If God Lived on Earth, they would break his windows…. A Yiddish Proverb
November 8th through the 11th marks the seventieth anniversary of the event the world calls ‘Kristallnacht‘ and is used most often by popular historians to denote the formal beginning of the war against the Jews, the Shoah in WWII, in 1938. It was not that there had not always been a war against the Jews: there had, since time began, nor was it that the Third Reich began their war against the Jews then, they had already within the past five years taken away their citizenship, jobs, ability to hold and maintain property, hire help, practice law, go to parks or even attend to personal care and education, by the time of “Kristallnacht” or Crystal Night, sometimes called “The Night of the Broken Glass”. By 1938, Hitler and the Third Reich already wanted the Jews as far out of Germany as he could get them, as far out of the world, if he could. Within just a few years from ’38, only a few Jews would be left at all in Germany, mostly those with expertise in the armaments industry who contributed to the war effort, and by 1938, major deportation plans and efforts were under way. And Hell, a very much misunderstood concept in the 20th century, laid the foundation for the bravest of New Worlds, with such people in it, with (apologies to Huxley and Shakespeare).
There are some stories so remarkably cruel, that one wishes they could begin, ‘Once upon a time’, but this particular ‘story’ or history, centered as so many world changing events do, not at some body strewn battlefield or in a State Office, but in the heart and mind of one young 17 year old. Well, at least the spark that lit the fire, although the wood and flammables were waiting next to the spark. History is a rather curious thing, often turning unpredictably at one person, or one argument, or one dislike, or theft, instead of the massive waves of change, the ‘zeitgeist’ changes we usually call to mind. And if I seem for the moment a bit maudlin, and not ‘technical’ enough, it is because it is important to grasp the attention of the modern mind, and not just those of a few dusty scholars. (Most of history has been written for about .000005% of the population and a few disgruntled school children). In any event though, though I began to write one of those dusty diatribes to please the more ‘sophisticated’ ( I can do it, really, I can), using jargon and hundreds of references, real and imagined, I decided to ‘go for the gold’ so to speak, and write about ‘Kristallnacht’ on this anniversary, and Hell, for the both have far more to do with each other than one might imagine.
A Boy in France Receives a Letter From His Sister
Herschel Feibel Grynspan, a young Jew born in Hannover in 1921, had grown up in Germany in a solid Jewish family, rather unremarkably. When the young man was 14, the family tried to emigrate to Palestine, for the Reich had already taken office and restrictions on Jews were becoming too severe to live in any normal fashion. (See Jewish Civil Liberties in the Shoah)
Failing that endeavor, he studied for awhile at Frankfurt am Main in Hebrew, and again tried to no avail, so the young man went to live via Brussels, to France, hoping to establish French citizenship, since they had a far more welcoming attitude toward the Jews than most, (despite the Dreyfus affair). However, the massive exodus out of Germany threatened French labor and the same was true in other countries, so
the young Herschel did not succeed though papers were filed and fees were paid. Poland and Germany at the time though were in a state of unrest, and Germany had decided to expel all Jews of Polish citizenship with Polish passports back to Poland, affecting 12-17,000 German-Polish Jews. Grynspan’s family was affected by that order from the Reich, and was sent with others to the Polish town of Zbaszyn a midpoint by train from Berlin to Warsaw. At the same time, the Polish government set a two week window on renewing Polish Jews passports, and fought the deportations by a little ‘hard ball’, which would have kept most the Jews, by delay, in Germany, partially deported in nomansland without any paperwork.1,2
Herschel Grynspan’s sister Berta, wrote a postcard from the little town of Zbaszyn, requesting money for the family, and Herschel, who in October of 1938, at 17 had already run out of time on his visa with no hope for renewal, and hiding from the French police, responded, but recognized the utter hopelessness of the situation: he was in danger of arrest and deportation to basically nowhere for he could not return to Hannover, his family was possibly on their way to the ‘alleged’ concentration camps (they were known of by then), but in the mean time, with thousands of others stranded in the doldrums, they also had nowhere to go that did not mean destruction. The young teenager Grynspan, distraught over his own predicament, worried for his family he had hoped to ‘rescue’ in France, and with virtually no way out, walked into the German Embassy in France, in despair, with all hope gone, and point blank fired at a midline Nazi official, Vom Rath, whom his family had known, presumably for refusing any solution or help. The one distraught youngster that day, with no way to turn, no legal recourse and seeing the beginning of the destruction of his family, the Jewish race, his life, and ostensibly Europe and the world, partly by plan and it is assumed partly in the heat of the moment fired point blank at the official behind the desk. 2
Vom Rath died of his wounds shortly after, and Grynspan was arrested. On the immediate heels of the arrest, Goebbels, the Propaganda Minister issued the edict to all German press that they were to make it front page and keep it front page, and spin it so that Grynspan represented the ‘worldwide Jewish conspiracy’ which would soon be at the door of every German, if the Reich did not get rid of the Jews. Most did not mention that the Pogrom which followed, organized and set in place of the destruction of every Jewish business and confiscation of homes and property, with the burning of Synagogues, occurred on Martin Luther’s birthday (November 10, 1483 ). Now, there were no coincidences in the Third Reich, and the great German, Luther who had brought back ‘Salvation by Grace’ to Christian belief and doctrine, had also at the end of his life turned violently against the Jews, claiming them to be heathen and idolators, and advocating the burning of their synagogues and running them out of town. (See, e.g. Letter to Spalatin Imagine the irony.
The World Press, was initially enraged on Grynspan’s side, when they heard of the ‘hopeless’ deportations of thousands, and some non-Jewish sources in the U.S. raised money for Grynspan’s defense. (The Jews felt their contributions would be misunderstood, and some felt Grynspan had done a very dangerous thing). He was not though extradicted immediately to Germany, but stayed until 1940 in a prison in France awaiting extradition and trial. The fate of Grynspan has been given to historical mythology, with one Interpol account based upon a French police report having him escaped and living in France after the war, one claiming he was beheaded immediately arriving in Germany in ’40, and several claiming he was held for trial but the trial never took place. One theory even claimed he was an operative from the beginning, others claimed even that he was a plant of the Germans, acting for the purpose of beginning an unpopular war, to gain domestic German backing. Interestingly, the train taking Grynzspan derailed with first to the south of France as the Nazis occupied Paris, derailed by bombings, and he with the others escaped, but for an unexplained reason, he went back and turned himself into a French prison before extradition to Berlin to stand trial. The reasons remain in the realm of mystery.
The Kristallnachtpogrom
Goebbel’s call to action, though was swift, instant, and organized: in every community in Germany, Austria and the Czech Sudetenland, Hitler’s first incursion with the Rhineland in the war, officials, Nazis, officers, and man woman and child were to take part in a rampage against Jewish businesses and organizations, against all Jewish property including homes, against Synagogues etc. Killings ensued, horrible killings: Jewish families were dragged from their houses, their mouths taped to muffle crying and screams, and shot firing squad style. Rabbis and congregates were gathered in Synagogues, the doors sealed against escape and burned. Torahs, the holy furnitures, etc were urinated on and burned, destroyed, and Jewish men as in the years prior who were of orthodox sects had their beards shaved at the corner (forbidden in scripture), and humiliated in a variety of other ways. There were over 20.000 arrests of Jews, yet most all of the looters escaped charges. The night was referred to as ‘Crystal Night’ or Kristallnacht’ due to the thousands of glittering shards of glass from broken shop windows. The owners were required to carry heavy insurance on the sites and were forced by the Nazis to file and have the benefits turned over to the Reich. In short, they were unable again to rebuild, work or live in those areas, and businesses and homes which had been in some families for generations, ceased ownership in one evening. It was the beginning of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, the beginning of a World War which has not ended, and the end, worldwide to 65 million lives, military, civilian, young, old, rich poor and 1/3 of the worldwide Jewish population. Hell had a foundation.
The Law, Civil Rights and Kristallnacht
When I was young, I was rather much of ‘flower child’ era, where we all assumed that anarchy could really work, because, as Carl Rogers and Maslow noted, people were really all good and lovely inside, and everything would work out without the need for government, law, rules etc, those horrid enemies of all ‘coolness’ . Yea right. Now pardon this momentary insanity, but with age, I came to understand the ‘goodness’ of Law, why there has to be sound government, and why Law, is the ‘President’, King, or Monarch, and not a mere man or woman. We have lost that. We think law is cheap, made to be broken and fenceposts only to ‘get around’ by clever ruses. Instead, I discovered, it is the glue that holds our free society together, and keeps us from Kristallnachts over and over, which begin wars which are now always leading to genocide, and getting progressively more horrific and brutal and about substances of no eternal value, e.g. oil. Lawmakers , Supreme Court Justices and Legislators can make excellent laws, and to be frank many many of ours are great laws, designed to maximize freedom and be just, but unless the perception of the law is right and honorable, unless we all agree we need laws that stay in place, any society degenerates first into hell and then is non-existant. (I will get to Hell, still shortly, lest any think this is too acceptable.) We are though currently, today, now, here in the US, a little ‘beyond’ law, we have a feeling we are a little ‘superior’ to it, and that moral relativism is the only law we all agree to. It is the rent in the fabric of our peace, and eventually as the tear grows of our justice and very existence. Kristallnacht and the action of the young Grynspan, was the formal worldwide declaration, that a new ‘Order’ would now exist: one of cleverness and strategy but not of right and wrong. And one where brute force with strategy would win against good laws.
As the Jews met Kristallnacht 70 years ago, I think they must have at once reacted as we would have, “you can’t do that—its illegal, there are laws, you can’t take my business, my copyrights, my house, my citizenship: I have rights—even as a human being!” Hitler knew that access to the courts must be circumvented early, or that those moronic enough to believe in freedom and justice would win, and keep Germany, well from becoming ‘Nazi Germany’ . The Holy Scriptures warn of a day when everyone would ‘do what was right in their own eyes’ , i.e. circumvent law, only now instead of dreading that day, we welcome it. We have learned nothing in 70 years, except more clever ‘anti-law’ strategies, and the deprecation of all that is life, all that is holy, and all that tends to order, is gone, and in as many pieces as those bright little shards of broken glass on German soil so many years ago. Stars and the Sand, calling in a negative image from hearing of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Kristallnacht and Hell
The world ‘garment’ the world system has been unraveling for a few centuries. Two main features hallmark its entropy:
1. A Refusal to maintain God as Sovereign, choosing man to wear his crown instead and
2. Lawlessness
Lawlessness is always accompanied by lies. A really good lie, scheme, or ruse can undo a nation. Khrushchev, railing at the UN many years ago banged his shoe on the podium and declared he would take over the US without lifting a finger, and whether he won or not, the truth is this nation is far from what it was, and fair civil rights and employment law aside, we have degenerated not gotten better. For the first time in our history, overthrow is a possibility: we became the brutal Pollyannas of the world. The degeneration of clear thinking and institution of arrogant pride, a hubris which has blinded us, began with the Enlightenment: Cartesian methods and musings helped us to see we did not, we thought really need God, that we could reconstruct Him into our image instead of vice versa, and ‘the thing itself’ (apologies to Husserl) was not subject first to divine sovereignty but to what we thought about it: we flipped all logic and righteousness, and the result are seen now even in theology, which by the time of the Shoah, even by the Kristallnacht had placed man at the head of church and doctrine instead of God. The results of these modern ‘advancements’ (the Nazis saw it as advancement also) was death, morbid destruction, the erasure of morality, a rabid new intolerance, a disrespect, no disregard for the value of Life, and the fabric has so unravelled, that rather than learn from Kristallnacht, which began a veritable Hell on earth, we choose to live it over and over again.
“I Don’t Believe in Hell”
Modern man, C.S. Lewis noted does not believe in Hell or the Devil. Lewis claimed the Devil likes that just fine, it makes his work all the easier. I cannot though much understand how the idea of pure evil personified would not be apparent to those who study the Holocaust and Genocide. Many scholars look at the Holocaust and Genocide and declare ‘there is no God’. They demand utter freedom from him, and when He gives it, they are horrified at the results they cause, and cry out, ‘how could you’, and cease to believe, although He turns the question back on us. “How could you?” You promised did you not, when you called on His name, to be His hands, legs, eyes and and image in this world. So, I think, it is the LORD and not us, who if we followed the same logic would cry, “There is no man”. “No man at all”. “Otherwise, how could he have let the world be destroyed like this”.
The Devil, on the other hand, never spoken of on University campuses, but all to comfortable there, also bears some characteristics seldom addressed: he destroys, he kills and he steals. John 10:10. He is the entropy of all things. In the movie ‘Devil’s Advocate’ the character of the Devil declares he is a ‘fan of man’ and gives all the traditional reasons with gusto that the modern heart gives against the existence or goodness of God. The real Devil, sits reveling on the ashes of Torahs, Menorah’s, bones and ashes, burnt synagogues, and the death of the heart. He blinds the eyes to the winters which stopped Hitler’s march across Russia and exhausted Nazi supplies and the war effort, greatly diminishing the length of the war. He makes one forget about the shores of Israel coming into view or a new day for Israel waited for 2000 years. He hides the tales of praise and the Shema stopping death right at the brink of a flaming pit of corpses, and lulls to sleep those who saw answered prayers. There is a war out there: when the power of Luciferan doctrine swoll to the massive shroud it became, one or two prayers would not accomplish the victory, a lesson from the wars of Israel.
Though some may snicker at the idea of Hell, it is far more logical than that of those who are amused. Entropy begets entropy, and chaos, chaos. Do we find it so hard to imagine a sulphurous burning pit of bodies? We’ve seen it. Of demonic monsters looking like men, but seemingly without souls? They ran Europe. Of the degeneration of the person so great that it is described as ‘wormlike’, only a fragment of what the human condition used to be? How could we not believe: it occurred over and over before our eyes while we cried ‘Where is God’, ‘How could he do such a thing?’ , ‘why would he allow this suffering’, but never turning to Him, because we were now sovereign instead of Him.
Kristallnacht: the bright slivers of shining glinting glass, beginning not the dawn of all hope, but the age of Entropy. Are we more lawful? No, less. Are we more humane? No, less. Less AntiSemitic? No, actually more, and more is rising. Do we value life more? No, Eugenics became ‘human engineering’ and became acceptable, and life became expendable based upon the feasibility of a life, the cost of childrearing and the payback. We have had dozens of frightful genocides SINCE the 
holocaust, not a heart commitment of never again. On this anniversary, when the world turned and entered Hell, at least its portals, if any one would hear, I would beg the Church at least to go back to Stuttgart in 1946 and not debate whether it should have repented, but instead, fall on it’s corporate face.
“they have burned up all the Synagogues in the Land….Psalms of David.
The Sedition Act 