Socials studies

A Visitor’s Perspective on Kristallnacht

René Juvet, a Swiss merchant, was visiting friends in the countryside during the events of

Kristallnacht. The next morning he drove to the town of Bayreuth, where he saw people

watching as houses burned to the ground. At one point, he got out of his car to take a closer

look at a crowd gathered in front of a warehouse where dozens of Jews were being held.

I was reluctant to add myself to the assembled crowd but I had to see with my own eyes

what was happening there. Through the great windows you could see perhaps fifty people

in a bleak, empty hall. Most of them stood against the wall, staring gloomily, a few walked

restlessly about, others were sitting—in spite of the severe cold—on the bare floor. Almost

all of them, incidentally, were inadequately dressed; some only had thrown on a topcoat

over their nightclothes. The SA people who had picked them up during the night had

apparently not allowed them time to put on more clothing. Compared to what happened

later, this was only a small beginning.

At the end of his description of Kristallnacht, Juvet writes:

To the credit of my [non-Jewish German colleagues] I can report that they—with the

exception of Neder, who took part in the operation in his role as an SA

Führer—disapproved of the excesses. Some more, others less. Waldmeyer said nothing,

but he was very thoughtful in ensuing days; Hoffmann, who could almost count himself as

one of the old guard, made no attempt to conceal his horror from me. I also heard that the

workers were outraged. . . .

A little while after this I met our Nuremberg representative, a harmless and industrious

person. He was a member of the SA but was, by chance, kept away from home that

evening. . . .

“I am happy I was not in Nuremberg that evening, it certainly would have rubbed me the

wrong way,” said our representative.

I asked him whether he would have taken part if he had been there. “Of course,” he said,

“orders are orders.”

His words clarified a whole lot of things for me.