5/4/2019 Jonathan Lanz_ FINAL DRAFT - Google Docs “Shattered Childhoods:” A Children’s History of the November Pogrom Jonathan Lanz Honors Thesis Submitted to the Department of History, Georgetown University Advisor: Professor Anna von der Goltz Honors Program Chairs: Professor Katherine Benton­Cohen and Professor Alison Games 6 May 2019 https://docs.google.com/document/d/10BY5DvYpmIAhzFk9mWaFec20tWAPSTW13uk38AvTrXQ/edit 1/97 5/4/2019 Jonathan Lanz_ FINAL DRAFT - Google Docs Lanz 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 3 Historiography 5 Source Material 14 Chapter I: Indoctrination and Assimilation: Daily Life Before the Violence 19 Life Inside of the Classroom 21 Youth Organizations as Weapons of Indoctrination 31 “Racial Education” in Children’s Literature 36 Chapter II: The Descent into Madness: Jewish Children During the Pogrom 42 Transformation of Family Dynamics 43 Physical Destruction of Jewish Life 50 Violence Against Jewish Children 56 Chapter III: Life After the Pogrom: The Beginning of the End 63 The Disfigurement of Identity and Family 65 In the Community: Jewish Schools and “Aryan” Friends 68 Leaving Home Forever: Emigration and Kindertransporte 74 Conclusion 85 Bibliography 90 Archival Collections 90 Published Primary Sources 91 Secondary Sources 92 Appendix 95 https://docs.google.com/document/d/10BY5DvYpmIAhzFk9mWaFec20tWAPSTW13uk38AvTrXQ/edit 2/97 5/4/2019 Jonathan Lanz_ FINAL DRAFT - Google Docs Lanz 2 Acknowledgements This thesis, without a doubt the most difficult and complicated academic project I have ever undertaken, would never have been completed without the support of so many individuals. In the history department, Professor Anna von der Goltz has been steadfast in her support of my project and academic development in the past two years. Professor Tommaso Astarita has been a continuous source of support during this project and my early interest in the life of a historian. Professor Katherine Benton­Cohen and Professor Alison Games, co­directors of the thesis seminar, have been crucial advisors in the past year, helping me turn a single research question into this enormous accomplishment. I am also grateful for supplementary funding provided by the Department of History and the Penner Family Experiences Grant, both of which were essential to the success of this thesis. In the Center for Jewish Civilization, I will be forever grateful to Professor Anna Sommer Schneider, who has not only served as a close advisor during the formative years of my academic development, but has also served as an inspiration to me as a historian of the Holocaust. Father Dennis McManus and Father Patrick Desbois, a dynamic duo that could only be found at a place like Georgetown, continue to inspire me to deepen my understanding of the Holocaust and its remnants in the current world. To my seminar colleagues and friends who have continuously pushed me to challenge my current understanding of history and its relevance, this project has largely succeeded due to your help and intellectual probing. Margaret Underwood and William Leo have been especially helpful in aiding my transcription of Fraktur text into standard German. To Mom, Dad, Matthew, Alex, Frankie, and Harry, thank you for giving me your confidence to follow my passions no matter where they might lead. I am here today due to your support. And to Grandpa and Colonel. Two men who have radically shaped my development and inspired me to dedicate my life to this important history. This project is a testament to your childhoods and experiences. I give permission to Lauinger Library to make this thesis available to the public. https://docs.google.com/document/d/10BY5DvYpmIAhzFk9mWaFec20tWAPSTW13uk38AvTrXQ/edit 3/97 5/4/2019 Jonathan Lanz_ FINAL DRAFT - Google Docs Lanz 3 Introduction In the early morning hours of November 7, 1938 seventeen­year­old Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish­Jewish refugee, walked into the German embassy in Paris. Upon presenting himself at the reception desk, Grynszpan claimed to have sensitive intelligence to be seen by the ambassador’s eyes only. The ambassador had just left for his morning walk, so the embassy secretary directed Grynszpan to the office of Ernst vom Rath, a junior diplomat with the German delegation. As he entered vom Rath’s office, Grynszpan pulled out the revolver he bought earlier that morning and shot vom Rath five times in the abdomen, killing the German diplomat with a shot to his stomach.1 Grynszpan’s act was a reaction against the forcible expulsion of Jews with Polish citizenship from German territory. In late­October 1938, German authorities had forced these approximately 17,000 Jews to leave their homes and return to Poland in what became known as the “ Polenaktion, ” or “Polish action.”2 Grynszpan’s family from Hanover was among this group, and after learning of the horrific conditions they were subjected to on the German­Polish border, Grynszpan decided to take retaliatory action against the German ambassador in Paris, where he was currently living. The assassination of a middle­level German diplomat had implications that affected millions of people. After top Nazi officials such as Joseph Goebbels, the Reich minister of propaganda, learned that a Jew murdered a German diplomat, the German government immediately began preparations for retaliation as a pretext to attack Germany’s Jews.3 Within four days, a 1 Jonathan Kirsch, The Short, Strange Life of Herschel Grynszpan: A Boy Avenger, a Nazi Diplomat, and a Murder in Paris (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013), 109. 2 Robert Gerwarth, Hitler’s Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 125. 3 There is a large scholarly debate surrounding whether the violence was state­sponsored or a eruption of popular violence. This debate is described in detail in the following pages. For the order cited by historians as evidence that https://docs.google.com/document/d/10BY5DvYpmIAhzFk9mWaFec20tWAPSTW13uk38AvTrXQ/edit 4/97 5/4/2019 Jonathan Lanz_ FINAL DRAFT - Google Docs Lanz 4 nationwide wave of antisemitic violence had swept through German­controlled territories that saw the widespread destruction of Jewish property and the imprisonment of thousands of Jewish men in the concentration camps at Dachau and Buchenwald.4 At the time of the assassination, Herschel Grynszpan was only seventeen years old. The fact that it was the action of a Jewish teenager which was used as the reason to incite the violence demonstrates the centrality of Jewish children and youths in the study of the November Pogrom. However, most scholars have yet to apply the lens of childhood and youth to an examination of the so­called “ Kristallnacht ,” or the “Night of the Broken Glass,” which took place between 5 November 9 and 11, 1938. This nationwide wave of mass violence is commonly conceptualized as a major turning point in Nazi antisemitic policy, as it was one of the first coordinated waves of mass violence against German Jews. While the application of the history of childhood to the broader study of the Holocaust has yielded a multitude of new studies, few scholars have paid much attention to analyzing the Pogrom through the experiences of both Jewish and non­Jewish children.6 Ironically, the November Pogrom is one of the most studied events in the history of Nazi Germany, yet the vast the violence was ordered from above, see “Telegram from Reinhard Heydrich to Local Party Leaders, November 10, 1938,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, accessed April 4, 2019, https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online­exhibitions/special­focus/kristallnacht/historical­overview/r ole­of­the­police/page­1. 4 Scholars disagree as to whether “antisemitism” should be hyphenated. For the purposes of this paper, it will not be hyphenated. For more information, see “Memo on Spelling of Antisemitism,” International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, April 2015, https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/memo­on­spelling­of­antisemitism_final­1.pdf . 5 The terms “ Reichskristallnacht” and “Kristallnacht” are controversial as they imply that the Pogrom centered around “broken glass” rather than physical violence. Scholars who subscribe to the view that the Pogrom was centered around mass violence tend to eschew the use of this term. See Peter Fritzsche, L ife and Death in the Third Reich (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 133. For the purposes of this study, I will use the neutral term “November Pogrom.” 6 This author has yet to find evidence that an extensive study exists which analyzes the experiences of children during the November Pogrom. The experiences of German­Jewish children have been analyzed within the broader history of the Holocaust, but they have been peripheral to studies relating to the November Pogrom. https://docs.google.com/document/d/10BY5DvYpmIAhzFk9mWaFec20tWAPSTW13uk38AvTrXQ/edit 5/97 5/4/2019 Jonathan Lanz_ FINAL DRAFT - Google Docs Lanz 5 majority of historical analyses concerning the Pogrom do not include any discussion of the experiences of German children under Nazi control. This thesis seeks to address the question of how our view of the November Pogrom can be nuanced by analyzing the violence from the perspective of German children. Historiography Even though the Holocaust has been studied for more than a half­century, scholars have only recently begun to pay attention to the diverse experiences of different Jewish populations in 7 Nazi­occupied Europe. From ghettoization to extermination, thousands of studies have analyzed numerous aspects of the Nazi program to murder Europe’s Jewish population. However, traditional Holocaust scholarship has generally focused on analyzing specific perspectives, such as the lives of Jewish men who survived death camps and the motivations of the perpetrators themselves. More recently, historians have sought to examine this history from a variety of perspectives, with a focus on the history of everyday life.8 Moreover, recent studies of the Holocaust have sought to address the social history of Nazi Germany from an interdisciplinary perspective.