The Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem publishes previously unknown photographs on the occasion of the 84th anniversary of the pogrom night in 1938. The pictures show the horrors of Kristallnacht up close. For the head of Yad Vashem’s photo department, the recordings are proof that it was not a “spontaneous event”.
The Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem has published rare photos of the pogrom night of 1938 for the first time on the occasion of the 84th anniversary. They are part of a collection that was recently donated to the Israeli memorial, according to a spokesman in Jerusalem. The photos are representative of the destruction and attacks on the Jewish community during the two-day pogrom. They were taken by Nazi photographers in the cities of Nuremberg and Fürth.
On the night of November 9th, 1938, the National Socialists set fire to synagogues, Jewish shops and apartments throughout Germany and abused, abducted and murdered Jewish fellow citizens. The violence is seen as paving the way for the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were murdered. “We see SS men and SA men setting fires, destroying houses and Jewish businesses and humiliating the Jewish population,” said Jonathan Matthews, head of Yad Vashem’s photo department.
The rare photos are further evidence “that this was dictated from above and was not a spontaneous event of an angry public”. According to Yad Vashem, the photo album was found in the home of a Jewish US soldier. He served during World War II in the US Army’s Counterintelligence Division in Germany. After his death, his daughter and her children discovered the album while cleaning up. “When I opened the album, I felt like a hole was being burned in my hands,” said the soldier’s granddaughter, Elischeva Avital, according to Yad Vashem. The former soldier therefore never spoke about his experiences during the war.