In 1938, Germany got away with annexing Austria, and its Jews hurried to flee. In October that year, Germany rounded up thousands of Polish-born Jews and even their German-born children – although they held German citizenship – and dumped them on the border of Poland, which refused to accept them. One Jewish family there had a son in France, who was so angry at his parents’ sufferings that he shot a high official in Germany’s Paris embassy.
That was the excuse for the previously planned Kristallnacht, when over a thousand synagogues and many Jewish businesses were destroyed, hundreds of Jews were killed and thousands interred in concentration camps. Meanwhile, Germany secured the great powers’ agreement to annex the German-populated Sudetenland areas of Czechoslovakia. Finally, after marching into Danzig, previously a free city, Germany invaded Poland on September I, 1939 – just 75 years ago – starting World War II, which caused at least 50 million people worldwide to lose their lives.
What most concerns us as Jews was the savage Holocaust, in which the Germans, systematically and scientifically, persecuted and murdered as many Jews as possible. With extreme barbarism they murdered millions of Jewish men, women, and children, and shattered the lives of millions more survivors and refugees.
As we mark these somber anniversaries, which remind us of how much harm these cataclysms caused the entire world and particularly our Jewish people, we realize that anti-Semitism is still alive and well. As much as we have accomplished for Yiddishkeit since these upheavals almost obliterated it, as many friends as we have gained in the non-Jewish world, we are still faced by multiple enemies, active and passive, physical and spiritual.
Just when we think life has become calmer for us Jews, we are reminded from all sides that our existence is fragile and that we can rely on no one but our Father in Heaven.
Jews throughout the world are still in exile and, during these last moments before Mashiach comes – as all great Jewish spiritual leaders of recent generations have declared – we must remain steadfast and do everything in our power to bring about the final Redemption, particularly through acts of goodness and kindness.