• 48 Hours of Kristallnacht
• Kristallnacht – Prelude to Destruction

48 Hours of Kristallnacht – Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust – An Oral History

By Mitchell G. Bard, PhD.
The Lyons Press, 2008
256 pages

Published to coincide with the 70th anniversary of this pivotal event, Bard uses eyewitness accounts of those who were young children and teenagers, to describe the incidents that took place on November 9-10, 1938, which became known as the Kristallnacht pogrom, or The Night of the Broken Glass. By reading these accounts, and thus conveying the vivid and horrifying memories of these young people as their worlds fell apart, readers can relate to the narrative and try to understand the events of that time.

Several survivors give accounts of their Bar Mitzvahs - the Jewish coming-of-age ceremony at 13 years of age. One such survivor is Henry Glaser, whose father had been picked up by the Gestapo during the Kristallnacht pogrom, and sent to concentration camp Sachsenhausen. One year later, had celebrated his bar mitzvah in Berlin without his father.

We read about Ursula Rosenfeld, just 13 years old when the Nazis arrested her father. She had eaten dinner with him the night before the Kristallnacht pogrom. Taken to Buchenwald, where he was killed, his ashes were later return to the family in an urn. Not knowing whether they were his ashes or belonged to someone else, he was buried in the Jewish cemetery. The family had to pay for the ashes.

A chapter on righteous Germans describes those brave enough to help the unfortunate Jewish families after the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Heinrich Muller’s orders to all Gestapo offices transmitted at 11:55 pm November 9th and Heydrich’s instructions for the Kristallnacht pogrom dated November 10, 1938 are printed at the end of the book. These left little doubt as to what was intended for German and Austrian Jewry, and indeed signalled the beginning of the end for European Jewry in the ensuing years.

Kristallnacht – Prelude to Destruction

By Martin Gilbert
Harper Press 2006
314 pages

This book presents the true and moving story of a group of young children and adults living under Nazi occupation in Budejovice, Czechoslovakia.

Martin Gilbert traces anti Jewish discrimination and legislation that began when Hitler came to power in 1933, culminating in the 1938 pogrom which became known as the Kristallnacht pogrom or the "Night of Broken Glass".

Storm troopers of the S.A. in Germany and Austria ransacked and burned Jewish-owned shops, destroying more than one thousand synagogues and murdering 91 Jews.

Through survivor testimonies, Gilbert clearly explains how this Nazi orchestrated and coordinated rampage became the forerunner of the terrible events to come and was the turning point for German and Austrian Jewry who had hoped that the rising tide of official Nazi Anti Jewish policy would disappear.

Gilbert writes in a conversational tone, creating a setting to pull readers in closer to events. His use of newspaper articles and first person accounts puts a human face on the tragedy.

Mentioned also are the events that took place in the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom - the flight of German Jews while they were still permitted to leave, and the “final destruction” of German and Austrian Jewry.

High school teachers can find an abundance of first-hand accounts and other materials to use in their classroom from this book.

Particular attention should be paid to the maps shown at the back of the book. These maps indicate hundreds of towns and villages where synagogues and Jewish communities - many of which had existed in Germany for centuries - were attacked, conveying the full extent of the destruction. It is important for the student to visually understand the enormity of this event and the tragic effects and consequences to the individual Jewish families whose lives were destroyed forever just seventy years ago.

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