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The Pogrom of November 9–10, 1938 in Germany

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Riots and Pogroms

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Abstract

Interpretation of the pogrom of November 9–10, 1938 from an ethnic perspective must begin with some remarks on the applicability of the concept of ethnicity to the Jews in Germany. Then it will be necessary to explain the long-term background, the environment of the year 1938, the development of the pogrom itself, and some of its larger purposes. My re-examination of these themes is based above all on a reading of a collection of nearly 250 largely unpublished autobiographies of Germans and Austrians, mostly in German and of greatly varying lengths, written for the “My Life in Germany” prize contest sponsored by three Harvard professors in 1939. A high proportion of those who submitted essays were Jews, and they wrote for posterity about the frightful treatment they had endured. These autobiographies illuminate vividly the premonitions of the victims and their interactions with the perpetrators, who expressed their violent or murderous intentions and fantasies with a complete lack of restraint.*

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Notes

  1. Trude Maurer, “Ausländische Juden in Deutschland, 1933–1939,” in Arnold Paucker (ed.), Die Juden im Nationalsozialistischen Deutschland 1933–1943 (Tübingen: Mohr 1986) (Schriftenreihe wissenschaftlicher Abhandlungen des Leo Baeck Instituts Bd. 45), pp. 189–210; idem, “The Background for Kristallnacht: The Expulsion of Polish Jews,” in Walter H. Pehle (ed.), November 1938: From ‘Reichskristallnacht’ to Genocide (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 44–72.

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  2. Reinhard Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus. Studien zur “Judenfrage” der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1975).

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  5. Alexander Bein, “‘Der judische Parasit’. Bemerkungen zur Semantik der Judenfrage,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 13:2 (April 1965), pp. 121–49.

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  6. Konrad Heiden, The New Inquisition (New York: Modern Ages Books, 1939), p. 149.

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  7. Gisela Bock, Zwangssterilisation im Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Rassenpolitik und Frauenpolitik (Schriften des Zentralinstituts für Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung der Freien Universität Berlin, vol. 48) (Opladen:Westdeutscher Verlag, 1986); autobiography no. 163, Necheles, p. 26.

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  16. See also Lionel Kochan, Pogrom: 10 November 1938 (London: A. Deutsch, 1957);

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  18. Record of interview by Prof. Harold Deutsch of Dr Erich Schultze in 1970, Institut für Zeitgeschichte. Dr Schultze, a Social Democrat, and his wife and child were badly beaten by the SS. See Harold C. Deutsch, Hitler and his Generals. The Hidden Crisis, January–June 1938 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1974), pp. 54–5.

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  19. Graml, p. 162; translation from Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews 1933–45 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1975) p.122, whose endnote quite rightly criticizes the translation in the English version of Krausnick, Anatomy of the SS State, p. 34.

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  20. Dawidowicz, pp. 124–5. The text of this speech is in Hildegard von Kotze and Helmut Krausnick, Es spricht der Führer. Sieben exemplarische Hitler-Reden (Gütersloh: S. Mohn, 1966),

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  21. quoted in Helmut Krausnick, “Judenverfolgung,” in H. Buchheim et al., Anatomie des SS-Staates (Olten u. Freiburg i.Br: Walter Verlag, 1965), Bd. II, p. 326.

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  24. This last number is from autobiography no. 16, Ernst Ballak; other accounts are in autobiography no. 238, Rudolf Walter; autobiography no. 239, Frederick Weil, pp. 80–104; see Eckart Früh, “‘Erstarrt und erstorben…’ Terror und Selbstmord in Wien nach der Annexion Östeneichs,” Wiener Tagebuch Nr. 3 (March 1988), pp. 15–19, Botz, pp. 98–105; Herbert Rosenkranz, Verfolgung und Selbstbehauptung. Die Juden in Österreich 1938–1945 (Vienna: Herold, 1976);

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  25. Konrad Kwiet, ‘The Ultimate Refuge — Suicide in the Jewish Community under the Nazis,” in Leo Baeck Institute Year Book XXIX (London, 1984);

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  27. Graml, p. 173 ff.; Dawidowicz, pp. 129–30; Aly, Roth, Die restlose Erfassung, p. 53. These complicated edicts must have been prepared well before their introduction and application. See Avraham Barkai, “‘Schicksalsjahr 1938’. Kontinuität und Verschärfung der wirtschaftlichen Ausplünderung der deutschen Juden,” in Ursula Büttner (ed.), Das Unrechtsregime: Internationale Forschung über den Nationalsozialismus. Festschrift für Werner Jochmann (Hamburger Beiträge zur Sozial- und Zeitgeschichte, Bd. XXII) (Hamburg: Christians, 1986), Bd 2, pp. 62–63 and

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  28. Avraham Barkai, From Boycott to Annihilation: The Economic Struggle of German Jews, 1933–1943 (London: University Press of New England, 1989).

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  29. See Leonidas E. Hill, Die Weizsäcker Papiere, 1933–1950 (Berlin: Ullstein Verlag, 1974) pp. 145, 170.

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  30. These two documents are in Vaclav Kral (ed.), Die Deutschen in der Tschechoslowakei 1933–1947. (Acta occupationis Bohemiae et Moraviae) (Prague: Nakl. Ceskoslovenskyé akademie ved, 1964), pp. 349–53, 357–62,

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  31. cited by Stephan Dolezel, “Deutschland und die Rest-Tschechoslowakei (1938–1939) Besatzungspolitische Vorstellungen vor dem deutschen Einmarsch,” in K. Bosl (ed.), Gleichgewicht-Revision-Restauration. Die Außenpolitik der Ersten Tschechoslowakischen Republik im Europasystem der Pariser Vorortsverträge (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1976), pp. 256–60.

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  32. Martin Broszat, “Hitler und die Genesis der ‘Endlösung.’ Aus Anlaß der Thesen von David Irving,” Vierteljahrshefte, für Zeitgeschichte 25:4 (October 1977), English version “Hitler and the Genesis of the ‘Final Solution.’ An Assessment of David Irving’s Theses,” Yad Vashem Studies XIII (1979), pp. 73–125; Hans Mommsen, “Die Realisierung des Utopischen: Die ‘Endlösung der Judenfrage’ im ‘Dritten Reich’,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 9:3 (1983), S. 392, Anm. 36;

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  33. English version in Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.), The Policies of Genocide (London:Allen and Unwin, 1986), pp. 134–5, fn. 36.

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  34. Sybil Milton, “The Expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany, October 1938 to July 1939: A Documentation,” in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook XIX (London, 1984), pp. 169–99; Mauer, “The Background,” in Pehle (ed.), November 1938; Dawidowicz, p. 133.

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  35. See Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey of Herschel Grynszpan (New York: Praeger, 1990).

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  36. Elisabeth Klamper, “Der Anschlußpogrom,” in Schmid, Streibel (eds), Der Pogrom 1938, p. 31; Gerhard Botz, “The Jews of Vienna from the Anschluß to the Holocaust,” in Ivar Oxaal, Michael Pollak, and Gerhard Botz (eds), Jews, Antisemitism and Culture in Vienna (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987), p. 195.

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  37. Kurt Pätzold, “Der historische Platz des antijüdischen Pogroms von 1938. Zu einer Kontroverse,” Jahrbuch für Geschichte 26 (1982), pp. 193–216.

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  38. See especially Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).

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Authors
  1. Leonidas E. Hill
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, USA

    Paul R. Brass (Professor of Political Science and South Asian Studies) (Professor of Political Science and South Asian Studies)

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© 1996 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Hill, L.E. (1996). The Pogrom of November 9–10, 1938 in Germany. In: Brass, P.R. (eds) Riots and Pogroms. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24867-4_3

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