The Night of Broken Glass
The Night of Broken Glass was an anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany and Austria on 9 and 10 November 1938. Kristallnacht was triggered by the assassination in Paris of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew. In a coordinated attack on Jewish people and their property, 91 Jews were murdered and 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps. 267 synagogues were destroyed, and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked. This was done by the Hitler Youth, the Gestapo the SA and the SS. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews, in order to assure their being left defenseless.
This woke up some Jews to the unfolding dangers, but not enough. The vast majority of them held the foolish delusion that nothing evil or dangerous to them could occur in the country of the culture of Bach Brahms and Beethoven. So they chose to remain blind and stayed waiting for the storm to go away.
While the fledgling Nazi party was growing in size and power, the Jewish community was crumbling. The Reform movement and the Enlightenment were taking their toll. Tens of thousands of Jews were losing all feeling of what being Jewish really is. Theirs was more like a drab colorless lifeless cardboard cutout rather a living vibrant spiritual life. It was devoid of anything to stimulate the heart and soul. ...... When there is nothing to draw interest, to love, to respect; there is no ..... Along with that since even the most basic level of Jewish soul desires spirituality, if "at home" their lives were devoid of spirituality, they would seek elsewhere.
Together this resulted in myriads of German Jews, leaving Judaism. By the onset of WW 2 there were 10,000 xtian priests and pastors in Germany from Jewish families.
They had sought the spirituality that had been stolen from them by the dried up version of Judaism they had been brought up in.
Even among those who "remained Jewish" many had adopted the attitude and saying of, "Be a Jew at home and a human being outside".
Is there any wonder that God let loose the Angel of Death with an 'open license to kill wholesale'? This process and its horrific outcome were to become one of the most gruesome chapters in human history.
Between the worsening socio-economic situation in Germany with the increasing political radicalism, combined with Divine Providence turning against the Jews of Germany due to the vast number who abandoned Torah life and values, the stage was all set for - - - -
Holocaust