November 2008 Archives

Eye-witness accounts taken immediately following the state-sanctioned campaign of hatred against Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe on the 9/10 November 1938 have been translated for the first time to mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass) and the launch of the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day 2009: Stand up to Hatred.

In a joint project between the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) and The Wiener Library, diary extracts, eye-witness accounts and letters have been converted into English for the first time. All of them were recorded by Alfred Wiener and his colleagues who sought to record the wide-spread programme of hatred that was taking place.

More than 300 reports of the infamous campaign of hatred were collected in the immediate aftermath of the events themselves, between November 1938 and January 1939 (Wiener Library Doc 1375). The translations reveal tales of vigilante violence, arrests, vandalism and fear.

Vienna, 20 November '38

My dear Otto,

You cannot imagine how things have been with us.

Papa with a head-wound, bandaged, myself in bed with severe fits, everything devastated and destroyed.

And the poor child had to look after us, cook, and run errands, although still in a state of serious exhaustion.

The file below plays the words of a Kristallnacht survivor:

Click below to listen an audio extract of a letter written by a Kristallnacht eyewitness