In her diary entries from September 1938 through September 1939, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich wrote about many of the most important events that unfolded in Nazi Germany in the last year before World War II. She paid particular attention to the events leading up to and immediately following Kristallnacht? The night of broken glass" in which Jewish property all across Germany was vandalized and often completely destroyed, and Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned " in November 1938. How did Andreas-Friedrich react to the events associated with Kristallnacht and what explains her responses to these events? What difficulties did the Jews she knew encounter in the days and months immediately following Kristallnacht? Be sure to refer to specific incidents or accounts from the diary to support your analysis.
The Jews have always been a persecuted minority and as the events in Germany unfolded, the situation for them rapidly became intolerable and without much hope. The Crystal Night was simply another chapter in the sequence of events which left the Jews without any property, practically homeless and in great danger of losing their lives. There had long been a form of subtle persecution with regard to the Jews but this was simply more pronounced as events began taking a turn for the worse with every Jew now in great danger of being deported or losing practically all their material possessions. Hitler’s philosophy was simply to rouse the rabble with inflammatory speeches which made several Germans go for the jugular when the time was right and create a situation of instability and harm to the Jews which would make them feel continually alienated and without any hope. The Crystal Night was the apex of a series of events, which continued accordingly to the extermination of the Jewish race but that is another story.
The Andreas-Friedrich diary
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich’s seminal diary which is called ‘Berlin Underground’ recounts the terrifying story of those Jews who decided to stick it out in Berlin and Germany itself as the Nazi regime continued to tighten the screws on those Jews who aimed to live a normal life. Andreas Friedrich continues to espouse on the vitriolic propaganda used for example by Josef Goebbel’s who described Jews as vermin or poison and this obviously roused the Germans to do things which previously were unheard of in living memory. The way she describes the events which led to the taking of the keys of the synagogues and the summary arrest of those who were not in any at fault simply confirms the fact that the class action which was being taken was just intended to terrorize the Jews and beat them into submission. Interestingly the Jews did not always react with passivity as is often assumed but there were several instances when covert action was taken and this involved the attempted protection of private property as well as other important issues.
Although the Final Solution was still some years into the future, one could immediately observe the fact that Jews were earmarked for elimination. The author also describes the effect of the Nuremberg Laws which simply left the Jews without any sort of rights and intrinsically without any hope for the future but to leave the country as fast as possible. Private property did not mean anything anymore and the obvious but stark choice was to stay and be exterminated slowly or to flee and start a new life elsewhere. Some of the Jews were pretty stoic about all this but others looked forward and were very active in proposing options to continue living a life of normality. The will to negotiate which was intrinsically present among the Rabbis and the Jewish leaders was also a case in point.
A typical assessment of the situation lies in Andreas-Friedrich’s description of her current state of mind:
“I can’t help myself: I don’t see anything between the lines. If there’s any pulse in them at all, it’s certainly no more than the beat of a chicken heart. But after all, where is courage to come from when it will cost you your neck to show any? People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. The courage of one’s convictions under a dictatorship is ruled by different laws from the opposition in a democracy”1.
Andreas Friedrich said this when referring to the dilly dallying of European politicians such as Chamberlain and Daladier on the Sudetenland question. This was simply land grabbing on Hitler’s part and she could not understand why the foremost European politicains did not see it as such.
Difficulties Jews faced after the Kristallnacht
If the situation had been bad for the Jews after the enactment of the Nuremberg Laws then it decidedly took a turn for the worse after the Kristallnacht. Here wanton and unchecked violence and vandalism on Jewish property as well as the continuous anti-Semitic decrees led to a terrible situation in which the Jew feared for his life. Businesses were not allowed to operate, Jewish firms were boycotted and shunned and this obviously created a situation of total prohibition with Jews left slowly to strave and without any sort of decent existence. The difficulties continued to increase when the yellow star system was introduced as all Jews had to wear this so that they could be distinguished from other people and this obviously made them stand out from the crowd.
However the resttlment of Jews into specially designated ghetto areas was the real legacy of the Kristallnacht. This meant that the Jews would be forced into specially prepared areas of the city without proper facilities thus making their life intolerable. As many as twenty people would be crammed into one room with absolutely no privacy whatsoever and this meant that they would be left to starve or go mad if they had nothing to do. It was a policy of slow extermination which would rob the Jews of all their dignity and leave them with no option but to rebel and be shot or killed or else to take their own life accordingly. It was subtle and evil discrimination on every human count.
Conclusion – leaving a country which now hates you
“And how they were hurt. Stupidly, senselessly. Take the affair of my deputy parents. When the Nuremberg Laws came out, they got ready to leave, with a heavy heart, God knows. I had lived with them for five years; for five years I had known nothing but kindness from them, and everyone else who knew them”2.
This poignant quote demonstrates how countless lives were uprooted simply due to Hitler’s abominable whims where the Jew was simply a cog in the machine which he wished to dismantle at the quickest possible speed. The diary by Andreas Friedrich is truly a poignant reflection on these events as they occurred and is definitely essential reading on all counts if one is remotely interested in European history.
References
Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Berlin Underground, 1939-1945, trans. Barrows Mussey (London: Latimer House, Ltd., 1948)
