June 1, 2025

Won’t You Be My Neighbor

By Rev Danielle Elliott 

What Eddie is describing in that haunting passage is Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass which occurred on November 9th-10th, 1938. When you read about this event in history books, the story often goes something like this: German Nazis attacked Jewish people, looted their shops, burned their synagogues, and 30,000 Jewish males were arrested and sent to concentration camps. While all of this is accurate history, I have come to struggle a bit with the imprecise language that is used. By labeling the perpetrators as ‘German Nazis” and the victims as “Jews,” historians are creating a distinction where there should not be one. All of the victims of Kristallnacht were also Germans. Yes they were Jewish but as Eddie tells us, these people were also proud citizens of Germany. They did not see themselves as the “other” until this night made it abundantly clear that they were “others.” What history also tends to gloss over is that it wasn’t only official Nazis who participated in pogroms like Kristallnacht. The truth is far more disturbing – every day people who had lived and worked beside their Jewish neighbors for generations, turned on them almost immediately when given the opportunity. The question for us all to consider is WHY. Why did this happen? How did thousands of otherwise decent, hard working people turn into monsters when they knew that they could participate in this violence and not only get away with it but also be praised for it?