a nasty, vindictive ring to it which, in

my

mind, is a discord

in an otherwise believable story.

I asked Ernst Zundel how such dishonorable action

could

have been

explained, and he said that the government reasoning

was

that Jews would

vastly exaggerate their own suffering and collect

on "damages" that weren't

supported by evidence ‑ and that, in fact, many

insurance

companies ignored

the government directives and paid for destroyed

plate

glass windows

regardless.

In the wake of those horrendously inflated

"Holocaust"

claims, that

explanation makes sense.  Still, I wish the Third

Reich

government, mindful

of public image, would not have been so niggardly.

Just so you know where I stand.  The rest makes

perfect

sense.

Here is the second‑to‑last Weckert installment:

[start]

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:

   1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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?

4. 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

espective    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. 5.

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.

[end]

Tomorrow:  The Consequences of the Crystal Night ‑

Part VI

=====

Courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review

'Crystal

Night' 1938: The

Great Anti‑German Spectacle ‑ Ingrid Weckert

(Paper Presented to the Sixth International

Revisionist

Conference.)

This and other Revisionist articles are posted, among

many

other websites,

at www.ihr.org and www.vho.org

=====

Thought for the Day:

"Earth bears no balsam for mistakes;

Men crown the knave

and scourge the tool

that did his will."

(Edward Rowland Sill)

=====

=====

=====

Dr. Ingrid Rimland is a well‑known novelist, keynote

speaker, and

owner of the Zundelsite.  For further information,

please

visit

www.zundelsite.org

Subject:

       Subject: ZGram ‑ 3/2/2001 ‑ "Kristallnacht" ‑ Part VI

   Date:

       Fri, 2 Mar 2001 02:25:24 ‑0800 (PST)

  From:

       Ingrid Rimland <[email protected]>

    To:

       [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2001 ‑ Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram ‑ Where Truth is Destiny

March 2, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Now we come to the consequences of Kristallnacht and

to

this presentation's

conclusion:

[start]

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:

Josäph

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

InterGovernmental 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 (the) 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 Ger

nan

historian, had to

admit these facts. Helmut Heiber, "Der Fall

Gruenspan,"

ViertelFahrshefte

Suer  Zeitgeschichte, 5. Hg., 1957, pp. 154‑172.

3. See: Werner Feilchenfeld, Dolf Michaelis, and

Ludwig

Pinner,

Haavara‑Transfer nach Palaestina (Tuebingen: 1972);

arld,

Edwin Black, The

Transfer Agreement (New York and London: 1984)

4. Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen:

Die "Reichslcristal1nacht," Anstifter und

Brandstifterpfer 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 ú

10. H. Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," p. 164.

11. H. Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," p. 172.

12. Gideon Hausner, Justice in Jerusalem (New York:

1968),

p. 41.

   Bibliographic information

[end]

=====

Courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review

'Crystal

Night' 1938: The

Great Anti‑German Spectacle ‑ Ingrid Weckert

(Paper Presented to the Sixth International

Revisionist

Conference.)

This and other Revisionist articles are posted, among

many

other websites,

at www.ihr.org and www.vho.org

=====

Thought for the Day:

"The Lightning reached a fiery rod,

and on Death's fearful forehead wrote

the autograph of God."

(Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)

=====

=====

=====  Dr. Ingrid Rimland is a well‑known novelist,

keynote

speaker, and

owner of the Zundelsite.  For further information,

please

visit

www.zundelsite.org