This may be a weird history teacher quirk, but I associate certain dates with countries near and dear to me. For example, on December 6, I think of Quito Day and the amazing gift God gave in the six months I got to live in Ecuador. On December 6, we crammed into open carriages and rode around the city blowing whistles and shouting “Viva Quito”; it was a hoot! Easter Sunday belongs to Austria in my heart as the way our church celebrated it with the best breakfast on God’s green earth made me salivate all of Holy Week. Of course I feel patriotic for the US on July 4th and pause for a moment every Chinese New Year to relive my year in Taiwan. Most of those memories stir happy thoughts and cozy feelings.
But Germany? To Germany belongs the troubled November 9. The only time this was a moment of celebration was in 1989. I was 8 and have a vivid memory of standing next to my Dad in front of the TV as we watched people dancing on the Berlin Wall before bulldozing it down. East Germans across Austria suddenly came out of hiding and rushed to the opening Iron Curtain border. But there was also that date in 1923 when an upstart politician with a mustache staged the Beer Hall Putsch and was consequently arrested and thrown in prison where he wrote the book that would launch his career and a world war. But to top them all, there was that one November 9 in 1938, the one that still makes me shudder slightly: The Night of Broken Glass.
10 years ago today, I had the opportunity to attend the opening of an exhibit at the Lörrach museum, just 20 minutes down the road from Black Forest Academy. An archivist had discovered an undeveloped roll of film, and the pictures it contained shocked and brought Kristallnacht back to the surface in an uncomfortable way. The photographs truly moved me, and I wrote the following reflection back then, that I actually shared once before on this blog. It bears repeating if you’ll indulge and remember with me.
November 9
Today, of all days, I broke a glass. Before fate or fortune could stop it, it had slipped from my fingers and scattered into a hundred pieces, escaping even into the tiniest crevices of my floorboards. Of course I retaliated with the broom and dustbin, but there was that one shard, astoundingly wedged between floor and cupboard. The broom wasn’t enough; I had to use my hands to pry it loose. With a violent tug, the sparkling glass came free, but not before it had extracted the reddest trickle of blood from my index finger, the price of its sacrifice.
Today, of all days, I met you. I believed I was heightening my intellectuality by attending my first German lecture. Proudly was I ready to cast my critical eye over the newest museum display and talk mightily with my fellow colleagues about our superiority of compassion over people of the past. But I had barely made it past the door when you greeted me, standing there in your button-down wool coat, carpet slung over one arm and tote bag firmly clutched in the other. You floated motionless in the middle of the lively crowd, and your thoughts were a hundred miles away. No one was looking at you. Everyone was too busy staring at the guard who had just forced himself into the edge of the frame, finger outstretched, tonsils glaring at me from his open throat. Your father was scowling at him and your mother hanging on fearfully, her own bag pressed against her chest. Kids who should have been in school were congested up almost to your legs, and neighbors hung with their big bosoms over their balcony rails to watch the spectacle. You just stood there in front of the transport truck, unfazed, your smooth facial features emotionless and your lips pursed in a straight line. Yet the injustice of what was happening simmered beneath the surface. You could feel it in the pulse of your fingertips and your fiery eyes as you stared off into a distant land where no price would ever be demanded of your blood.
Today, of all days, I walked the same streets you once called home. The glass has been cleaned up along with your carpet and other possessions that were pried from your fingers seventy-two Novembers ago. Then, the people praised themselves for their purity and rational-mindedness; now, we praise ourselves for our tolerance and open-heartedness. Yet how does any of it compare to the simplicity of a young woman whose life splintered into thousands of shards in the blink of an eye? Who was asked to pay an ultimate price? And only one forgotten photographer noticed as she slipped into oblivion.
Today, of all days, I will remember your scar as I finger my own.
One of the other pictures from that roll of film, credit: Dreiläendermuseum Lörrach
