Censorship and Information about the November Pogroms 1938
- Censorship in Nazi Germany
Press Advice by the German News Agency 1937
The German News Agency published daily advices concerning the information in the newspaper. Read the advice and together with a partner find some possible reason for the advice.
Advice / Possible Reason for the Advice13thSeptember
A special train for the Reichsregierung (Federal Government) is built at the moment in Kassel. In no case there should be a report about this.
30thSeptember
Reports about the visit of mayors from Latvia in East Prussia should be published only locally.
2ndOctober
The Führer as well Mussolini and the King of Italy have been honored by a new Spanish medal. Nothing should be reported about this fact.
5thOctober
About the Festival of German Church Music taking place from 7th till 13th October: should not be given so much attention. For this reason no misleading interpretation must come up.
6thOctober
Reports on the execution of Emil Prigge [murder and sex offender] are only allowed in the region of the Higher Regional Court of Hamm.
12thNovember
The big locomotive manufacture Hentschel received a huge order from South Africa. Nothing is allowed to be reported about this order.
19thNovember
From now on and for the future nothing should be reported about the Nobel Prize for Peace. Lord Cecil received this year the Nobel Prize for Peace. Nothing should be mentioned about this fact.
10thDecember
There are only photos allowed which show the Fuehrer while entering or leaving the Italian art exhibition in Berlin.
17thDecember
No line should be published about the election in the Soviet Union, even no press comment.
- Censoring the Pogroms
Press Advice by the German News Bureau, November 1938
7th November 1938
All German newspapers must report in largest letters about the assassination of the Legation Secretary at the German embassy in Paris. The news must dominate the frontpage.
Information about the serious condition of Mister vom Rath all issued by the German News Bureau. He is still in critical condition. Some commentary can point out that the assassination must have the gravest consequences for the Jews in Germany, in fact as well for the foreign Jews in Germany. Some word which express the popular outrage of the German people. It can be declared the the Jewish emigration clique [...] is reponsible for this crime [...]
10th November
Regarding the events of the former night
The Ministry of Propaganda declared: Subsequently own reports can be published referring to the German News Bureau report, which has been edited this morning. Here and there some windows haven been broken, synagogues have caught fire or went into flames somehow. The reports should not be too big, no headline on the frontpage. At first no photos should published. There should be no collective report but it can be reported that similiar actions have been taken place in the Reich. Specifications should be avoided. Reports about local incidents can be more detailed, but only on page two or three. If there is a need of comments, they should be very short and tell that the understandable outrage of the population was a spontanous answer to the assassination of the Legation Secretary.
Source: NS-Presseanweisungern der Vorkriegszeit: Edition und Dokumentation hrsg. v. Hans Bohrmann und Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert. München 1996 Band. 6 /III
Exercises:
- Explain what kind of public image the censor tries to evoke. Why should the first news from 7th of November be on the frontpage? Why should be the second (10th) one not be on the front page.
- Why should no photos been published?
- Discuss, why the reports on the pogrom were not forbidden.
3. What did foreign newspapers report?
Report by the Manchester Guardian, 11 November 1938
The operation of the wreckers of Jewish shops and places of business were in two parts. First, small wrecking squads, who began their work as early as two in the morning in some cases, smashed the windows and showcases of Jewish-owned premises, whether the proprietors were foreign Jews or German Jews. All Jewish shops are marked with special signs, which facilitated their work. The first squads, working quickly and in darkness, only dealt, however, with the Jewish premises on main streets. When Berlin went to work this morning it experienced the extraordinary sight of wholesale smashed windows with dummy figures and the like leaning out on to the street; nothing, however, was then plundered.
But at about midday the work of the original squads was supplemented by the wreckers proper. They operated too in small bands and were followed by crowds of supporters who proceeded to smash the interiors of the Jewish shops to pieces and in many cases to throw the goods in them out into the streets. These wreckers in their turn were supplemented by others, including many youngish boys. They seized whatever implements they could find and absolutely broke up everything to hand.
In some parts of Berlin, foodstuffs, clothes, underclothing – and even furs – were thrown out to the crowds. In other shops none of the contents, apart from the windows and fittings, were touched until this evening. Plundering did not seem to be the purpose of the wreckers themselves. Where there was plundering they threw out the contents of the shops to the crowds standing outside.
Exercises:
- Describe what happened in Germany according to the Manchester Guardian.
- Discuss, what information might not be published in a German newspaper. Why?
4. What did the papers not tell?
Exercise:
Compare the three sources! What do they report on the event? What information might not have been in the newspapers?
Report from a Jewish witness
Ytzhak Sophoni Herz, Educator in the Jewish Orphanage in Dinslaken, a city in the province of North Rhine Westfalia wrote these reminiscences which were based on daily notes made by the author in 1938. In 1940, as a refugee in Australia, Mr. Herz submitted a manuscript describing his experiences in Nazi Germany to the Literary Prize Competition conducted by Havard University.
At 10:15 A.M. we heard the wailing of sirens! We noticed a heavy cloud of smoke billowing upward. It was obvious from the direction it was coming from that the Nazis had set the synagogue on fire. Very soon we saw smoke-clouds rising up, mixed with sparks of fire. Later I noticed that some Jewish houses, close to the synagogue, had also been set alight under the expert guidance of the fire-brigade. Its presence was a necessity, since the firemen had to save the homes of the non-Jewish neighborhood [...]
In the schoolyard we had to wait for some time. Several Jews, who had escaped the previous arrest and deportation to concentration camps, joined our gathering. Many of them, mostly women, were shabbily dressed. They told me that the brown hordes had driven them out of their home, ordered them to leave everything behind and come at once, under Nazi guard, to the schoolyard. A stormtrooper in charge commanded some bystanders to leave the schoolyard "since there is no point in even looking at such scum!"
In the meantime our "family" had increased to 90, all of whom were placed in a small hall in the school. Nobody was allowed to leave the place. Men considered physically fit were called for duty. Only those over 60 – among them people of 75 years of age – were allowed to stay. Very soon we learned that the entire Jewish male population under 60 had already been transferred to the concentration camp at Dachau. During their initial waiting period, while still under police custody, the Jewish men had been allowed to buy their own food. This state of affairs, however, only lasted for a few hours.
I learned very soon from a policeman, who in his heart was still an anti-Nazi, that most of the Jewish men had been beaten up by members of the SA before being transported to Dachau. They were kicked, slapped in the face, and subjected to all sorts of humiliation. Many of those exposed to this type of ill-treatment had served in the German army during World War I. One of them, a Mr. Hugo B.C., had once worn with pride the Iron Cross First
Class (the German equivalent of the Victoria Cross), which he had been awarded for bravery... (Source Y.S. Herz, "Kristallnacht at the Dinslaken Orphanage," Yad Vashem Studies, XI, 1976, pp. 345-349).
Report from the American Consul Samuel Honaker in the Stuttgart Region (November 12 and November 15, 1938)
Burning of Synagogues.
Early on the morning of November 10th practically every synagogue – at least twelve in number – in Württemberg, Baden and Hohenzollern was set on fire by well disciplined and apparently well equipped young men in civilian clothes. The procedure was practically the same in all cities of this district, namely, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Heilbronn, et cetera. The doors of the synagogues were forced open. Certain sections of the building and furnishings were drenched with petrol and set on fire. Bibles, prayer books, and other sacred things were thrown into the flames. Then the local fire brigades were notified. In Stuttgart, the city officials ordered the fire brigade to save the archives and other written material having a bearing on vital statistics. Otherwise, the fire brigades confined their activities to preventing the flames from spreading. In a few hours the synagogues were, in general, heaps of smoking ruins.
Devastation of Jewish Shops.
Practically all the Jewish shops in the Stuttgart consular district are reported to have been attacked, ransacked, and devastated. These actions were carried out by young men and half-grown boys. It was easy to recognize under the civilian clothes of the former trained and disciplined S.A. or S.S. men, while in the case of the latter the Hitler Youth uniform was evident in some instances. The young men set about their task in most cases quietly and efficiently. They first smashed windows, destroyed furnishings, and then began to throw merchandise into the street. Throughout these actions the police looked on, either smilingly or unconcernedly.
The Historian Peter Gay writes about the Kristallnacht (1998):
Kristallnacht followed upon the death on November 9 of Ernst vom Rath, legation secretary at the German embassy in Paris. He had been shot two days before by a young Polish Jew distraught at the fate of his parents who, along with some sixteen thousand Polish Jews living in Germany, had been mercilessly deported a few days earlier. The Manchester Guardian, the most consistent voice for deceny anywhere in the world, wrote with feeling and complete accuracy of a “brutal expulsion.” There was to be more brutality soon.
Exploiting the event with ther accustomed adroitness, Nazi propagandists spread the word that vom Rath’s death created such fierce indignation among the German people that they went on a rampage. This version, that Kristallnacht represented a spontaneous response of angry Germans to a Jewish crime, was so fanciful that nobody believed it. The Manchester Guardian, like other newspapers abroad, put the word “spontaneous” in skeptical quotation marks. They were, of course, absolutely right: a regime that had made a speciality of the big lie was now promoting on of the biggest lies ever. Local authorities across the country had compiled lists of Jewish stores month before and had the names and adresses of Jewish men on record; in Berlin, some time before this “impulsive” outburst of collective “indignation”, Jewish store owner had been compelled to paint their names on the front windows in large white letters. If there was ever a thoroughly organized pogrom, it was Kristallnacht.
I know that the word Kristallnacht, the established name for this historic, countrywide pogrom, has been disparaged for presumably trivializing an event in which more than glass was shattered.
(Peter Gay: My German Question. Growing Up in Nazi Berlin. Yale University Press, New Haven & London 1998, p. 132-132)
Exercises:
- Describe, how the historian Peter Gay judges about the event.
- Explain why there are some words like “spontaneous”, “impulsive” or “indignation” put in quotation marks? Can you find the appropiated historical description instead of the used term?
Expression / Historical description
“spontaneous”
“impulsive”
Collective “indignation”
- Can you find other examples for the use of quotation marks in a political or historical context?
5. What a photo can tell
Above: Burning Synagogue in Frankfurt am Main; Below: Burning Ceremonial Hall at the Jewish Cemetery in Graz; unknown photographers
Exercises:
- Pairwise, please compare the two photos! What do they have in common?
- What might the people on the photos tell at home to their families?
- Write a private letter to a friend in which a person, e.g. the one who has arrived on the bicycle, reports from their thoughts and impressions while they were watching the burning synagogues.