World News | Newly Discovered Photos Show Nazi Kristallnacht Up Close
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. Harrowing, previously unseen images from 1938's Kristallnacht pogrom against German and Austrian Jews have surfaced in a photograph collection donated to Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, the organization said Wednesday.
Jerusalem, Nov 9 (AP) Harrowing, previously unseen images from 1938's Kristallnacht pogrom against German and Austrian Jews have surfaced in a photograph collection donated to Israel's Yad Vashem memorial, the organization said Wednesday.
One shows a crowd of smiling, well-dressed middle-aged German men and women standing casually as a Nazi officer smashes a storefront window. In another, brownshirts carry heaps of Jewish books, presumably for burning. Another image shows a Nazi officer splashing gasoline on the pews of a synagogue before it's set alight.
Also Read | Meta Layoffs: Massive Sacking by Mark Zuckerberg Hits India Team Across Verticals.
Yad Vashem — The World Holocaust Remembrance Center released the photographs on the 84th anniversary of the November pogrom also known as Kristallnacht, or “The Night of Broken Glass." Mobs of Germans and Austrians attacked, looted and burned Jewish shops and homes, destroyed 1,400 synagogues, killed 92 Jews and sent another 30,000 to concentration camps.
The violence is widely considered a starting point for the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews.
Jonathan Matthews, head of Yad Vashem's photo archive, said the photos dispel a Nazi myth that the attacks were “a spontaneous outburst of violence” rather than a pogrom orchestrated by the state. Firefighters, SS special police officers and members of the general public are all seen in the photos participating in the Kristallnacht. The photographers themselves were an integral part of the events.
Matthews said these were the first photos he was aware of depicting actions taking place indoors, as “most of the images we have of Kristallnacht are images from outside.” Altogether, he said, the photos “give you a much more intimate image of what's happening.”
The photos were taken by Nazi photographers during the pogrom in the city of Nuremberg and the nearby town of Fuerth. They wound up in the possession of a Jewish American serviceman who served in Germany during World War II — how, precisely is uncertain, he never talked about them to his family.
His descendants, who declined to give his name, donated the album to Yad Vashem as part of the institution's effort to collect Holocaust-era objects kept by survivors and their families. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)