At this time 78 years ago, on November 9, 1938, Germany was the scene of the worst pogroms since the Middle Ages, a 36-hour culmination of a growing persecution of Jews. During this time, 267 synagogues were burned to the ground, 7,500 Jewish businesses and homes were vandalized and looted and between 40 and 50 Jews were murdered as police and other authorities stood by and watched. This was, of course, only the beginning. On the morning after the initial terror of the pogroms subsided, over 30,000 Jewish men were deported to concentration camps. That, too, was merely a beginning, and like shards of glass, our people were broken and scattered, as Europe went many shades beyond dark. For several years, I have written about the remembrance on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, and I have done so with growing fear and anxious trepidation. Like last year, when two separate Kristallnacht commemorations organized in Sweden chose not to include Jews, as they were being organized by factions on the political Left, otherwise unsympathetic to us and our "predicament." So they used our memories and our sorrow for political gain, as a faux sympathy of sorts, and instead made it a general rally against general racism, at a comfortable political distance from those pesky Jews and their annoying habits of Jewishness and life. And now, as I sit down and write again in 2016, my sense of hopelessness is more overwhelming than ever. It's not just that the violence is more prevalent, that the anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise or even that the anti-Jewish legislation is becoming more accepted across this continent. It's that we don't get mad as we once did, and that we have somehow internalized what the outside world has been saying for some time -- that we do not have a future here, and that we cannot stay where we are not wanted. I know this, because I wrote the U.S. president five years ago, almost to the day. I got a hold of the man who was his special envoy against anti-Semitism and I spoke to him and pleaded with him to act on behalf of Europe's Jews before it was too late. This was before Paris, before Germany and Brussels and Paris again and all those deaths and all that horror that we now know as a reality, rather than a shock. He smiled at me then, and told me that while any Jewish suffering was serious, there would be no death camps in Sweden anytime soon, and as my heart sank, I saw the beginning of the end of the trust I had put in America to fight on behalf of those of us who cannot fight for ourselves. I was very angry then, as I left that meeting, and today I miss the anger and the outrage that I felt five years ago. The anger meant I had expectations and hope, and both those things are necessary for life to exist here and anywhere. Since then, we have moved beyond history, as is visible in the memorials that are hijacked in our name. What was once our darkness is now used to shed light on their agendas, and little or nothing is left for us, and we are but what we can do for them and how we can be an alibi for someone else's purpose and plight. We all know to where that kind of willful memory loss leads. We know it because it was one of the mantras used in the post-1945 reckoning. What isn't remembered will be repeated, they said, and yet here we are. Without memory, without allies, and I pray that the event now overshadowing this solemn anniversary will at least help us regain some of those memories and some of that faith. This year's anniversary has been overshadowed by the election of the next president of the United States, and any wise words said were drowned out in the fallout and aftermath. These two, however, are far from mutually exclusive, as I know how important the office can and should be. Many claim to have low expectations on the incoming president, but I expect and ask much of him, going forward. We are at a crossroads, once again -- the world has a choice to make in whether and how it will protect a people that has fled one too many times. The president-elect has a responsibility to restore the world's memory and to honor it, fully, so that we are not only allowed ownership of our own memorial, but can be spared the creation of another. Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a political adviser and writer on the Middle East, religious affairs and global anti-Semitism. Twitter @truthandfiction.
Beyond history
מערכת היום
מערכת "היום“ מפיקה ומעדכנת תכנים חדשותיים, מבזקים ופרשנויות לאורך כל שעות היממה. התוכן נערך בקפדנות, נבדק עובדתית ומוגש לציבור מתוך האמונה שהקוראים ראויים לעיתונות טובה יותר - אמינה, אובייקטיבית ועניינית.
