In 1938, on the nights of November 9 and 10, the Nazis whipped up anti-Jewish riots in a pogrom now known as Kristallnacht.
During these two nights, synagogues were set on fire and thousands of Jewish shop windows were broken.
Ninety one Jews were killed. 30,000 were arrested and taken to camps, a harbinger of the Holocaust.
Kristallnacht - An unwashable stain on the sheet of German history.
ReplyDeleteAs is, indeed, the entire period of the 'Nazi Experience', for lack of a better term.
Lately, Mr. Molovinsky, I have been working and posting on the fall of the Berlin Wall in relation to German football.
November 9 is also a famous date with respect to the Cold War.
Of course, it was the occupying Soviets who built the Wall, but, anyone with the slightest understanding of history knows that it was, in fact, the Nazis who bought and paid for the thing.
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Yesterday, I posted about the big "Bayrisches Derby" game today between traditional powerhouse Bayern Munich and their intra-state Bavarian rival, 1.FC Nuremberg.
ReplyDeleteI have to admit, Mr. Molovinsky, the two things I most associate with the city of Nuremberg are the infamous Nuremberg Laws and the post-war Nuremberg Trials.
The fact that city was also the annual site of the National Socialist German Worker's Party (the Nazis) convention, commonly known as the Nuremberg Rally is not too far behind.
This did not escape my thoughts as I wrote a about the history of the Bayern Munich - 1.FC Nuremberg rivlary, which is like a Michigan - Ohio State thing for southern Germany.
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1.FC Nuremberg were actually a big powerhouse in the 1920s and 1930s. Even into the 50s and 60s, 1.FC usually had their way with Bayern.
ReplyDeleteI did not feel like discussing the championships of 1.FC Nuremberg, so I skipped it and picked up after World War II.
You may be interested to know Bayern Munich have been regularly beating the snot out of 1.FC Nuremberg since the 1960s.
1.FC Nuremberg does have Israel international midfielder ALMOG COHEN (son of Avi) in the ranks these days, though.
It is interesting you posted on Kristallnacht today, Mr. Molovinsky, considering all I have been up to lately.
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I will be running a story about a guy named LUTZ EIGENDORF, an East German footballer who defected and then turned up dead four years later while playing professionally in West Germany back in the early 1980s.
ReplyDeleteEigendorf was a former player for Dynamo Berlin - the team of the dreaded East German secret police, the Stasi.
I think one lesson history has on offer is that, more often than not, bad things start happening when too much power in the government is concentrated in one party without concrete limits on those powers, any kind of system of checks and balances on those powers.
Not to mention, and any sort of GENUINE, independent and neutral press scrutinizing and reporting freely on the affairs of government as they see fit.