Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of Nazis’ Attack on Jews on Kristallnacht

Eighty years ago on the night of November 9-10, 1938, the Nazi government in Germany and Austria perpetrated widespread attacks on the Jews in those countries. In my play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE I talk about those attacks:

PZ MILLER:
Two months after we arrived in Munich, I read about an event that the Nazi government had organized before the start of WWII — mass public attacks on Jews throughout Germany and Austria. This event that I had never heard of before became known as Kristallnacht — Night of Broken Glass — also known as Reichspogromnacht. During the attack, the Nazis in Germany and Austria burned synagogues, vandalized Jewish stores, and rounded up Jewish males, sending thousands to concentration camps. Suddenly I realized that I was learning about Kristallnacht while in Munich, Germany, on the exact date of the anniversary of that dreadful night of November 9-10, 1938.

PZ Miller contemplates this before continuing.

PZ MILLER:
For propaganda purposes the Nazis claimed that the attacks carried out on Kristallnacht were spontaneous. Yet when I later got a job in an Army office, I worked with a German woman, Miss Winkler. She told me she had been 17 in Munich when her night school teacher sent all the students home early that evening before the attacks began.

PZ Miller looks around at the audience.

PZ MILLER:
In Arnold Geier’s book HEROES OF THE HOLOCAUST he recounts that on November 8, 1938, one night before Kristallnacht, a German man appeared at the Berlin apartment of Geier’s grandfather. The man said: “Herr Geier, do you remember when you saved a soldier on the battlefield many years ago [during World War I]? I am that soldier. I work with the Chief of Police in Berlin and have kept track of you for a long time. Tomorrow night, police and SS will round up adult male Jews all over Germany. I have seen the list, and your name is on it. Do whatever you wish. My debt to you is paid.”

PZ Miller steps to one side and puts on a German child’s pinafore.

PZ MILLER AS ELFRIEDE MORGENSTERN:
I am Elfriede Morgenstern, and I was nine years old in Frankfurt, Germany, the morning after Kristallnacht. My mother’s parents, Jews born in Poland rather than Germany, had already been taken by the Nazis and shipped back to Poland, eventually to be murdered in the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz. My mother, my six-year-old sister Sylvia and I were woken by pounding on the door of Nazi brown shirts demanding my father. Lucky for him he was away on business, and a neighbor who barely knew us — Frau Storch — confirmed that Herr Morgenstern frequently traveled on business. Minutes later my father pulled up in his car in front of the house. He had heard about the attacks on Jews and had returned to check on us. Frau Storch ran to his car and pleaded for him to get away.

Why is this 80th commemoration important in today’s world?

As far right political parties get more powerful in Germany, the U.S. and other democratic countries, all of us must be on guard that we do not allow the trampling of civil rights until it is too late as it was on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany attacked Poland and started World War II — and the fate of six million Jews along with millions of others including Roma, homosexuals, mentally and physically handicapped people, and political opponents was sealed.

At the conclusion of the play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE:

PZ MILLER:
Some people say that I am obsessed with the Holocaust. Am I? Or am I obsessed with the thought that these horrific crimes against humanity can happen again — anywhere — anytime — to any group of people.

Judith, the Polish Countess, and the Radio Announcer come to stand besides PZ Miller.

PZ MILLER:
All it takes is allowing the thin edge of the wedge to grow so wide until … there is no turning back.

Read more about the one-act play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE here.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks. Phyllis is available by skype for book group discussions and may be reached at pzmiller@gmail.com

Her Kindle fiction ebooks may be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription — see www.amazon.com/author/phylliszimblermiller — and her Kindle nonfiction ebooks may also be read for free with a Kindle Unlimited monthly subscription — see www.amazon.com/author/phylliszmiller