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The Shadow of Kristallnacht
(Los Angeles Times) Mark Hetfield - This year, the German Film Awards were dominated by "Oh Boy." In the movie, an elderly stranger confesses to a young Berliner he meets in a bar that, as a boy, he watched his father join a mob to smash the windows of Jewish-owned businesses, including that very bar. The old man was recalling Kristallnacht, a Nazi-instigated overnight rampage in which some 1,000 synagogues and 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were destroyed in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. At least 91 Jews were killed. Instead of arresting the perpetrators, the Nazis rounded up 30,000 Jews and sent them to concentration camps. The night of Nov. 9, 1938, marked the Nazis' transition from discrimination to genocide.