Obama: 75th Kristallnacht anniversary a reminder of what silence in face of hatred can bring
Source: Jerusalem Post
US President Barack Obama marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Friday, saying that the 1938 pogrom in which Nazis burned synagogues and murdered Jews across Germany serves as an example of what silence in the face of hatred can bring.
"I join millions of people in the United States and around the world in marking the 75th anniversary of the tragedy of Kristallnacht – “the Night of Broken Glass,” Obama stated.
"On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi paramilitaries marched under the cover of darkness throughout the towns and villages of Germany and Austria smashing Jewish storefronts, arresting Jewish men en masse, ransacking Jewish homes, burning books and littering the streets with the parchment of sacred Judaic texts," the US president stated.
"Throughout the two-day wave of violence, hundreds of synagogues and thousands of businesses owned by Jews were destroyed or damaged. At least 91 Jews were killed, while another 30,000 were sent to concentration camps," he continued.
Read more: Obama: 75th Kristallnacht anniversary a reminder of what silence in face of hatred can bring
From earlier today:
Statement by the President on the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht
I join millions of people in the United States and around the world in marking the 75th anniversary of the tragedy of Kristallnacht – “the Night of Broken Glass.” On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi paramilitaries marched under the cover of darkness throughout the towns and villages of Germany and Austria smashing Jewish storefronts, arresting Jewish men en masse, ransacking Jewish homes, burning books and littering the streets with the parchment of sacred Judaic texts. Throughout the two-day wave of violence, hundreds of synagogues and thousands of businesses owned by Jews were destroyed or damaged. At least 91 Jews were killed, while another 30,000 were sent to concentration camps.
Kristallnacht foreshadowed the systematic slaughter of six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims. Seventy-five years later, Kristallnacht now signifies the tragic consequences of silence in the face of unmitigated hatred.
As we mark this anniversary, let us act in keeping with the lessons of that dark night by speaking out against anti-Semitism and intolerance, standing up to indifference, and re-committing ourselves to combatting prejudice and persecution wherever it exists. In so doing, we honor the memories of those killed and reaffirm that timeless call: “Never Again.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/11/08/statement-president-75th-anniversary-kristallnacht
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024002844
= new reply since forum marked as read
(not on the scale, but) all too common these days
America will live up to its own similar tragedies - one notable one having occurred some 17 years before Kristallnacht, not in Europe, but right here in the U.S. in Tulsa, OK
Ever since the story was unearthed by historians and revealed in uncompromising detail in a state government report a decade ago — it estimated that up to 300 people were killed and more than 8,000 left homeless — the black men and women who lived through the events have watched with renewed hope as others worked for some type of justice on their behalf.
But even as the city observed the 90th anniversary this month, the efforts to secure recognition and compensation have produced a mixed record of success.
The riot will be taught for the first time in Tulsa public schools next year but remains absent in many history textbooks across the United States. Civic leaders built monuments to acknowledge the riot, including a new Reconciliation Park, but in the wake of failed legislative and legal attempts, no payments were ever delivered for what was lost.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/20/us/20tulsa.html?_r=0
R.I.P. to all victims of HATE everywhere in the world.
"auto de fe" literally is the "act of faith"
People of color,
People of differing sexual orientations,
People of varying socioeconomic statuses,
People of varying faith beliefs,
People of nontheism,
People of education,
People of science,
People that are just plain different from them.
On this site, and others, we will continue to speak up and speak out.
Do not be silent my friends........................
The shame of the nation is that so few rose against the attacks on the Jews. Fear of the Nazis and pervasive anti-Semitism allowed these kinds of abuses to go on until the Final Solution became a reality.
A Stolperstein (from German, "stumbling block"
is a monument created by Gunter Demnig which commemorates a victim of the Holocaust. Stolpersteine are small, cobblestone-sized memorials for an individual victim of Nazism. They commemorate individuals – both those who died and survivors – who were consigned by the Nazis to prisons, euthanasia facilities, sterilization clinics, concentration camps, and extermination camps, as well as those who responded to persecution by emigrating or committing suicide.
While the vast majority of stolpersteine commemorate Jewish victims of the Holocaust, others have been placed for Sinti and Romani people (also called gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, black people, Christians (both Protestants and Catholics) opposed to the Nazis, members of the Communist Party and the Resistance, military deserters, and the physically and mentally disabled.
Stolperstein No. 40,000: During his TEDxKOELN talk on May 14, 2013 Gunter Demnig announced the installation of the 40,000th. stolperstein on July 3, 2013 in Oldambt (Drieborg), Netherlands. It was one of the 10 Stolpersteine in memory of Dutch communists who were executed by the German occupation forces after they were betrayed by countrymen for hiding Jews and Roma.
People’s attention is drawn towards the stolpersteine by reports in newspapers and their personal experience. Their thoughts are directed towards the victims. Cambridge historian, Joseph Pearson, argues that "It is not what is written [on the stolpersteine] which intrigues, because the inscription is insufficient to conjure a person. It is the emptiness, void, lack of information, the maw of the forgotten, which gives the monuments their power and lifts them from the banality of a statistic."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolperstein
