Kristallnacht – Through the Eyes of a Schindler Survivor’s Son

Kristallnacht – Through the Eyes of a Schindler Survivor’s Son

Featured on the Times of Israel Blog

 
 

On the night of November 9-10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide

 

antisemitic riot.  This week marked 87 years after this unconscionable event. The violence was supposed to appear as an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. But in reality, it was state-sponsored terror of Jews manifested in vandalism and fear.  The riot came to be known as Kristallnacht – “The Night of Broken Glass” or “The November Pogrom.”  The widespread terror throughout the country was seen in 1400 synagogues that were burned by the Nazis – religious objects that were desecrated.  There was also vandalism of thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, and the Nazis had broken into countless Jewish homes.  During Kristallnacht, the German police imprisoned about 26,000 Jewish men only because they were Jewish and deported them to concentration camps.

 

What led up to Kristallnacht was the increasingly restrictive and violent anti-Jewish measures in 1938 under the reign of Adolf Hitler. They were undertaken to drive Jews out of Germany.  During October 27 – 29th of that year, the Nazis deported more than 17,000 Jewish people – targeting Jews with Polish citizenship and passports in Germany.  It was the first mass deportation of Jews from the country.  It included the Grynszpan family.  The parents and two of the Grynszpan’s children had been deported from Hanover to Zbaszyn in Poland.  The family had a 17-year old son – living in Paris at the time.  After learning what happened to his family, he went to the German Embassy in Paris.  On the morning of November 7th, he shot and killed a German diplomat –  Ernst vom Rath.  Apparently, the murder was due to the son’s rage for the deportation of his family from Germany and other Jews with Polish citizenship.

 

Nazi leadership decided to use the murder as a long-anticipated excuse to undertake a national anti-wide Jewish riot.  Beginning on November 7th, Propaganda Minister for the Nazis, Joseph Goebbels, coordinated the Jewish violence and exploited the murder as part of a world Jewish conspiracy. The Nazi leadership cynically claimed that the pogrom was not organized in any way, and that the Jews themselves had provoked the righteous anger of the German people.

 

Kristallnacht was the impetus for the Holocaust manifested in hatred and executed with racial desecration – in short, dehumanization.  It’s origin rested in fundamental Nazi idealism – the hatred of others that were perceived as a threat to the Aryan race, especially Jews. Its effectiveness was executed in the manipulation of people’s minds – channeled through propaganda and conspiracy.  It was seen as ethnic cleansing based upon nothing that was real.

“The Night of Broken Glass” wasn’t due to revenge, or any form of justice for the vom Rath Murder.  It was nothing but unconscionable conspiracy.  The German nation had been told by the Nazis they must hold a religion, race, and culture accountable for the actions of one.

 

But Oskar Schindler, who saved my mother’s life and an immeasurable number of other Jewish lives in the Holocaust, finally differentiated himself from Nazi ideology.  They saw Jews as only parasitic vermin that must be exterminated on an unprecedented scale.  Schindler finally stood apart from the antisemitism that penetrated throughout Germany, the rest of Europe, and far too many others in every other part of the world.

 

My mother actually never told me she was a “Schindler” Jew until my father had told me that on Yom Kippur day, 1993, while in synagogue.  It was five years after she’d passed away.  The Rabbi’s sermon for Yom Kippur was the story of “Schindler’s List” due to the film being released in the coming weeks. Her trauma due to the Holocaust that manifested in hatred for Germans is why I felt that she never said to me or my brother that she was a “Schindler” survivor.  The story is being told in my debut book, In the Midst of Darkness, coming soon.

 

Initially, Schindler, as a member of the Nazi party – and its conviction to fascism -exploited Jews. Firstly, he confiscated the Emalia factory in Plaszow Poland from three Jewish owners in 1939.  Nazi decrees no longer would let Jews own property.  He also employed Jews due to being cheap labor, while knowing they were in a concentration camp, with barely enough food to survive.  But after he’d finally seen the atrocities that were being inflicted upon Jews in the Krakow Ghetto and the Plaszow concentration camp, he saved Jewish lives to a reach that was unforgettable. They were probably never more certain of their fate inevitably being death.   Schindler found humanity when there were very few that did in a world that didn’t feel differently.

 
The story of Oskar Schindler has been told along with the memory of Kristallnacht for us to see “That what brings us together can overcome what pulls us apart.”  The Night of Broken Glass that turned into the darkest chapter in the world’s history was based on nothing that was true, but Schindler eventually recognized that delusional reality after he’d seen the immeasurable carnage of the Holocaust, which infected a world. The learning by how we can’t forget what he did can’t be more pivotal since that time than now. He was a Nazi that risked his life and everything he had to save every Jewish life he could. The Jews were the race that the Nazi party convinced a nation and too many others everywhere else in the world, who were the enemies. 
 
 
 

How can we not, as a world, especially seeing the divide today, not want to act more like those amongst the righteous during the Holocaust  – people like Oskar Schindler, Irena Sendler, and Raoul Walberg –  non-Jews who saved Jews from a genocide?  But Schindler, apart from the others needed to see inhumanity to come back to humanity.  As we’ve seen from each of them, they weren’t influenced by others who were convinced of what they heard being the truth.  It’s our responsibility to act like they did that will let us prevent another genocide like the Holocaust from ever happening again.

Survivor And Inherited Trauma – The Shoah and 10/7

Survivor And Inherited Trauma – The Shoah and 10/7

 

There has been so much shared of survivors’ accounts of the atrocities they lived through in the Holocaust, but not nearly enough of the trauma they’ve passed onto their children, their children’s children and what future generations may have to bear.  If we only consider the approximately 11 million victims murdered in the Holocaust – of which there were six million Jewish lives, there must be at least that many survivors of family members and other relatives, who have probably been inflicted with survivor trauma.  That also doesn’t consider there may be at least that many descendants of survivors, who may live with generational trauma.

 

If we talk about the penetration of the unconscionable atrocities dictated by antisemitism due to the Holocaust and the trauma that it often leaves survivors and their descendants, we also cannot forget the impact of October 7th.  The trauma that survivors, witnesses and their descendants are left to confront of 1280 victims murdered by Hamas that day of unforgettable inhumanity or held in captivity.

 

Many who survived a time as catastrophic as the Holocaust and those in the aftermath of October 7th, including the survivors and families of the victims might not have been able to  or may never fully adjust to real life again.  Psychological research has found that survivor trauma and for the families of the victims during the Holocaust and October 7th will probably be inevitably passed on genetically to their descendants – let alone what future generations may need to confront.

 

I have felt Holocaust survivors could really begin to confront their trauma until nearly 50 years after the darkest era of history, when “Schindler’s List” was released in 1993 and Steven Spielberg founded the Shoah Foundation, a year later.  The “Brutalist,” a film released in early January this year, a three-time Academy Award winner deeply explores the impact of a Holocaust survivor living with trauma and confronting assimilating to life in America, being ruined by his past.

 

The film also lets us see what something like the Holocaust or October 7th. can do to the victims, when being forced to integrate back into society, without the help needed to reconcile what they’ve confronted.  Sometimes that only needs to be nothing more than sharing the trauma they live with to the depth needed.  But in other circumstances, especially unrelenting psychological fear needs to be treated professionally.

 

The Shoah Foundation has given a voice to over 59,000 Holocaust survivors for them to share their trauma since it was established in 1994, five years after my mother passed away.  After October 7th, the foundation also conducted interviews for survivor testimony and witnesses to share their account of the deadliest antisemitic attack since the Holocaust.  But that penetration of public consciousness also can’t be more needed for the descendants of survivors and witnesses of October 7th, that wont escape inheriting their parent’s trauma.  If not, the silence may only leave, or continue to leave them without enough awareness needed to really reconcile their trauma.

 

I have written a memoir titled “In the Midst of Darkness” – A Schindler’s List Survivor’s Story Never Told that tells what I know of my mother’s teenage life being a Schindler Jew that confronts “Second Generation” survivor trauma.  She was traumatized due to being a holocaust survivor, and that my dad left her when she was eight months pregnant with me for a German woman.  I never knew until five years after she passed away that she was a Schindler survivor.

 

My mother had been defined by her past after what she lived through in the Holocaust, and her  parents, four sisters and a brother, who were murdered in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz and Belzec death camps.  Her undeserved lifetime of hatred for my stepmother and every other German that my brother and I inherited helped lead to his nervous breakdown – a fate that was nearly mine.  He was institutionalized before even reaching 30. The Shoah Foundation and its right of passage for survivors to tell what happened to them in the Holocaust would have meant everything to my mother.  If she would have been able to share what she endured and lost, it may have helped to prevent some of her trauma that my brother and I inherited.

 

Jewish organizations, Holocaust museums and holocaust survivor groups have established support groups for descendants of survivors that live with Second and “Third” Generation (“2G & “3G”) trauma.  But that’s often where it ends.  The public socialization that’s needed for their stories hasn’t been anywhere even near what’s been seen for the stories of Holocaust survivors.  I only hope that as we see a new chapter of trauma that’s being confronted after October 7th, we provide much more of what’s needed for those impacted and their descendants compared to what’s been accessible for Holocaust survivors.  Despite that more of these resources have only been there for the past 30 years – coming after Schindler’s List and The Shoah Foundation was founded.

 

What’s really been that hard to understand and honestly heartbreaking is Holocaust museums, and many synagogues have not been very welcoming for a story of a Schindler Jew that confronts generational trauma.  Prominent institutions for Holocaust remembrance, including The US Holocaust Museum, The Museum of Jewish Heritage, The LA Holocaust Museum, The St. Louis Holocaust Museum, The Simon Wiesenthal Center, The Illinois Holocaust Museum and even The Shoah Foundation haven’t been very responsive, or receptive.

 

I’ve been told from these institutions they have other stories that are priorities, the story doesn’t align with their thematic programming, or mission, they can’t tell every story in a public format, or there are layers of bureaucracy that exist.  Maybe it’s the inherited trauma for descendants of survivors they don’t feel is worthwhile enough to be told to the reach we’ve given for survivor themselves.  But I can’t be certain.  What I do know is the descendants of survivors and future generations may need to confront due to the Holocaust and after October 7th need institutions of this nature to tell their stories.  How do they heal from the trauma they’ve inherited being left without enough of a public voice to share what they’ve confronted?  I’ve always known that “what you resist persists.”  That can’t be more real than for a trauma victim, especially someone who can’t tell their story.

 

If we realize, there may be 10 – 15 million descendants of holocaust survivors and thousands  that were impacted and their descendants by October 7th, who probably will be subject to trauma.  What they have to confront may even reach an unconscionable level.  Then how can we not give them every bit of compassion for the stories they need to tell?