The New Democratic Youth or the NeoNazis organized to march through the historic Jewish center of Prague under pretence of protesting the Czech participation of the US occupation in Iraq.
The date 10 November 1938 is notorious as the infamous Kristallnacht when Heydrich sent his memo out across Nazi-occupied Europe to instigate violent demonstrations against Jews with the legalized violence of burning synagogues and houses of prayer, private Jewish property in retaliation of the shooting death of a minor German official von Rath in Paris.
On 7 November, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan a severnteen-year-old Jew received a postcard from his family that they had been forcibly transported to Poland. On arrival, the Polish authorites rejected them as noncitizens with no rights of entry. They had been living in Germany since 1911 as legal citizens and under the new Nazi regime and Aryanization, deemed illegal. Herschel Grynszpan went to the german embassy in Paris and shot von Rath in the stomach. This gave Hitler the excuse to unleash Naxi terror throughout Europe with the secret orders that the historic archive of synagogues and Jewish communities be confiscated as well as the wealth of Jews. Men were to be rounded up and transported to camps and property burned, but no nonJewish property was to be harmed. Firemen stood besides burning synagogues and sprayed water on neighboring buildings to protect them from conflagaration.
Shopwindows of plate glass were smashed, covering the streets in broken crystal and in Vienna, Jews were forced to wash the streets with their tallits and were brutally subjected to abuse. Torahs and religious books were burned and Jews who once ahd friendly neighbors were suddenly the victims of their abuses.
In this night, the history of European jews was changed forever as institution of laws and restrictions systematically isolated them from legitimate legal protection and victimized them to exploitation and discrimination. No Jew was aallowed to own property or be a manager of a company. Companies were confiscated adn management turned over to Nazi sympathisizers. Eventually, Jews were herded into ever more crowded flats and restricted areas where they were forced to build their own walls for the Nazi ghettos.
More than one billion reichmarkt was exacted on jews as a fine for their destroyed property. The same man, Heydrich who engineered the instigation of riots, implemented and designed the plan for the Final Solution, systematically transporting Jws to transit and work camps and eventually to death camps where they were gassed or died of abuses and starvation. Less than 2percent of Czech jews survived.
Property was confiscated by the Nazi state and then later absorbed by the communist government. Those who survived had nothing to claim and the synagogues were abandoned, converted and englected.
For Prague, heydrich had special plans to preserve this historic district and establish in the synagoges, a Museum for the Extinct Race. The Spanish Synagogue was used as a sorting room for Nazi confiscation and processing of stolen goods. Token jews were to be kept like animals as examples of an extinct culture in a human zoo.
In 1002, when Czech republic regained its democratic government, the country returned the Jewish property to the Jewish Community. The streets were empty and the synagogues abandoned in dirt and grime and abuse. Over teh decade, the jewish community invested in restoration of the property so that Prague is an important historic mecca for Jews around the world.
here once the Golem roamed, protecting the Jews from external harm under the order of the Maharal. Prague citizens can ppint to the ladder climbing the back of the AltNeu Synagoge and tell you that the Golem sleeps above, awaiting the day of awakening when it will once again protect Prague jews.
But on Saturday, 10 November, the anti-facist youth organized to confront the NeNazis in the ara of the Cechuv Most near the AltNeu Schul. nearly 2000 Czechs amassed in protests. Solidarity was apparent across political and religious lines. Catholics and Evangelicals stood by Jews and anarchists stood with police to blockade the advance of 400 NeoNazis from the inner town. In the Old Town Square, political and religiou8s leeaders denounced NeoNazi racial and cultural violence and hatred. Survivors of the Holocaust recalled bitter memories and the people stood in strength to support them.
!400 armed police protected the area which included horseguards and canine units to break up any violent assault. Light armoured vehicles were strategially placed and armoured trucks moved into alleys to create blockades as Prague waited for the gangs to invade. The tactics were successful and the NeoNazuis were forced to break up into separate gangs and were detained by police.
But Kristallnacht and its vicious aftermath be forgotten in a city where Reinhold Heydrich was assassinated and the Nazi reprise was the bombardment of the Czech Orthodox church where the Free Czech paratroopers were hidden in the crypt. Lidice was liquidated and transport after transport of Jews were sent to death camps in reprisal for the assassination of Heydrich in 1942.
The Holocaust happened and will not be forgotten as Czechoslaovakia was broken under the vicious attack of Nazi terrorism.
It will not happen again and the threat of NeoNazi mentality is repulsed by the solidarity of Czechs.
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| 10 November 2007 Kristallnacht |
