"The Jews experienced one
Kristalnacht in Germany in 1938.
Oberammergau's sole Jewish resident, Meyer had been expelled from the village by a mob right after
Kristalnacht. The leader of that mob, Anton Preisinger, now stood accused beside Lang.
My father was arrested--on
Kristalnacht, the unofficial pogrom that many think started the Holocaust--and sent with many of his congregants to prison and then to Buchenwald.
Jews in Central Europe were experiencing a new round of terror in 1938, after Germany's absorption of Austria and with Nazi attacks on Jewish property during
Kristalnacht. Many sought to flee, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) wanted to help resettle them, though not in the United States, which had a highly restrictive immigration policy, nor in Palestine, where the British government, beginning in 1939, had limited Jewish emigration.
In de naam van de heldin klinkt immers het scheldwoord voor een Duitser door: mof; en de "
kristalnacht" (III, 2), de "pruisische kuilen", de familieleden die elkaar begraven tot ze er zelf bij neervallen en de "voortdurende//dreiging van schijnwerperachtige straffen" (IV, 24) zijn evenzeer in dat verband te lezen.
This was all to happen again in 1930's Austria, when Jewish shopkeepers were humiliated by the Nazis and their sympathisers during the infamous "
kristalnacht".
But the Nazi pogrom against the Jews called
Kristalnacht had already taken place almost three weeks before on November 9, 1938 and shocked the humanists of the world.
The aftermath of
Kristalnacht when the Nazis attacked Jewish homes and businesses