JEFFREY HERF
229
What makes his 7,OOO-word speech so distinctive, and what sets
it apart from other speeches about the Nazi past, is its persistent and
resolute
factualiry.
Instead of calling for recollection in the abstract,
Jenninger recalled and did so in considerable detail. On Wednesday
night, the Chancellor had addressed West German Jews. On Fri–
day, Jenninger spoke to the non-Jewish West Germans. As he said,
the Jews everywhere know what happened on "pogrom night" of
November
1938.
"But do we [West Germans] know, too?"3 Judging
from his speech, Phillip Jenninger thought that the West Germans
needed an extended history lesson.
Jenninger recalled how the highest authorities suspended right
and law, how the state itself became an organizer of crime, and how
open terror against the Jews emerged. He laid out facts and figures.
In the pogrom over two hundred synagogues were burned or demol–
ished, thousands of businesses and homes destroyed. Several hun–
dredJews were killed, and about
30,000
were taken to concentration
camps. The police and fireman allowed synagogues to burn, unless
"Aryan" property was threatened. The event marked the beginning
of the "destruction of the Jews in Germany and in large parts of
Europe." The non-Jewish population remained passive, as it had
since
1933
in the face of anti-Jewish actions. There was "no resis–
tance worth mentioning" and only isolated acts of help and practical
solidarity. "Everyone saw what happened, but almost everyone
looked away and remained silent. The churches remained silent
too."
Why? How? Jenninger offered no generalities about man's in–
humanity to man. He said that in the five years from
1933
to
1938,
a
century of Jewish advance in Germany was wrecked through boy–
cotts ofJewish stores, forced retirements ofJewish civil servants, the
expulsion of Jews from journalism, art, medicine, and law. The
Nuremberg laws of
1935
reduced them to second-class citizenship.
In spring
1938,
Jewish property was expropriated . The Nazis or–
dered the Jews to come up with a billion marks to pay for the physi–
cal damage done by the Nazi thugs on November
9, 1938.
Jenninger
said that a "revolution" took place in Germany between
1933
and
1938
in which the
Rechtstaat
was transformed into an illegal and
criminal state. At the end of this revolution, Nazi rule was more
3. Phillip Jenninger, "Die Opfer wissen, was der November 1938 fur sie bedeutet
hatte: Die Rede des Bundesprasident im Wortlaut,"
Franlifurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Nr.
264 (November 11 , 1988), p . 6.
