In 1938, the Third Reich, which had just annexed Austria, was applying a policy of systematic expulsion of foreign Jews resident on its territory. In the fall, Polish Jews banished from Germany were rebuffed by Poland. Herschel Grynszpan, who sought refuge in Paris, learned how his family was stuck no man’s land between the two countries, and killed the third secretary of the Reich’s embassy in France. The Nazis used this as a pretext to launch a pogrom. During the night of 9-10 November 1938, synagogues were systematically torched, Jewish shops ransacked, almost 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, who were later freed on condition that they emigrate. It was the notorious Kristallnacht. The Nazi leadership – Göring, the regime’s number 2, Goebbels, the minister of propaganda, Heydrich, the head of the SS intelligence service – decided that Jews had to pay reparations, and that they also had to payer an “expiatory” fine of one billion Reichmarks and that insurance indemnities destined for Jewish proprietors would be confiscated by the Nazi state. That same day, Göring published a decree which excluded Jews from all economic activity. On 1 January 1939, there were no longer any Jewish businesses on Reich soil. The situation of German Jews grew worse: banished from German society, demonized by the regime, they were presented as the enemy within, but no longer had any possibility of leaving the country. The invasion of Poland by the Reich, on 1 September 1939, dragged Europe into the Second World War. The Nazi regime also decided to displace German populations to the south of general government. The operation organized by Heinrich Himmler was a failure, but Poland was acting as a laboratory for the Final Solution. The Nazis gathered Polish Jews in ghettos, forcing them to move house and to abandon their jobs if they were outside the ghetto.
Documentary: Annihilation EP2 Trap (2014)
Directed by: William Karel & Blanche Finger
Production: ZADIG PRODUCTIONS
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