November 9 is a weighty date in German history. Depending on the year, it conjures up acts of brutality or widespread euphoria. In 1938, Nazis in Germany and Austria plundered Jewish homes and businesses, torched synagogues and killed and deported Jews during the night of 9 November to 10 November. The night became known as Kristallnacht (crystal night).

On 9 November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell after having separated family and friends for 28 years, which prompted a jubilant celebration. http://walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/who-really-opened-the-berlin/wall/, http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/schabowski-sparks-the-fall-of-the-wall/, http://www.walled-in-berlin.com/j-elke-ertle/brinkmann-or-ehrman-the-crucial-question/

Events preceding Kristallnacht

In the 1920s, most German Jews were fully integrated into German society. When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the situation changed. Hitler branded the 500,000 Jews living in Germany (about 0.86% of the total German population) as enemies of the State. He blamed the Jews for Germany’s defeat in World War I and for the hyperinflation in the 1920s and quickly introduced policies that restricted their rights. Jewish citizens lost the ability to work in civil service, to get accepted into university and to marry non-Jewish Germans. Many Jews left Germany, but as the number of Jews wanting to leave increased, so did the restrictions against them.

In August 1938, authorities revoked residence permits for foreigners, including those of German-born Jews of foreign origin. In the so-called Polenaktion on 28 October 1938, more than 12,000 Polish-born Jews were expelled from Germany. The deportees were put on trains to the Polish border. But Polish border guards sent them back to Germany because Poland no longer accepted “Jews of former Polish origin.” The deportees ended up walking back and forth between Germany and Poland for days. Among those expelled were the Grynszpans, Polish Jews who had emigrated to Germany in 1911 and settled in the north of Germany. Their teenage son Herschel was living in Paris when he received a postcard from his parents on 3 November 1938, describing their expulsion. Four days later, Herschel went to the German embassy in Paris with a revolver in his pocket. He was directed to the office of Ernst vom Rath, a German embassy official. Young Grynszpan fired five bullets at vom Rath who succumbed to his wounds two days later.

What happened during Kristallnacht in 1938?

When news of the death of Ernst vom Rath reached Nazi officials, they decided that the Jews would have to pay for vom Rath’s death. During the night of 9 November to 10 November, Nazi storm troopers destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses, set fire to more than 900 synagogues, killed 91 Jews and deported some 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/peopleevents/pandeAMEX99.html

The sounds of breaking glass shattered the air and littered the streets throughout Germany and parts of Austria, which gave rise to the term “Kristallnacht.”

Kristallnacht had also provided an opportunity for Hitler to totally remove Jews from German public life. He ordered that henceforth Jews would be prohibited from practicing most professions in the private sector; Jewish businesses could not be reopened unless non-Jews managed them; Jewish children would be barred from attending school and Jews would lose the right to hold a driver’s licenses or own an automobile. The Nazis held the Jewish community liable for the damages caused during Kristallnacht and imposed a fine of one-billion Reichsmark. In the ten months following Kristallnacht, more than 115,000 Jews emigrated from the Reich. The majority went to other European countries, the US and Palestine. At least 14,000 went to Shanghai.

Kristallnacht and the Fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

Decades later after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany chose to declare 3 October 1990 – the day of German reunification – a national holiday rather than 9 November 1989. The main reason cited was the association of the latter date with the anniversary of Kristallnacht, which had occurred more than 50 years earlier.

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Walled-In is my story of growing up in Berlin during the Cold War. Juxtaposing the events that engulfed Berlin during the Berlin Blockade, the Berlin Airlift, the Berlin Wall and Kennedy’s Berlin visit with the struggle against my equally insurmountable parental walls, Walled-In is about freedom vs. conformity, conflict vs. harmony, domination vs. submission, loyalty vs. betrayal.