Anniversary of the pogroms against Jews in 1938 | November pogroms 1938: On watching, looking away and being seen

People passed by smiling: Encouraged by the Nazi regime, from November 9, 1938, thousands of Jewish-owned businesses were vandalized and Jews were mistreated and murdered. Photo: IMAGO/GRANGER Historical Picture Archive A yellowed newspaper page from November 1938, found in the estate of a Latvian, tells of burning synagogues, devastated shops and crowds of people watching the events. What is remarkable is not only what the foreign correspondents reported at the time about the pogroms against Jewish people in Germany - but also how they described the role of the German population.

My Latvian friend Baiba recently discovered issue number 257 of "Jaunākās Ziņas" ("Latest News") from November 11, 1938 in her late father's estate. Two days after the November pogroms began, Latvian and French correspondents reported on the excesses of violence in Germany and annexed Austria. The newspaper was one of the most important in Latvia at the time. The Berlin employee described the events based on the immediate impression of what he had seen; a second article in the same issue summarized the reports from French newspapers.

The Berlin correspondent for "Jaunākās Ziņas" describes how young men move from shop to shop, breaking shop windows and throwing furniture onto the street: "On Alexanderplatz, furniture lies between broken glass, on Friedrichstrasse traffic is at a standstill, on Kurfürstendamm well-known shops - Etam, Sigmund Reis, Lichtenstein, Café Dobrin - are completely destroyed." The perpetrators were followed by "huge crowds of curious people." The crowds are so big that cars can't get through. The crimes happen in the middle of the city, in broad daylight, in front of an audience. If you don't strike, you can stand and watch - or move on. That is also a decision, although under a dictatorship not every decision is free.

The report also states: The police are absent. Only a few officers can be seen during the day; nowhere do they fall into the arms of the destroyers. At night, when the shops were already devastated, numerous law enforcement officers suddenly appeared - to prevent anyone from stealing from the open shops. Protecting Jewish property from destruction is not their job. Protecting it from uncontrolled appropriation, on the other hand, does.

Today we know: The Nazi leadership had organized the violence and instructed the police not to intervene as long as non-Jewish property was spared. Tens of thousands of Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The correspondent's report makes it clear how this state organization was reflected in the street scene: the perpetrators acted because they knew that they would be left to their own devices.

The press review of the French newspapers completes the picture. “Le Temps” reports on systematically organized riots that began simultaneously in different parts of the city. It is said that the majority of Berliners did not support the violence. However, other French journalists describe crowds of people shouting and shouting and passers-by taking briefcases and wallets from the destroyed display in front of a leather goods store. The population was not a uniform mass: perpetrators, followers, enthusiastic spectators, indifferent and horrified. The pogroms did not take place in secret. They were public and their extent could hardly be overlooked.

A scene from Friedrichstrasse tells a lot. In front of a shop whose windows are being smashed, a woman calls out to the attackers in Bavarian dialect whether they would pay for the damage - the shop had been "Aryanized" for three weeks. The perpetrators move on. And the woman's protest is not directed against the persecution of her Jewish neighbors, but rather against the accidental damage to what has now become an "Aryan" company. The expropriation of Jewish owners and the brutal attacks on them are therefore seen as justified and “normal”.

The reports of burning synagogues are also revealing. French journalist Georges Blum writes that the arsonists knew what they were doing - and that no one would stop them. The fire brigade is on site, but is just making sure that the flames do not spread to neighboring buildings.

The simultaneity of precise observation and misjudgment is particularly oppressive. The Latvian newspaper's correspondent reports on devastated shops, burning synagogues and arrests - and at the same time writes that there were no reports of injuries. The Paris show also states that nothing is known about fatalities. Today we know: Hundreds of Jewish people died during the pogroms and in their aftermath; approximately 26,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The full extent of the crimes could not yet be grasped on November 11th.

Nevertheless, foreign journalists recognized important connections: the simultaneity of the attacks, the inaction of the police and the deliberate burning of the synagogues left little doubt that these were not spontaneous riots. Nazi propaganda claimed that the pogroms were an angry reaction by Germans to the murder of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by the Polish citizen of Jewish faith Herschel Grynszpan on November 7, 1938. In doing so, it made the Jewish population collectively responsible for the act and thus also for the riots.

The correspondent's report adopts this language in places ("outrage," "protesters") but provides observations that contradict the official narrative. The French colleagues spoke more clearly of a “general pogrom” and systematically organized riots. As early as November 11th, there was speculation about the economic future: Insurance companies might not be able to compensate for damage; new laws could mean the end of Jewish business. In fact, further disenfranchisement followed - in the end, the victims themselves paid for the terror.

One of more than 1,000: The synagogue in Bamberg was destroyed by arson during the November pogroms in 1938. In addition to SA paramilitaries, numerous civilians were involved. Photo: IMAGO/CPA Media/Pictures from History We won't find out why Baiba's father kept the newspaper page. The find reminds us that the crimes did not only become known after 1945. In Riga on November 11, 1938, you could read how shops in Berlin were smashed and synagogues set on fire, and how people applauded the perpetrators. Nobody could fully know what would become of it. It was already apparent at the time that persecution was taking place here and was tolerated and supported by the state.

The old newspaper thus raises a question that goes beyond the occasion: What does it mean to witness an injustice? When is watching still observation, when does it become tacit consent? And how easy is it to claim later that you didn't know anything? Anyone who dissents under a dictatorship can end up in danger. Not every viewer is a convinced supporter of the perpetrators. But between resistance and enthusiasm lies a wide range of behaviors that are surprisingly little talked about to this day.

Perhaps this is the real treasure that Baiba has found: not an unknown fact about November 1938, but a contemporary look at the many people who destroyed or watched. Many later claimed that they had seen and known nothing.

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