Friday, November 09, 2018

What happened 80 years ago today in Germany?

In The American Thinker, Gerry Gindler explains
what happened 80 years ago, November 9-10, 1938 in Germany. The unprecedented pogrom of the Jews got the name Kristallnacht – "Night of Broken Glass." Today, we are well aware of the approximate number of murdered Jews, destroyed businesses, and burned synagogues. The formal reason for the pogrom was the murder of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by the Jewish teenager Herschel Grynszpan on November 7.

Unfortunately, few people know about the true causes of the pogrom.

Who created the conditions under which a mass pogrom of Jews in the Third Reich could even take place?

After the murder of the German diplomat, the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, announced that neither the German government nor the ruling National Socialist Workers Party (NSDAP, AKA Nazi) would organize any protests in this regard. Goebbels knew what was going to happen. The government of Nazi Germany, although not formally involved in the detailed organization of the Kristallnacht, for several years was doing everything possible to make such a pogrom.

Since taking power in 1933, the Nazis had tightened the existing gun control laws. All German citizens, including Jews, were required to register their weapons, and for every firearm purchase, they must obtain a special permit from the authorities. In September 1935, all Jews were stripped of German citizenship. All Jews, without exception, were declared "untrustworthy" and deprived of most civil rights. Then, starting in December 1935, the Jews of Germany lost the opportunity to buy firearms and ammunition, but the Nazis had not yet executed a widespread confiscation of the existing weapons and ammunition.

Finally, in March 1938, a new gun control law was passed in Germany. In this law, the only mention of Jews was in the part that declared a total ban on Jews from participating in the production and trade of firearms and ammunition. However, this law, on the one hand, lifted restrictions of the possession of firearms by members of all Nazi-connected organizations (such as the NSDAP, the SA, and the Hitler Youth) and on the other hand prohibited the possession of firearms by all "untrustworthy" and those persons "relieved of their civil rights." By the law of 1935, not only Jews, but also all political opponents of the Nazi regime, as well as Gypsies and the homeless, were treated as "untrustworthy."

Due to the combined application of the laws of the Third Reich of 1935 and 1938, the confiscation of all firearms from German Jews was categorically legalized.
Read more here.

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