Unknown photos so far show the horror of the Crystal Night up close

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A hitherto unknown collection of photographs revealed, eight decades later, unpublished records of Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night, considered the beginning of the Nazis’ violent persecution of Jews in Europe.

Donated to Yad Vashem, a memorial in Israel in honor of the victims of the Holocaust, the images show interiors of destroyed buildings and the coordinated action of Nazi forces. In one record, smiling, well-dressed German men and women watch a soldier break a shop window.

In another, so-called “brown shirts” — members of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary militia — carry piles of Jewish books, presumably to be burned. In the other photographs it is possible to see a Nazi soldier pouring gasoline on the benches of a synagogue and another destroying a closet.

Kristallnacht, which took place in the early hours of November 9-10, 1938, left around a hundred Jews dead, more than a thousand synagogues destroyed and thousands of Jewish cemeteries, homes and schools vandalized in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

Thirty thousand Jewish citizens were still detained, with most being taken to concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. The aggressors were often neighbors or acquaintances of the victims.

Jonathan Matthews, head of the Yad Vashem photo archive, told the Associated Press that the photos dispel the Nazi myth that the attacks were “a spontaneous outburst of violence” and not a state-orchestrated “pogrom” — the source word. Russian, which means to cause destruction, designated persecutions of Jews in the Russian Empire in the 19th century, later having its meaning expanded.

Matthews said these were the first images he was aware of of actions taking place indoors. “Most of the photos we have [até aqui] from Kristallnacht are from outside”, he said.[A nova coleção] provides a much more intimate picture of what was going on.”

The photos were taken by Nazi photographers during the “pogrom” in the cities of Nuremberg and Fürth, Germany. They ended up in the possession of a Jewish American soldier who served in Germany during World War II — precisely how this came about is still unclear.

The soldier’s descendants, who declined to give his name, donated the album to Yad Vashem as part of the institution’s effort to collect Holocaust-era objects kept by survivors and their families.

Yad Vashem president Dani Dayan told the Associated Press that the photos “will serve as eternal witnesses long after the survivors are no longer here to witness their own experiences.”

In testimony to Sheet In 2018, German Jew naturalized Brazilian Geraldo Lewinski said that, in order to survive, his family mimicked the horde that predated and painted anti-Semitic graffiti in Berlin.

“So we saw all this up close. Because I was with the horde. Of course, we didn’t scream, we just opened our mouths. But that was our salvation. We saw the windows being destroyed, people throwing stones. And the shrapnel on the ground. “, said Lewinski, who was 10 years old at the time.

Sensing even darker times, the Lewinskis fled to Brazil in 1939. “We don’t forget. I can’t tell you everything because I get emotional. Even today, when I see Jews walking around in their kippahs, going to the synagogue on Saturday or Friday I get emotional because our people, despite everything, still live.”

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