“Today is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when German Nazis coordinated a nationwide attack on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. It’s generally considered the official beginning of the Holocaust. Before that night, the Nazis had killed people secretly and individually. After Kristallnacht, the Nazis felt free to persecute the Jews openly, because they knew no one would stop them.”
The above paragraph was from today’s “Writer’s Almanac,” a free-e-newsletter you can subscribe to through National Public Radio. The last sentence gives me chills; because no one protested about Kristallnacht, the Nazis knew they could publicly destroy the Jews because there would be no outcry from society. What would history have been like if the German citizenry had taken to the streets that next day in outrage and anger that their neighbors, the Jews, had been targeted in such a vicious way? And who today is experiencing their version of Kristallnacht, the beginning of their Holocaust, that I and the rest of the world are remaining silent about?