Aryanizing Jewish Businesses

Minister Joseph Goebbels handed down a decree today. All Jewish businesses, enterprises and shops will be Aryanized. All Jewish firms were dissolved on November 23rd.

Also today, Jews were forced to relinquish their driver's licenses and their vehicle registration papers. An earlier proclamation also forbade the movement of Jews from different localities.

Reichskristallnacht

Totals from the destructive progoms against German and Austrian Jews are now known. These may be adjusted slightly but all indications are that these are the figures. Some have been released by Minister Reinhard Heydrich and so come from the Nazi authority.

According to Minister Heydrich, 191 Synagogues were destroyed (constituting nearly all Germany had), with 76 completely demolished; 100,000 Jews were arrested; three foreigners were arrested; 174 people were arrested for looting Jewish shops; and 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed.

It is believed that 7500 Jewish stores and businesses were destroyed by violent Germans. The event has begun to be called Kristallnacht, Reichskristallnacht or Reichspogromnacht.

At this time there may have been a total of 91 deaths due to mob violence. It is unclear how many of these were Jews but it is believed to be all. Many Jews were beaten to death with other Jews being forced to watch on.

Synagogues were not merely damaged and burned but also looted with much of ceremonial treasures stolen and destroyed. Many Temples even had their mezuzot taken from the doorways.

Jewish cemeteries were not spared violence. Tombstones were uprooted and graves violated. Fires were lit, and prayer books, scrolls, artwork and philosophy texts were thrown upon them, and precious buildings were either burned or smashed until unrecognisable. Even the ancestors and the dead were not spared violence and the peace of being dearly departed.

Goebbels ascribed the events to the "healthy instincts" of the German people. He went on to explain: "The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."

Events in only recently annexed Austria were no less horrendous. Of the entire Kristallnacht only the pogrom in Vienna was completely successful. Most of Vienna's 94 synagogues and prayer-houses were partially or totally destroyed. People were subjected to all manner of humiliations, including being forced to scrub the pavements whilst being tormented by their fellow Austrians, some of whom had been their friends and neighbors.

Thousands were arrested throughout the riots with no word on what the charges are (many were arrested under the pretence of protection as the Nazis call it) or when they will be released. Countless Jews commit suicide during the pogrom as well.

Internationally, the reaction to the extreme violence has been shock. Many foreign papers have printed accounts of the series of events and destruction of Jewish temples.

Goebbels speaks at Bürgerbräukeller

In the hours after Ernst vom Rath's death in Paris, Minister Joseph Goebbels gave an impassioned speech at Bürgerbräukeller. This was also to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. This night is accorded great significance by the Nazi Party as the Tag der Bewegung (Day of the Movement). Those present were many senior Party members who well remember the night fifteen years prior.

The night was set aside for all the Nazis to celebrate this event in the formation of the party. Chancellor Hitler was in attendance and was expected to speak as has been the tradition for numerous years. He was seen discussing a matter with associates and then abruptly left the event.

This left Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels to carry on with the event. Goebbels, though in charge of propaganda, lacks the fiery and passionate rhetoric and charisma of the Chancellor. He also has been seen as something of a failure due to his tepid performance during the Sudeten Crisis. Goebbels told those in attendance that "the Führer has decided that… demonstrations should not be prepared or organised by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered." Which seemed to say that if violence against Jews began in retaliation for the death of Ernst vom Rath, the Nazi Party would not interfere.

Nazis close Catholic Schools

The Nazi Party closed all Catholic Schools in Bavaria. Recently the Church has come under fire from the German authorities for pedophilia on younger members of the church by church priests and clergy.

Goebbels has gone on record saying this of the Roman Catholic Church:There are cases of sexual abuse that are coming to light every day against a great number of the members of the Catholic clergy. Unfortunately, we are perhaps not talking so much about individual cases but rather a collective moral crisis that the cultural history of humanity may never have known at such a frightful and concerning level. Numerous priests and religious have confessed to the crime. There is no doubt that the thousands of cases that have come to be known to the authorities represent only a small fraction of the true number, since many molesters have been covered and hidden by the hierarchy.

Despite the mounting evidence to back up the claims of the Nazis and many of the Church's victims, there is also a systemic action, a campaign, to destroy the Roman Catholic Church in Germany.

Bürgerbräukeller Crisis

A Political Party declared a revolution in Germany at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, Southern Germany. A leader of the party, Adolf Hitler, said, shortly after firing a single shot into the ceiling of the beer hall that

The national revolution has broken out! The hall is filled with six hundred men. Nobody is allowed to leave. The Bavarian government and the government at are deposed. A new government will be formed at once. The barracks of the Reichswehr and those of the police are occupied. Both have rallied to the swastika.

They did not allow people to leave, even to use the facilities. Some were able to escape using the kitchen.

There have been many speeches made by Hitler's associates such a Herman Göring, Joseph Goebbels, Rudolf Hess, Max Amann, Ulrich Graf, Wilhelm Adam and Ernst Hanfstaengl.