WAR CRIMES AND ATROCITIES (True Crime) (17 page)

Kristallnacht

10 November, 1938

Kristallnacht was a horrific attack on thousands of Jewish people living in German and Austrian cities. It took place on the night of 10 November, 1938, when, in a frenzy of anti-Semitism, Nazi stormtroopers and ordinary civilians rampaged through the streets, smashing the windows of Jewish homes, shops and businesses. Afterwards, the streets were covered in broken glass, and it was this that gave rise to the name, Kristallnacht, meaning ‘Night of Broken Glass’.

Kristallnacht, or ‘Pogromnacht’, as it is now known in Germany, marked the beginning of the end for the Jewish population of Germany. It set in motion the events that led up to the Holocaust, in which over six million Jews were murdered. During the pogrom, many Jews were beaten to death and hundreds of synagogues burnt to the ground. Around 30,000 Jewish men were taken prisoner and sent to the concentration camps.

F
ORCED MARCHES

The pogrom took place against a background of rising anti-Semitism in Germany that had been building up since the Nazis were elected in 1933. Up to that point, German Jews had been well assimilated in the population and had become successful in various fields, especially business, science and the arts. However, once the Nazis came to power, a series of harsh, anti-Semitic laws were passed that excluded them from the rest of the community and undermined their livelihoods. As a result, many Jewish families left the country, but it was not always easy for them to do so, because of anti-immigration laws elsewhere. Thus, many were forced to stay behind to face the full horror of German fascism.

According to some sources, the Nazi government planned the pogrom well in advance, hoping to whip up public sentiment against the Jews and thus gain the help of the general populace in persecuting this minority group. On 28 October, 17,000 Polish Jews were forced to leave the country and return to their homeland. This was despite the fact that many of these people had been living in Germany for over a decade. When the deported Jews got to the Polish border, the guards sent them back, and thus the refugees were forced to tramp back and forth between the two countries for days, in bad weather, until the Polish government finally interned them in a concentration camp. The camp was such a horrific place that many of the Jews tried to escape back to Germany, only to be shot on sight by German soldiers.

A
SSASSINATION

It was this event that prompted a young Jewish man living in Paris, Herschel Grynszpan, to write to the head of the German embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan’s parents had been deported, and his mother had written to him describing the terrible treatment they had received at both the hands of the Germans and the Poles. Vom Rath was unable to help, however. In retaliation, Grynszpan – an intelligent, sensitive young man whose whole life had been characterized by anti-Semitic persecution, forcing him to move abroad from place to place – decided to take matters into his own hands. On Monday, 7 November, Grynszpan went to the embassy with a revolver and shot Vom Rath in the stomach. Two days later, his victim died.

The assassination provided the excuse Hitler needed to launch a pogrom against the Jews. He signalled to his ministers that, should anti-Jewish protests erupt among the public, they should be allowed to continue. Hoping to curry favour with the Führer, Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, who had recently brought ridicule on himself as a result of an affair with an actress, immediately commanded the party leaders to organize the pogrom. Some of the party leaders privately disagreed with the action, realizing that it would prompt outrage from the rest of the European nations, and that Germany would soon be isolated because of its persecution of the Jews.

S
MASHED WITH SLEDGEHAMMERS

Nevertheless, on 10 November, 1938, Gestapo Chief Reinhard Heydrich ordered the attacks to begin. Beginning from around 10. 30 p. m. , members of the Gauleiters, the SA and the SS, mostly wearing civilian clothing, stormed the streets of Germany’s major cities, destroying Jewish property with sledgehammers and axes. The soldiers had received instructions not to harm German civilians or to endanger German property. Where a Jewish building stood next to a German one, it was smashed rather than burnt to the ground. In addition, the troops were ordered to arrest all Jews, especially healthy young men, and wealthy families. The authorities did not actually order the troops to beat or assault Jews, but this happened on many occasions, and the authorities turned a blind eye.

In the morning, there was glass everywhere on the streets of Germany’s cities. Vienna, the capital of Austria was also awash with glass. Almost the entire total of German and Austrian synagogues had been destroyed in a single night: that is, around 1,600. Over 7,000 Jewish shops were destroyed, some of them large department stores. Scores of Jews had been killed, and several Gentiles who had been mistaken for Jews. Many Jews had committed suicide, realizing that the game was now up, and that anti-Semitic persecution had now reached epic proportions. In addition, over 30,000 Jewish men had been arrested and taken to concentration camps at Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen. Here, they met with brutal treatment. However, they were released three months later on condition that they leave the country immediately. Overall, the death toll was estimated to be around 2,500.

G
RAVEYARD GHOULS

One of the most disturbing aspects of the pogrom, besides the loss of life and the destruction of property, was the sick way that the Nazis and their civilian sympathizers desecrated the synagogues and cemeteries belonging to the Jews. Graves were raided, tombstones smashed and bonfires lit in the graveyards, onto which were thrown prayer books, scrolls, statues, paintings and other religious artefacts. Even the smallest synagogues in little rural villages were razed to the ground, both in Germany and Austria. Not only this, but the Jews themselves were often forced to clear up the damage, being taunted by erstwhile friends and neighbours as they did so.

Not surprisingly, the events of Kristellnacht prompted outcry from abroad. In London newspapers, there were reports of the anti-Semitic violence on the streets, as well as an account of what had happened to interned Jews at Sachsenhausen, where 62 Jewish men had been beaten so badly by police that 12 of them died.

H
OUNDED INTO EXTINCTION

However, despite public opinion abroad and the diplomatic repercussions for the German government, the Nazi leaders were determined to continue with their policy of persecuting the Jews. In fact, Kristellnacht seemed to mark a turning point: the Nazis’ violent anti-Semitism was now out in the open, and, moreover, had ignited a deep vein of anti-Jewish feeling within the German population. Hitler’s right-hand man, Hermann Göring, called a meeting of top Nazi officials ‘to coordinate and solve the Jewish question once and for all, one way or another’. With these sinister words, the Nazis ushered in new phase of persecution, in which Jews were to be further hounded into extinction.

First, a collective fine of one billion marks was to be levied against the Jews for the murder of vom Rath. The government also decided to avail itself of all the insurance money that should have gone to the Jewish owners of properties destroyed on Kristallnacht, as ‘damages’ due to the German nation.

M
ASS EMIGRATION

Realizing that life in Nazi Germany was going to be made impossible for them, many Jews left the country: in total, in the ten months after the events of Kristallnacht, over one million Jews emigrated. Many found homes in other European countries, such as France, only to find themselves victims of persecution there later on in the war. Others went to the USA and to Palestine, and even to China.

After Kristallnacht, many European nations condemned the Nazi government. However, what was significant to the leaders of the Third Reich was that no one country actually came forward to oppose what was going on in Germany. After the events of World War I, none of the European nations was keen to involve its civilians in another horrific world war. Thus, Hitler and his henchmen were allowed to continue with their campaign of terror. They became aware that they could get away with whatever they wanted to, safe in the knowledge that neither Europe, nor the USA, would intervene.

Thus, Kristallnacht had a dual significance: signalling to the citizens of Germany that they could indulge their racist sentiments without fear of punishment from the government, indeed with encouragement from the authorities; and signalling to the rest of Europe that the Nazis were now in total control, and that Germany could be left undisturbed to carry out its cruel, inhuman programme of persecution and slaughter of the Jewish people.

Some historians have argued that had Kristallnacht provoked stronger opposition in Europe, German anti-Semitisim might have been nipped in the bud and the Holocaust might never have happened. However, through a combination of fears about another world conflict, and possibly a measure of anti-Semitism as well, the European powers left Hitler to his task of committing the greatest crimes against humanity that the world has ever known.

The Serbian Massacres

1941–45

The mass genocide of European Jews by the Nazis in World War II is well known. However, today many people do not know that, in the Balkans, fascist elements in Croatia and elsewhere persecuted and killed over one million Serbs, either interning them in concentration camps, where most met their deaths, or torturing and murdering them in their own villages and towns in the most unspeakably brutal way. This persecution had its roots in a long enmity between the different ethnic and national groups, and after the war, the wholesale slaughter of the Serbs was to have many repercussions, resulting in renewed conflict in 1991 in Bosnia.

S
ADISTIC BRUTALITY 

The main perpetrators of the atrocities in Yugoslavia were the Croatian Ustase army, which was a militia created by the pro-fascist government under Prime Minister Ante Pavelic. One of the first massacres they committed was on 28 April, 1941, when Ustasa troops appeared at the villages of Brezovica and Gudovac. The soldiers rounded up the villagers, singled out those of Serbian nationality, and ordered them either to convert to Roman Catholicism or to go back to their native land. During the raid, they killed 234 Serbs. Next, 520 villagers, including women and children, were attacked at Blagaj. They were beaten about the head until they died in a frenzy of violence that shocked even the most hardened inhabitants.

The violence continued at various areas around Livno, where over 3,000 Serbs were killed. At the Koprivnica Forest and the Risoveda Greda Forest, soldiers went on a rampage, hacking the bodies of women and children to pieces and throwing the bodies into ravines. Tales were told of terrible sadism, such as children being decapitated and their heads thrown at their mothers. Another instance of dreadful brutality occurred on 10 July at the small town of Glina, where 700 Serbs had gathered at a church to renounce their faith and convert to Catholicism. Instead, the Ustase attacked them, beating them to death with mallets, clubs and rifle butts, or stabbing them with bayonets. After this frenzied attack, members of the congregation were left to die, and the church was torched to the ground.

M
ASS MURDER OF CHILDREN

All this went on as the Nazis took control of the country. As far as the Nazis were concerned, as long as the Croatian militia carried out their orders to round up and intern Jews from the region, the troops were at liberty to persecute whoever else they pleased. Thus, as well as rounding up Jewish and Roma people, the Ustase interned many Serbs. In one of the worst war crimes to take place in Yugoslavia, over 6,000 children were separated from their parents and taken to a camp at Sisak. There, they lived in squalid conditions without enough to eat or drink, until around 1,600 of them died. A similar scene took place at the concentration camp of Jastrebarko, where over 3,000 children met with the same type of neglect, and hundreds of them dying in the process.

At the end of the war, the horrifying statistics on the carnage were revealed. It is estimated that in total, 11,176 Serbian children die between 1941 and 1942. Of these, the majority were boys. Tragically, the average age of the children was six-and-a-half years old.

T
HE ARCHITECT OF GENOCIDE 

The architect of the Serbian massacres was Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Croatian National Socialist Ustase movement, who became head of the so-called Independent State of Croatia when the Nazis invaded the Balkans during World War II. Far from being an independent state, as its name suggested, Croatia in fact became a puppet state of the Third Reich, and it set about supporting the Germans in their persecution and murder of the Jews and Roma people. In addition, the Croatian Ustase pursued their own agenda, which was to rid the country of the Serbian nationals living there, without opposition from the German government.

Pavelic himself was a fascist activist who had campaigned for a separate Croat state and had been tried for terrorist activities before the war. In 1929, after being sentenced to death, he had fled the country, and while abroad, had founded the Ustase, an underground terrorist organization. He had helped to create a militia for the organization, setting up terrorist training camps throughout Italy and Hungary. In 1934, the Ustase had succeeded in assassinating the king of Yugoslavia, Alexander I, together with one of Alexander’s ministers. For this, Pavelic was arrested and imprisoned in Italy, but before long, he was released. He remained in Italy until the outbreak of World War II. When the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia, he returned to his homeland and set up a pro-Nazi government there.

B
ARBARIC RITUALS

According to many sources, even the Nazis themselves were horrified at the brutal sadism of the Ustase regime. Barbaric rituals, such as gouging out victims’ eyes, or wrapping prisoners in barbed wire before throwing them down pits to starve to death, were routinely used by Pavelic’s Ustase troops. The stated aim of the pro-German, pro-Catholic Pavelic regime was to exterminate one-third of all Serbs in the country, which they succeeded in doing. Their plans were for another third to convert to Catholicism, while the remaining Serbs would be forced to move abroad.

After the war, it became clear that the Vatican had never condemned Pavelic’s activities, and that in fact he had been given a private audience by the pope. Many commentators later saw the collusion of the Catholic Church in condoning the brutal Serbian massacres of World War II as one of the most shaming episodes in its history.

D
EATH OF A WAR CRIMINAL

As the defeat of the Germans at the end of the war at last became a reality, Pavelic fled Croatia, first to Austria and then to Rome, where his Catholic friends in the Church helped to hide him from the authorities. However, since he was not a communist, the Americans were not, by all accounts, interested in pursuing him. Six months later, Pavelic managed to secure a passage to Argentina, where he found protection and help from the country’s leader, Juan Peron. Peron also helped thousands of other Croatian Nazis and others who fled their homeland as the communist government of Josip Tito took control.

In April 1957, Pavelic became the target of an assassination attempt. He was not killed but was seriously injured. Rumours were that the assassins were working for Tito’s security forces, but these were not confirmed. However, Pavelic was then forced to flee Argentina, since Tito’s government was trying to make arrangements to have him extradited. This time, Pavelic went to Spain, where he was able to seek protection from the fascist government under Franco. On 29 December, 1959, he died in Madrid from complications caused by the injuries he had received in the assassination attempt.

C
OMMUNIST ATROCITIES

Sadly, towards the end of the war, Tito’s incoming communist partisan troops, who had vowed to liberate the country, also behaved with extreme brutality. For example, at Siroki Brijeg on 7 February, 1945, 25 monks from a local monastery were attacked by the partisans, who tore down the crucifix in their church and demanded that they abandon their faith. The monks, not surprisingly, refused to do so, and knelt down to kiss the cross. In response, the friars – some of whom were ill in bed with typhoid – were dragged outside, doused in petrol and set alight. It was not until many years after the war that their bodies were finally given a proper burial.

In other instances, German and Hungarian civilians were set upon by Tito’s communist troops at Vojvodina in southern Hungary. Helped by the local Serb population, who had suffered so much under the Nazi regime, the partisans murdered thousands of Germans and Hungarians. The victims were tied together in groups around stacks of corn and then set alight. Often, the perpetrators of these crimes were women, who wreaked their vengeance on the victims by torturing them to death. They devised horrible tortures, such as killing Catholic priests by tearing off their testicles with pincers, or chopping their victims up in sawmills. They also impaled their victims on sticks, putting them up on display for spectators to see. In one appalling case, they strapped a grenade to a small boy and allowed him to run away across a field before firing at the grenade so that it blew up, exploding his small body into pieces.

In all, Tito’s partisans are thought to have murdered 34,000 victims at the end of the war, most of whom were Hungarian. Thus it was that, in the final years of the conflict, the most terrible brutality was unleashed, and the hideous carnage that ensued created resentments that lasted until the end of the 20th century and beyond.