CB, of course you're quite right about the Jews being persecuted from 1933 on; but still, Kristallnacht marked a definite escalation from persecution to outright state-sponsored killing and destruction. Sending enemies of the Reich to prison, which is done quietly, is one matter; sending troops openly against one segment of your own population is another.
And no civilized person could honestly believe that Hitler could and would do what he did, and that the German people would go along with it. Nor that the people in the occupied parts of Europe would cooperate.
It was unthinkable. Apparently even to the Jews.
It was unthinkable to the German Jews, who were mostly assimilated members of what had formerly been the most civilized state in Europe. The Polish Jews, tragically for them, could not believe it because the last time Germany had occupied Poland (in WWI), the Germans had behaved better to them than the Poles. Russian Jews, who knew what serious pogroms looked like, found it easier to believe, though no-one could believe that plans to wipe out the Jews (as opposed to driving them out) could be in earnest. Until the Nazis, Europeans and Americans believed that there were depths that civilized man could not fall to; I think our civilization is still trying to recover from the loss of that belief.
I am talking to you today because my father belonged to a Russian Jewish family, who did see it coming. |
