The lecture was given in Hebrew by Dr. Shmuel Kneller
A lecture given on November 9th 2008 on the 70th anniversary of “Crystal Night” at the Holocaust Studies Centre in Haifa.
On Holocaust Memorial Day a siren marks a moment of silence. On the eve of Crystal Night Memorial no siren sounds at all. Let us close our eyes for a second and go through some silent soul searching to check what reflections link each and every one of us to this evening.
If I could, I would be sitting with each and every one of you to hear what went through your minds and what emotions stirred your hearts. I believe that some of you have personal memories, others might have heard from the older generation reverberations of the dreadful calamity inflicted upon our people, and perhaps there are others who manage only to put on a sad face vis-à-vis this inconceivable chapter in the history of our people decades ago in distant lands and that has by now become a chapter in history taught at school. Is it possible to identify with this chapter? Does it relate to us personally? Or does it belong to the anonymous “them”? Has any lesson from the Holocaust become deeply embedded in our hearts, guiding our thoughts and directing our deeds, or does all this belong only to "others" ?
Let us try to be true to ourselves and devote some thought to this question during our talk today.
Since I cannot sit with each and every one of you personally, I have no alternative but to reverse the situation and share with you here my own thoughts and feelings tonight. A siren sounds on the Day of Remembrance for the IDF and underground fighters; it is followed by stories of our soldiers’ heroism, who “in their death commanded us to live”. The siren on Holocaust Remembrance Day isn’t followed by a single word as to what we were ordered by the six million victims imprisoned, tortured, humiliated and murdered during the Shoah , and for which disaster Crystal Night was the overture. Each and every one of us has to draw his personal legacy from that overture and forge his life accordingly. I wish to share my personal legacy with you tonight, hoping that you can go along with me in this exposure by listening and identifying.
Let me introduce myself and my family by pinpointing four dates over the last hundred years which have indirectly influenced me, four very meaningful milestones – to my mind – in the history of our people at that time.
1897: My father was eight years old when the first Zionist Congress, chaired by Theodor Herzl, convened in Basel, possibly marking the inception of political Zionism. My father firmly believed in political Zionism and imparted it to his friends and two sons. (I wish to add in parenthesis that when my father was in Russian captivity during World War I he opened a course in Zionism in Siberia and one of his pupils was Erich Moller who later on founded and managed the ‘Ata’ enterprise not far away from here). 1933: I was eight years old when Hitler came to power. 1967: Both my sons were about eight when I was drafted to my reserve unit to fight in the Six Day War, which regardless of our glorious victory has radically changed Israeli society. 1995: The 21 year olds in our society just about to be released from the IDF so as to integrate into Israeli adult society were eight years old when a Prime Minister was assassinated in the State of Israel. I wish to reiterate: a Prime Minister in the “Jewish State”, of which Herzl dreamt and for which he preached about 100 years earlier, was assassinated by a Jew. These four milestones are the background of my personal story.
As I have already said, I was eight years old when Hitler came to power. Long banners with the swastika appeared in the streets of Berlin, part of which unfurled from the rooftops to the lower floors of the buildings. More and more citizens were wearing the brown uniform and marching in demonstrations. I couldn’t deny the fact that as a child I felt that these were symbols of power and might that were supposed to give a feeling of confidence deriving from the regime’s power. I could almost feel at ease and even proud of belonging to a strong people. There was a candy store not far away from my
school and occasionally my pocket money sufficed to buy some candies. They were made of a red crust filled with white marzipan with a black swastika in its core. Thus I was supposed to assimilate Nazism. Hitler’s speeches could be heard on the radio in his shrieking threatening voice and at the cinema he could be seen in film journals. Masses were cheering him. My school mates began wearing the ‘Hitlerjugend’ uniform; at the beginning I was probably even jealous of them. Gradually, I sobered up from the "intoxication" of power and understood that Jews were about to be persecuted, but initially only the ‘other’ Jews. They could no longer keep their jobs, there were several cases of detentions and slowly but surely the threat reached our acquaintances and then our family as well.
The Nuremberg Laws (1935) forbade Christians (under the age of 45) to work for Jews: a loyal team of household help left our home in farewell tears, replaced by less skilled personnel of young Jewish women. Whoever now visits Berlin’s Bavarian Quarter can notice on the street lamps across the neighborhood, the compendium of laws issued by the Nazis in the 30s. For instance, the Jewish physician who gave us the certificate required in order to leave Germany used a stamp reading that he "was not allowed to treat Aryans”.
There was also a different atmosphere in my elementary school: Teachers saluted and shouted “Heil Hitler” and during the warm-up gymnastics we had to march with our hand up, declaring loudly that Saarland did not belong to France and had to be annexed to Germany. At that time German Jewry was split into two camps: Those claiming that “we were first of all Germans and then also Jews” and those who were claiming the opposite: “first Jews and also Germans”. The first camp adhered to the belief that Germany was a very civilized country, that they themselves had fought for Germany during World War I, even gaining decorations for their service and that the entire Nazi persecution was a temporary episode that would soon disappear. My close classmate belonged to a family firmly believing in these ideas. One day we went to the movies and he innocently asked me “what do you think of the Nazis?” Aged nine, I naively answered that “I’m not very fond of them”. On the following day I went to school. On entering the tunnel that linked the street to the internal yard I found my class standing in two lines along both sides of the tunnel. I couldn’t imagine what was going to happen and walked confidently between the lines, greeting them “Good Morning”. Quite soon they began hurling me from side to side and shouting in chorus “Kneller is afraid of the Nazis”. In a jiffy the hurling became beating. Suddenly, I became resourceful and declared that it was unfair to have all against one and proposed that they should choose one who would wrestle with me. Surprisingly, they accepted my proposal and we went up to our classroom. I didn’t have the self-image of a super hero. In gym I was afraid to stumble across the vaulting horse or vaulting box while jumping, I preferred excelling in track and field. However, probably because of my anger, I retrieved unknown hidden strength and defeated the thug that they had chosen to wrestle with me. As he was lying beneath me with both his shoulders pinned to the ground the fight was over and spirits calmed down. Reflecting over this event I can’t refrain from thinking of the David and Goliath story which had gained a new meaning for me. By the way, in 1990, when I returned to visit Berlin, my wife asked me to walk with her along that tunnel. It had a new locked gate. As we were ringing the bell, a German lady police officer faced us explaining that the school belonged to the Jewish community, attended, inter-alia, by children of former Soviet Union emigrants, and that she was in charge of the security check of visitors. I couldn’t refrain from thinking: oh, my fair lady, why didn’t you come to protect me 56 years ago.
1935 - time to leave public school . I moved to a Jewish boarding school. These schools were founded by Jewish teachers who had been compelled to leave the general education system so that Aryans should not be "contaminated" by their teaching. On the one hand it was a refuge from the street scene, creating a “Jewish family” milieu; on the other hand it also meant annoying exposure to Nazism on the way to school and back since train passengers identified us as Jewish children. So we conferred whispering next to the driver’s cab so that others wouldn’t hear us. The insignia “Juden raus” appeared in the central train stations (by the way, as we visited Berlin in 1990 I detected in the very same place the insignia “Nazis raus”). While waiting for the train on the platform I would occasionally swallow the sandwich that my mother had prepared for me in the morning, because during the breaks I played with my friends, finding no time to eat it. One day, the German who stood next to me explained to his five year old son, pointing at me: “This is the Jew who is eating your bread”. During our visit in 1990 I couldn’t avoid looking at all those who seemed to be sixty and ask myself whether one of them was that five year old child.
1936 - The 11th Olympic Games in Berlin led to a temporary truce in the persecution of Jews. At least outwardly Germany wished to present itself to the world as a liberal country. Nevertheless, Jewish athletes were not allowed to be part of the German delegation. Hitler was interested in proving the supremacy of the Aryan race. I saw Hitler on his way to the opening ceremony. To his chagrin the black Jesse Owens won in track and field and got four gold medals. Four times he took his place on podium No. 1 raising a fisted hand; Hitler left the stadium infuriated.
1937-38 – Persecution intensifies. Shops still owned by Jews were marked with the letter J (for Jews) so that Germans should not buy there. Anti-Semitic demonstrations gained more impetus. Hitler convened mass folk rallies and sounded much more aggressive in his speeches. The rabbi whose sermon I heard in the synagogue on Friday evening was detained by the Gestapo in the middle of a sentence and led directly to a detention camp. A Palestine Group was opened at school, to prepare children for their immigration to the Land of Israel without their parents. I was part of that group. I learned to peel potatoes, cook hot-dogs (in my diploma it was stated that they burst!), prepare an omelet, repair electric safety sockets and even mend socks. In addition, I received intensified Hebrew lessons, however of the old bookish kind: A foot-cover instead of a sock; a head-cover instead of a hat and so on.
On Sept. 29th 1938 Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Daladier’s France and Chamberlain’s England signed the shameful Munich Agreement, according to which Germany was allowed to annex the Czech Sudetenland which allegedly would curb Nazi Germany’s expansion pretensions! Naively they thought that thus they were buying universal peace to last a generation (World War II broke out a year later!).
“Crystal Night” hit me against the background of all these events On Nov. 8th, on my way to school, a German man who was sitting opposite me was reading in the Nazi newspaper ‘Voelkischer Beobachter’ about the assassination of the German Embassy envoy in Paris a day earlier. A young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan had shot Ernst vom Rath in revenge of the Nazis who had deported his father together with thousands of other Jews to Poland and the ambassador had not made himself available to receive him. The German who easily recognized me as a Jewish lad, with the typical nose and dark eyes looked at me and said: “You’ll see what we are going to do with you!” I was then 13 years old!
“Crystal Night” took place on the following night The first heralding signal was at 4.00 p.m. A close friend of my parents rang them up and told them that her husband had been arrested. My father, who was a jurist, went to see her right away with my mother. When it transpired later on that this had not been the only case, but had just opened a wave of detentions, my brother and I were told to join them in the evening, with clear instructions to walk only in side alleys. I clearly remember the smashed windows of the shops we were passing and the red sky reflecting the flames of the burning synagogues, among them the synagogue where I had celebrated my Bar Mitzvah two months earlier. Dozens of Jews were killed, hundreds arrested and many committed suicide. Shops were destroyed; hundreds of synagogues and flats were burnt in what Göbbels called “a spontaneous demonstration” of the German people, well orchestrated by him on the morning of that day. (Researchers are still in dispute regarding the accurate numbers). My parents, my brother and I hid in our friends’ flat for a couple of weeks. I couldn’t deny the joy of a young kid who suddenly didn’t have to go to school, thus gaining an unexpected holiday. I began to realize the seriousness of the situation as I was participating in rescue drills through the backdoor of the flat in order to be ready to flee as soon as the front door might ring.
Two weeks later we returned to our flat. The old concierge at the entrance to the building told us that the Nazis had been here too. I returned to school and found the classrooms almost void of pupils. Many families had left Germany given the fact that the release from the concentration camps was conditional on leaving the country within a given time. I felt that my world was about to fall apart. Witty passwords became part of my life: if we had a phone call drawing our attention to a “lovely moonlit night” it was an indication that we’d better leave the flat. If the doorbell rang and somebody wished to sell “a vermin control agent” mother was sure that by "vermin" they meant Jews.
November 10th 1938 was gradually forgotten by the Jews. The Jewish calendar is full of memorial days, the 9th of Av, 10th of Tevet and so on, so that the human mind refuses to assimilate so many additional dates. What did not happen in November? On Nov. 2nd 91 years ago Balfour’s declaration was proclaimed about the right of the Jewish People to a National Home in Palestine. Is this date ever mentioned except full decades later? Nov. 29th gave way to the 5th of Iyar. I have met numerous pupils whose school was on the street in Jerusalem named November 29th , who had no idea why the street bore this name. How many more years will Nov. 4th be remembered as the date of the Prime Minister’s assassination? And tomorrow is Nov. 10th: I still carry in my heart deep anguish remembering this stormy night – Crystal Night! And I find it difficult to come to terms with those who do not remember it. I’ll give you two examples that I truly found revolting: Forty eight years later, on Nov. 10th 1986 the Israeli tennis player Amos Mansdorf won the championship and was declared Israel’s champion. That evening “Sport Journal” on TV apologized for not broadcasting live because of a technicians’ strike. Who could have dreamt in 1938 of an Israeli sport champion?!? At last, we do have a champion and yet the technicians are on strike. But there was more to come. What was the alternative? Instead – they said on TV – we are going to broadcast tonight a Boris Becker game (the German champion). What lack of sensitivity!!! I wrote a letter to the TV and they replied apologizing “We did not pay attention to the date”. On Nov. 10th 2000 elections took place for the City Council of the Jerusalem Municipality, accompanied by electoral belligerence and slanders as we can witness this year too. Why emphasize discordance and rivalry on this day? Why? Only because the law stipulates that elections should take place on the second Tuesday of November – but no mention of Crystal Night !
Maybe as you are listening you might accuse me of being hypersensitive tonight. About three months after Crystal Night we left Berlin, immigrating to Israel. On our way we went through France to bid farewell to my uncle’s and cousin’s family, both murdered later on in Paris. Upon our arrival in Israel Germany invaded Czechoslovakia and the Munich Agreement became a piece of paper.
World War II broke out six months later. In November we received the last postcard from my aunt in Poland who wished to continue keeping in touch through acquaintances in Holland. She, her husband and daughters were murdered too. I was left with no cousins. During the war I attended senior high school. I spent the nights before my matriculation in the shelter of our home in Tel-Aviv bombarded by Italian airplanes. German troops were landing in Egypt, Crete, Rhodes and Greece, threatening that the Nazi boot would march also into Israel. During those years we received the first news about the Holocaust in Europe. Quite soon I understood that I had been fortunate and privileged to immigrate with my parents and brother and to fight for the independence of the state.
I lived to witness the joy of independence of the Jewish People in its homeland. My heart was filled with pride to have our own President, government, Knesset (Parliament), flag and courts. All these should be duly respected and safeguarded! Every Memorial Day many reflections come to my mind: Innocently, I had thought that in our country no Jew would ever physically attack another Jew; naively I had hoped that there would be no Jewish thief and surely no Jewish assassin. Soon enough disillusion taught me that I was truly naïve, very naïve! During the split between the oriental and Ashkenazi communities I saw on the wall facing my home in Jerusalem graffiti with the word ‘Ashkenazis’. Then I witnessed the tension between newcomers and veterans, religious and secular, Arabs and Jews. I heard curses: “What a pity that Hitler didn’t finish all of you off in the crematoria” and even in the Knesset I heard parliamentarians calling each other “Nazi”. We also remember the recent shocking images during the evacuation from the Katif region with the yellow patch and with the child raising its hands.
And above all, that infamous night in 1995 when a young Jew aimed his gun at our Prime Minister in our young state, shooting and killing him. Before that vile assassination demonstrators against the Prime Minister carried his portrait wearing the S.S. uniform. So I repeatedly ask myself: have they all learned about the Shoah, have they been exposed to ceremonies in their schools standing at attention as the siren was sounding? And if so what lessons did they draw? Since I have retired from my job as high-school principal, where I had the privilege to educate our youth for 39 years, I began volunteering in the management of the ‘Tolerance’ movement, aiming at curbing violence in Israeli society. I am partner in developing an educational program teaching young people to face conflicts in their society without resorting to violence. We may differ in our opinions, it is even desirable, but there is no need to solve disagreement by resorting to violence, neither verbal nor physical. We can respect the other even if we don’t share his opinions. As I was teaching my pupils mathematics I emphasized that even in exact science there are various juxtaposed truisms, each based on its own assumptions. Those supporting one truism are not necessarily right and the ones supporting the other are not necessarily foolish. There is no need to show mutual disrespect and there is no need to humiliate the other. Quite the contrary, everybody should listen attentively to the other’s allegations, take issue, but also try to understand and by means of a civilized dialogue gain the feeling of rapprochement and belonging to that great camp called the Jewish people –" Am Israel". The Shoah did not differentiate between a man and a woman, old and young, Ashkenazi and other ethnic community members; it made no distinction between religious and secular, it trampled everybody’s human dignity mercilessly. Let us draw the lessons and assimilate them, regardless of our personal credo. Let us bear in mind that a State of Israel , a government, a Prime Minister, a Supreme Court of Justice are concepts that I couldn’t even dream of in the 30s under Hitler’s regime. And as soon as we close our eyes once again in a moment of silence with or without the siren, let’s remember that we had the great privilege to be partners in the resurrection of our people in our state! Each and everyone of us, regardless of age, is partner in forging its image.
I started my personal story tonight by introducing three generations of my family at age eight. I’ll end and introduce them once again 15 years later: At age 23 my father enrolled in the army during World War I. At age 23 I participated in the War of Independence and had the privilege to be witness to the declaration of the state - about ten years after Crystal Night. At age 23 my sons were drafted to reserve duty to fight in the first Lebanon war.
In conclusion, I can only wish the young ones among us tonight, that when they reach the age of 23 they should live in a society such as I have dreamt of, in the state which I have fought for in several wars during my lifetime. One of the recent Holocaust Remembrance Days was dedicated to the topic of “Human Image under the Shadow of Death”. Let us all preserve human image under the light of life. Seventy years after I experienced Crystal Night and on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, I have the honour to leave you my personal legacy: Please hold each other’s hands and support each other for a better future that we all yearn for and wish for our young generation.
I am grateful to those who gave me the possibility to share with you my inner thoughts and grateful to you for listening.
The lecture was given in Hebrew by Dr. Shmuel Kneller
s?” 
gether with thousands of other Jews to Poland and the ambassador had not made himself available to receive him. The German who easily recognized me as a Jewish lad, with the typical nose and dark eyes looked at me and said: “You’ll see what we are going to do with you!” I was then 13 years old!
