Kristallnacht

Today is the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, officially known as Reichskristallnacht, translated as "The Night of Broken Glass." From November 9-10, 1938 the Nazis launched a rampage against Jews throughout Germany and in parts of Austria. Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked and destroyed — the name Kristallnacht refers to the shards of glass from the broken shop windows covering the streets afterwards — Jews were beaten to death, 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps (one of them my grandfather, from Vienna to Dachau), and 1,668 synagogues were looted or set on fire.

November 9 also marks my grandfather's arrival in Auschwitz in 1942 and, you might say, his departure — he went up the chimney that same day. He was 56 years old.

When I lived in Berlin I made myself "The Yellow Star" out of colored paper and took a series of photographic self-portraits with it in place on the upper left front of my flea market raincoat — whose armpits were impregnated with pungent perspiration that probably could have been carbon-dated back to those very years. I wanted to do a performance piece, riding the Hauptstrasse bus in my outfit, from the beginning to the end of the line and back again, ad infinitum, but I didn't have the guts and was getting pretty unfriendly looks already so the performance never left the apartment. The badge above might have come in handy had I embarked on my intended project and certainly would have been more durable.

I took many such photographs during that year and had them developed at a nearby black and white laboratory. Each week the photographic contact sheets were presented to me quite formally, by a tall German woman with no facial expressions, a shiny empty table between us. The pages were removed from a sheath of waxed paper and presented for my examination and approval. The encounters were uniformly strange and impersonal. No words were ever spoken. It was as if we were having a secret banking transaction. I always wondered what she thought of the photographs, or whether she questioned what I was up to, but never had the courage to ask her.


For those with more chutzpah who wish to relive the sad past
and/or spread Holocaust Awareness (your choice), Hebrew American offers this Yellow Star Sticker among the many fine Jewish-themed items in their CafePress.com shop.


If it happened again maybe I'd be wearing one of these. Name Fan Club makes personalized HELLO MY NAME IS ___ T-shirts for men and women in their all-occasion personalized name oriented CafePress.com shop.

[To purchase items click on the photographs or colored text links — the first image is for illustrative purposes only and is not a link.]