Now we come to the consequences of Kristallnacht and to this presentation's conclusion:
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The Consequences of the Crystal Night
It is often said that the Crystal Night incident was the official start of the German "Final Solution of the Jewish Question." This is quite true, but "Final Solution" did not mean physical extermination -- it meant only emigration of the Jews from Germany. Immediately after the Crystal Night, Hitler ordered the creation of a central agency to organize the emigration of the Jews from Germany as rapidly as possible. Accordingly, Goering set up the Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration ("Reichszentrale fuer die juedische Auswanderung") with Reinhard Heydrich as director. This agency combined the various government departments which had been involved with Jewish emigration. It simplified official procedures for Jewish emigration, but its work was severely hampered by the unwillingness of almost all countries to admit Jews. The only country to which Jews could still easily emigrate was Palestine, provided they possessed one thousand pounds sterling each, as required by the British authorities there.
Despite the favorable terms of the Haavara or Transfer Agreement, only a few German Jews were willing to emigrate to Palestine. In those days Palestine was only at the beginning of its development. It was still an agrarian country with very little industry. It was only after the arrival of thousands of German Jews with their capital and experience that industrial development really began there. The Jews in Germany were generally employed in trade, industry, or the professions. There were little or no opportunities for them in Palestine. For example, there was virtually no financial structure in Palestine in the 1930s. There was no money market, no stock exchange, and no investment banking. How could businessmen operate in such an environment?
Because so few Jews wanted to migrate to Palestine, special efforts were made to open the doors of other countries, but this proved very difficult. Prosperous nations did not want Jewish immigrants and poor countries were very unattractive. In the summer of 1938 an Inter-Governmental Refugee Committee was established with the American lawyer George Rublee as its director. In January 1939 (that is, after the Crystal Night), Rublee and the German government signed an agreement by which all German Jews could emigrate to the country of their choice. Interestingly enough, it was the father of a future American president and the father of a future German president who nearly torpedoed this agreement: Josäph Kennedy, the U.S. Ambassador to Britain, and Ernst von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of the German Foreign Office and father of the current president of the German Federal Republic. Adolf Hitler personally intervened in the negotiating process and saved the agreement by sending Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht to London to negotiate with Rublee.
Rublee himself later called it a "senational agreement"-and it was indeed sensational. Special arrangements between the InterGovernmental Committee and governments of individual countries would guarantee the financial security of the migrating Jews. Training camps would be established to prepare emigrating Jews for new jobs in their future homelands. Jews in Germany who were more than 45 years old could either emigrate or remain in Germany. If they decided to remain, they would be exempt from discriminatory restrictions. They would be able to live and work wherever they wanted. Their social security would be guaranteed by the Reich government, the same as for any German citizen. As Rublee later noted, there were practically no incidents against Jews during the time between the signing of the agreement and the outbreak of war in September 1939.
The Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration, which was organized shortly after the Crystal Night, was based on the provisions of the Rublee plan. A parallel Jewish organization, the Reich Union of Jews in Germany ("Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland"), was established. Its task was to advise Jews on all questions of emigration and to act on behalf of Jews with the Reich Central Office. The two agencies worked closely together to facilitate Jewish emigration as much as possible. In addition, the SS and certain other National Socialist organizations worked with Zionist organizations to facilitate Jewish emigration. Jewish groups greatly appreciated the cooperation of the SS. For example, the SS established training centers where prospective Jewish emigrants learned new job skills to prepare them for their new lives.
With the help of the Transfer Agreement and the Rublee plan, hundreds of thousands of Jews migrated from Europe to Palestine. In September 1940 the Jewish news agency in Palestine, "Palcor," reported that 500,000 Jewish emigrants had already arrived from the German Reich, including Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia- Moravia, and German-ruled Poland. Nevertheless, after 1950 it was claimed that the total number of Jewish emigrants to Palestine from all European countries was only about 80,000. What happened to the other 420,000 Jews? In 1940 they probably had no idea that later on they were supposed to have been "gassed"!
Conclusion
I have tried to point out just a few unmentioned aspects of the Crystal Night issue which, in my opinion, give a picture of what actually happened that is entirely different than the one generally accepted. I am convinced that neither the German government nor the leaders of the National Socialist Party instigated the Crystal Night. Ultimately it was not the Jews but the Germans who suffered most as a result of this event. Even persons sympathetic to National Socialism are still appalled when they think of the Crystal Night. Many are under the impression that murder and arson were quite common under National Socialism and that no Jew could be sure of his life or property. Nazi Germany was supposedly a country without any civil rights. The Crystal Night incident was indeed one of the darkest episodes of German history in the era of 1933 to 1945. But based on all of the available evidence, these demonstrations were neither thought up nor organized by German Party or government officials. In fact, they were completely suprised and shocked when they learned of the riot and destruction. The pogrom must have been thought up and organized by those who actually benefited from it and who wanted to create havoc in Germany.
Who could they have been? If we keep in mind the deep involve ment of the Jewish organization LICA in the murder of vom Rath, we may ask: Could the Jews themselves have hoped to benefit from a pogrom? In the aftermath of the Crystal Night, the world press became overwhelmingly sympathetic to the Jews, which is precisely what they wanted above all else. The Zionists in particular counted on worldwide support in their struggle against England, which then ruled Palestine as a British mandate. Jewish immigration to Palestine was strictly limited at that time by the British because of vehement Arab opposition to the arrival of ever larger numbers of Jews. As a result, the number of Jewish immigrants dropped in 1938 to the lowest level since the beginning of the century, when the Zionist mass migration to Palestine began.
To stabilize the situation, the British formulated a partition plan dividing Palestine into Arab and Jewish portions. Despite serious reservations, the Jews agreed to the plan, but the Arabs did not. They responded with an uprising known as the Arab Revolt. In March 1938 the British government sent Sir Harold MacMichaels as High Commissioner to Palestine. He succeeded in suppressing the uprising, but to appease the Arabs he promised to urge his government to abandon the partition plan and halt further Jewish immigration. MacMichaels returned to London in October 1938 to discuss his proposals with the British parliament. The scheduled date for the final decision was 8 November 1938, the day on which the Crystal Night violence actually began.
German Embassy Secretary Ernst vom Rath had been shot just one day earlier, on 7 November. The conspirators no doubt hoped that vom Rath would die immediately, in which case the anti- Jewish demonstrations would probably have also started on the 7th. Could someone have hoped that a pogrom in nearby Germany would influence the British to change their Palestine policy? Or that it would induce the outside world to exert pressure on Britain to open Palestine to the Jews who were being so terribly treated in Germany? I cannot give any definite answers. I can only speculate as to who (the) conspirators behind the Crystal Night really were and as to their motives. To me it seems entirely plausible that certain Jewish groups were involved. The LICA was almost certainly involved in the murder of vom Rath. In any case, the Crystal Night incident was not an expression of the will of the German people. Nor was it organized by Dr. Goebbels or any of the other German leaders. On the contrary, it was carefully organized by people who worked in the shadows.
Notes
1.William P. Varga, The Number One Nazi Jew-Baiter: A Political Biography of Julius Streicher (New York: 1981).
2. Even Helmut Heiber, a prominent contemporary Ger nan historian, had to admit these facts. Helmut Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," ViertelFahrshefte Suer Zeitgeschichte, 5. Hg., 1957, pp. 154-172.
3. See: Werner Feilchenfeld, Dolf Michaelis, and Ludwig Pinner, Haavara-Transfer nach Palaestina (Tuebingen: 1972); arld, Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement (New York and London: 1984)
4. Ingrid Weckert, Feuerzeichen: Die "Reichslcristal1nacht," Anstifter und Brandstifterpfer und Nutzniesser (Tuebingen: 1981), p. 225.
5. Edwin Black, The Transfer Agreement, p. 382.
6. W. Feilchenfeld, et al., Haavara-Transfer Nach Palaestina, p. 71.
7. Nahum Goldmann, Das Juedische Paradox: Zionismus und Judentum nach Hitler (Cologne: 1978), p. 181.
8. Heinemann Stern, Warum Hassen Sie Uns Eigentlich? (Duesseldorf: 1970), pp. 298-299.
9. Hermann Graml, Der 9. November 1938 (Bonn: 1958), p. 47 ú
10. H. Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," p. 164.
11. H. Heiber, "Der Fall Gruenspan," p. 172.
12. Gideon Hausner, Justice in Jerusalem (New York: 1968), p. 41.
Bibliographic information
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Courtesy of the Institute for Historical Review 'Crystal Night' 1938: The Great Anti-German Spectacle - Ingrid Weckert
(Paper Presented to the Sixth International Revisionist Conference.)
This and other Revisionist articles are posted, among many other websites, at www.ihr.org and www.vho.org
Thought for the Day:
"The Lightning reached a fiery rod, and on Death's fearful forehead wrote the autograph of God."
(Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)