Massechet Avoda Zara, Chapter 1, 11B: read Talmud Bavli from ArtScroll, and don't forget the footnotes.
Rav Yehudah said in the name of Shmuel: there was a festival in Rome that took place EVERY SEVENTY YEARS: It was a festival that was supposed to celebrate Esav - Rome- 's dominance over Jacob - Israel.
They would take a limping person, (representing Jacob who had been wounded in his battle with the angel), and have a healthy person ride on his shoulders, wearing the outfit of Adam ( a garment stolen by Esav from Nimrod after he killed him)... They would cover his head with the scalp of Rabbi Yishmael, who was extremely handsome and had been killed by the Romans,( who preserved the skin of his face - that skin is still in Rome).They would parade him around town, proclaiming that Jacob's prophecy is false, and that Rome still lords over Yisrael. They would say: Jacob tricked Esav, he is a cheat.
To this day, Esav - Rome shows its dominion over Yisrael.
It happened 70 years to the day before Obama's election, on Kristallnacht,. Kristallnacht , a tragedy in and of itself, was followed by the worst Holocaust in Jewish history.
One year ago, Obama was elected. This was the prelude to all the horrors we are witnessing nowadays - just open your eyes and look around, ESAV IS STILL LORDING OVER HIS BROTHER, AND HAS EVERY INTENTION TO REPEAT THE EVENTS OF 71 YEARS AGO.
Remember that Obama is Benedikt's right hand man.
Understand what is happening.
IS THIS HOLIDAY STILL BEING CELEBRATED BY ROME, ALBEIT IN A DIFFERENT FORM - NAZISM, ANTISEMITISM, CRUSADES, ETC, - UNTIL THE FINAL GEULA, BIMEHERA BEYAMEINU??? I would say it is; check the dates: it is rather uncanny.
Comments appreciated.
DS
Received from A.M., thank you, DS
Kristallnacht
The Nazis coordinated an attack on Jewish people and their property in Germany and German-controlled lands as a part of Führer Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic policy.
The consequences of this violence were disastrous for the Jews under the Third Reich. In a single night, Kristallnacht saw the destruction of more than 200 Synagogues and the ransacking of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes. A business originally ran by a Jew wasn't allowed to reopen unless managed by a non-Jew. While many view Kristallnacht as the beginning of the systematic eradication of the Jews that was to follow, many historians view Kristallnacht as part of an evolving Nazi policy which eventually led to mass genocide.
Context
Eric Johnson notes that in the year before Kristallnacht, the Germans "had entered a new radical phase in anti-Semitic activity." Although controversial, some historians believe that the Nazi government had been contemplating a planned outbreak of violence against the Jews for some time and were waiting for an appropriate provocation; there is evidence of this planning that dates back to 1937. The Zionist leadership in Palestine wrote in February 1938 "a very reliable private source – one which can be traced back to the highest echelons of the SS leadership, that there is an intention to carry out a genuine and dramatic pogrom in Germany on a large scale in the near future."
Background
Kristallnacht was the result of more than five years of discrimination and persecution. From its inception in Germany, Adolf Hitler's regime moved quickly to introduce anti-Jewish policy. The roughly 500,000 Jews in Germany, who accounted for only 0.76% of the overall population, were singled out by the Nazi propaganda machine as "the enemy within" who were responsible for Germany's defeat in 1918 and her subsequent economic difficulties.
During 1933, the German government enacted 42 laws restricting the rights of German Jews to earn a living, to enjoy full citizenship and to educate themselves. The most severe of these laws, the law "for the reconstruction of the civil service," forbade Jews to work in any branch of the civil service. The pressure against the Jews continued unabated. Historian Jesse Irwin and many others believe that the program was the start of the Holocaust. During 1934, a further 19 discriminatory laws were introduced. During 1935, the government enacted a further 29 anti-Jewish laws. The Nuremberg Laws of 1935 were laws passed in Nazi Germany. They used a pseudoscience basis to discriminate against Jewish people. The laws classified people as German if all four of their grandparents were of "German blood,", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents.
In an attempt to provide help to those affected by these laws, an international conference, The Evian Conference, was convened at the initiative of President of the United States Franklin Delano Roosevelt on July 6, 1938 to discuss the problem of Jewish refugees, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The conference hoped to address the issue of Jewish and Gypsy immigration to other countries. When the conference was held, more than 250,000 Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by Germany on March 12, 1938, in the "Anschluss."
More than 75,000 German and Austrian refugees from Nazism arrived in Britain in the 1930s. Later one in seven of the German and Austrian refugees who came to Britain between 1933 and 1939 volunteered for, and enlisted in, the British Forces; a surprisingly high percentage. They took the unprecedented step of swearing allegiance to King George VI even though, with a few exceptions, they did not receive British nationality until after World War II.
Expulsion of Jews from Germany
The deportees were taken from their homes to the nearest railway stations, where they were put on trains to the Polish border. The Polish border guards sent them back over the river into Germany. This stalemate continued for days in the pouring rain, with the Jews marching without food or shelter between the borders. Four thousand were finally granted entry into Poland; however, the remaining 8,000 were forced to stay at the border. There, in harsh conditions, they waited for the Polish government to allow them into the country. Hundreds more, one British newspaper told its readers, "are reported to be lying about, penniless and deserted, in little villages along the frontier near where they had been driven out by the Gestapo and left."Conditions in the refugee camps "were so bad that some actually tried to escape back into Germany and were shot," recalled a British woman who was sent to help those who had been expelled.
Vom Rath shooting
Grynszpan received his sister's short message on November 3. The next day he read a graphic account of the deportations in a Paris Yiddish newspaper. Seeking to alleviate the situation, he appealed repeatedly over the next few days to Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, who could not help him. On the morning of Sunday, November 6, he bought a pistol and loaded it with five cartridges. The next day, Monday, November 7, 1938. Grynzpan went to the German embassy where, "in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews," he shot Vom Rath, hitting him in the stomach. He attempted and missed three additional shots. Two days later, on November 9, vom Rath died.
Germany's response
It was also announced that Jewish children could no longer attend "Aryan" state elementary schools, something that had hitherto been allowed where there were not sufficient Jewish elementary schools. At the same time all Jewish cultural activities were suspended "indefinitely."
Kristallnacht
Following vom Rath's death, the assassination served as a pretext for launching a rampage against Jewish inhabitants throughout Germany.
Planning
Some leading party officials disagreed with Goebbels's actions, fearing the diplomatic crisis it would provoke, and Heinrich Himmler even went so far as to write "I suppose that it is Goebbels's megalomania…and stupidity which are responsible for starting this operation now, in a particularly difficult diplomatic situation." Friedlander, among other historians, believes that Goebbels had personal reasons for wanting to bring about Kristallnacht. Goebbels had recently suffered humiliation in the ineffectiveness of his propaganda campaign during the Sudeten crisis, and was in disgrace over an affair with the beautiful Czech actress, Lída Baarová. Goebbels thus needed a chance to prove himself in the eyes of Hitler, and Kristallnacht was such an opportunity.
At 1:20am on November 10, 1938, Reinhard Heydrich sent an urgent secret telegram to "All Headquarters and Stations of the State Police, All Districts and Sub-districts of the SA" containing instructions regarding the riots.
Riots
The SA shattered the storefronts of about 7500 Jewish stores and businesses, hence the appellation Kristallnacht (Crystal Night). Jewish homes were ransacked all throughout Germany, with a mixture of Stormtroopers (SA) and a few German citizens going to destroy buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows of destroyed businesses the next morning (the origin of the name "Crystal Night"). Although violence against Jews had not been explicitly condoned by the authorities, there were cases of Jews being beaten or assaulted.
This pogrom damaged, and in many cases destroyed, about 1,574 synagogues (constituting nearly all Germany had), many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores. Some Jews were beaten to death while others were forced to watch. More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps; primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The treatment of prisoners in the camps was brutal, but most were released during the following three months on condition that they leave Germany.
The number of German Jews killed is uncertain. The number killed in the two-day riot is most often cited as 91. In addition, it is thought that there were hundreds of suicides. Counting deaths in the concentration camps, around 2,000-2,500 deaths were directly or indirectly attributable to the Kristallnacht pogrom. A few non-Jewish Germans, mistaken for Jews, were also killed.
The synagogues, some centuries old, were also victims of considerable violence and vandalism, with the tactics the Stormtroopers practiced on these and other sacred sites described as "approaching the ghoulish" by the United States Consul in Leipzig. Tombstones were uprooted and graves violated. Fires were lit, and prayer books, scrolls, artwork and philosophy texts were thrown upon them, and precious buildings were either burned or smashed until unrecognisable. Eric Lucas recalls the destruction of the synagogue that a tiny Jewish community had constructed in a small village only twelve years earlier:
After this, the Jewish community was fined 1 billion Reichsmarks because of the damages the Jews had caused! In addition, it cost 4 million marks to repair the windows.
Events in only recently annexed Austria were no less horrendous. Of the entire Kristallnacht only the pogrom in Vienna was completely successful. Most of Vienna's 94 synagogues and prayer-houses were partially or totally destroyed. People were subjected to all manner of humiliations, including being forced to scrub the pavements whilst being tormented by their fellow Austrians, some of whom had been their friends and neighbours.
Official figures released after the event by Reinhard Heydrich stated that 191 Synagogues were destroyed, with 76 completely demolished; 100,000 Jews were arrested; three foreigners were arrested; 174 people were arrested for looting Jewish shops; and 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed.
The Daily Telegraph correspondent, Hugh Carleton Greene, wrote of events in Berlin:
Concentration camps
Aftermath
The number of emigrating Jews surged as those who were able left the country, and this was a desirable outcome for the Nazi party. In the ten months following Kristallnacht, more than 115,000 Jews emigrated from the Reich. The majority went to other European countries, the US and Palestine, and at least 14,000 made it to Shanghai. As part of government policy, the Nazis seized houses, shops, and other property the émigrés left behind.
Several major nations condemned the acts, though the Nazi party never faced significant repercussions, and came to see that the world would tolerate the persecution of Jews on a mass scale.
Responses to Kristallnacht
From the Germans
The reaction of non-Jewish Germans to Kristallnacht was varied. Martin Gilbert believes that "many non-Jews resented the round up", his opinion being supported by German witness Dr. Arthur Flehinger who recalls seeing "people crying while watching from behind their curtains". Some even went as far as to help Jews, but the majority merely sat inside watching in horror, feeling helpless to do anything. Other non-Jewish Germans took part in the violence, as it was not just Stormtroopers rioting. Evidence of this can be established in that riots broke out on the night of November 7 and continued in some places after the pogrom was called to a halt; thus it may be surmised that these successive actions were not those of the Nazis. Also, several sources mention women and children as participating in the riots, and these were clearly not Stormtroopers but ordinary citizens. The number of German citizens involved in the riots is impossible to know, as many Stormtroopers were wearing civilian clothes and were thus indistinguishable.
Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after the Kristallnacht; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." Diarmaid MacCulloch argued that Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.
In an article released for publication on the evening of November 11, Goebbels ascribed the events of Kristallnacht to the "healthy instincts" of the German people. He went on to explain: "The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."
Eyewitness accounts show the general response. Reports of the destruction are the main focus of the article.
From the global community
As such, Kristallnacht also marked a turning point in relations between Nazi Germany and the rest of the world. The brutality of the program and the Nazi government's deliberate policy of encouraging the violence once it had begun, laid bare the repressive nature and widespread anti-Semitism entrenched in Germany, and turned world opinion sharply against the Nazi regime, with some politicians even calling for war.
Kristallnacht as a turning point
While November 1938 predated overt articulation of "the Final Solution," it nonetheless foreshadowed the genocide to come. Around the time of Kristallnacht, the Schutzstaffel [SS] newspaper "Das Schwarze Korps" called for a "destruction by swords and flames." At a conference on the day after the pogrom, Hermann Göring said: "The Jewish problem will reach its solution if, in any time soon, we will be drawn into war beyond our border—then it is obvious that we will have to manage a final account with the Jews."
Specifically, the Nazis managed to achieve in Kristallnacht all the theoretical targets they set for themselves: confiscation of Jewish belongings to provide finances for the military buildup to war, separation and isolation of the Jews, and most importantly, the move from the anti-Semitic policy of discrimination to one of physical damage, which began that night and continued until the end of World War II.
The prefix Reichs- (imperial) was later added (Reichskristallnacht) as a sardonic comment on the Nazis' propensity to add this prefix to various terms and titles like Reichsführer-SS (Himmler) or Reichsmarschall (Göring).
Other names
- Reichskristallnacht , meaning Imperial crystal night
- Pogromnacht , meaning pogrom night
- Reichspogromnacht , meaning Imperial pogrom night
- Novemberpogrome, meaning November pogroms
- Crystal Night, literal English translation
- Night of [broken] glass, the meaning of the phrase
Recent archeological finds
The site, which is the size of four football pitches, contains an extensive array of personal and ceremonial items looted during orchestrated nationwide riots against Jewish property and places of worship on the night of November 9-10, 1938. It is believed the goods were brought by rail to the outskirts of the village and dumped on designated land. Among the items found were glass bottles engraved with the Star of David, mezuzot, painted window sills, and the armrests of chairs found in synagogues, in addition to an ornamental swastika.
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