On the night of November 9, 1938, exactly 80 years ago, Nazi Germany put on a display of unbridled anti-Semitic violence that was quickly dubbed Kristallnacht—the night of broken glass. For those Americans living there at the time, the scenes they witnessed or heard about left indelible memories:
Angus Thuermer, a recent University of Illinois graduate who was studying German in Berlin, recalled hearing “the smash and tinkle of broken glass” as thugs with Nazi armbands bashed in the windows of Jewish-owned shops; inside one of them another Nazi smashed a grand piano to pieces. Thuermer also saw smoke rising from a synagogue that had been set alight, one of approximately 1,000 synagogues that were destroyed across the country. “I was seeing, eye-witnessing an unreal frenzy,” he recalled. “It was the n-th power of what I had seen in Nazi rallies. That was sound. This was fury.”
Read Full Article »