BenTha'er-Horizons

Holocaust

Kristallnacht

Today this the 85th Anniversary of Kristallnacht in Germany. It was felt to be the visible beginning of the Holocaust for the Jews.

Information from The Lid Blog about that day and the Anniversary
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Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was a nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany. It began on the evening of November 9, 1938, and continued through the next day…

Kristallnacht was a coordinated attack on the Jewish people and their property, 99 Jews were murdered, 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps. Two hundred and sixty-seven synagogues were destroyed, and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked. Just Like Hamas did to Kibbutzim on Oct. 7th.

The attacks were carried out by the Hitler Youth, the Gestapo, and the SS. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews and was part of the broader Nazi policy of Antisemitism. Kristallnacht was followed by more horrific anti-Semitic economic and political abuses and horrible genocide.
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Hitchcock and the Holocaust

It was not a well known fact that Alfred Hitchcock, a master film maker, produced a documentary in 1945 of the liberation of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. Hitchcock was so disturbed by the images he saw on the film and also due to other factors that the film has not been shown. It was archived away for many years. It is now to be released. Five of six reels of film were stored at the Imperial War Museum, a museum Bob and I visited while on a London visit. It is an excellent spot to spend time in and understand history. The repeat playing of Neville Chamberlain’s words when he told the British people about the Munich Pact which sold out Czechoslovakia are haunting and chilling in hindsight. The article can be read here and an excerpt from it follows. I would really like to be able to see what the Imperial War Museum has done here to digitally master this documentary and add other film with it.

“Now, finally, the film is set to be seen in a version that Hitchcock, Bernstein and the other collaborators intended. The Imperial War Museum has painstakingly restored it using digital technology and has pieced together the extra material from the missing sixth reel. A new documentary, Night Will Fall, is also being made with André Singer, executive producer of The Act of Killing, as director and Stephen Frears as directorial advisor. Both the original film about the camps and the new documentary will be shown on British TV in early 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the "liberation" of Europe. Before that, next year, they are due to be shown together at festivals and in cinemas.”
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A Holocaust Snippet

When you visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, they give you a card of details of a holocaust victim to carry throughout your tour. The thought is to give you a connection to that person and what their life may have been like during this horrific period in our world’s history. This post reminds me of the card I carried during my one trip through. The photo and description of this 14-year old girl from Poland can bring the whole tragedy closer.
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