Political Quotes

“I rise today to remember those who perished and suffered during Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, 75 years ago on November 9 and 10 in Germany, German-occupied Austria, and German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Earlier that year, in March 1938, Germany absorbed Austria--the so- called Anschluss. Then, at the September 1938 Munich conference, France, Britain, and Italy allowed Germany to annex the western rim of Czechoslovakia and to claim its 3 million Sudeten Germans as its own. In both acts, the concept of loyalty to the state was equated with ethnic identity. Then, in October 1938, Germany expelled 17,000 Jews with Polish citizenship from Germany into Poland. These families were arrested at night, transported by train to the Polish border, and effectively left in limbo, as Poland initially refused to accept them. The son of two of these expellees, a Polish Jew in France, took revenge: He assassinated a German diplomat in Paris. Propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels subsequently asserted that ``World Jewry'' was responsible for the assassination and gave the signal for the start of the first large open pogrom in Germany: ``The Fuhrer,'' he stated, ``has decided that . . . demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.'' As described by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum: The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland.…”