Trump’s “Broken Glass” Problem: Why Jewish Cemeteries Matter

A group that tracks hate crimes reports today: “In a three-month period after Trump’s November election, the Southern Poverty Law Center recorded 1,372 bias incidents, including anonymous bomb threats being called in to Jewish Community Centers in 24 states.”

This post is for friends and neighbors who want to lighten up on President Trump for his timid condemnation of rising anti-Semitism.

Whether it’s the Holocaust, Russian pogroms, the Spanish Inquisition or other state-sanctioned attacks on Jews, there is a clear pattern. First, divide your nation into “us” and “them.” Second, allow attacks on Jewish property. Third— and it often takes years— isolate Jews. It has often grown much worse from there.

Kristallnacht was a key turning point in Nazi Germany’s assault on Jews.

It began with a deportation order: German authorities expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany. Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew who lived in Paris, was aggrieved that his parents were deported to Poland—but Poland denied these Jews entry, so his parents were reduced to living in a squalid refugee camp on the border. He assassinated a German diplomat on November 7, 1938.

Joseph Goebbels—Hitler’s right-hand man for propaganda— suggested, without directly saying so, that a Jewish conspiracy led to the assassination. He then said: “the Führer 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.”

Here is how the Holocaust Museum summarizes Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, which occurred after Goebbel’s “whistle”:

"On the night November 9 … rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Many synagogues burned throughout the night in full view of the public and of local firefighters, who had received orders to intervene only to prevent flames from spreading to nearby buildings. SA and Hitler Youth members across the country shattered the shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial establishments and looted their wares. Jewish cemeteries became a particular object of desecration in many regions."

When a Jewish cemetery is desecrated, it sounds like a tornado siren to Jews. What makes America different from Germany is that people of all faiths and backgrounds are speaking out against this blind hatred. 

Here is hoping that at least one friend or neighbor sees Trump's meek approach to these developments in a new light.