Dr.

Patricia Heberer
Dr.Heberer has been serving as an historian with the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington for the past 18 years, since 1994. There she functions as the Museums in-house specialist on medical crimes and eugenics policies in Nazi Germany. A publication, Atrocities on Trial: The Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes in Historical Perspective, co-edited with Juergen Matthus, appeared in 2008 with the University of Nebraska Press. We had the privilege to interview Dr.Hebere who gave us in-depth details on Kristallnacht.

1. What kind of research do you do as a historian and does it relate to the holocaust?
I am a historian here at the United States Holocaust Museum and my specialty is actually medical crimes related to the Holocaust. I do research on the Nazi Euthanasia program which was the murder of about 200,000 disabled Germans during the Holocaust.

2. When you studied the Holocaust, were Kristallnacht and the murder of the secretary Vom Rath a big part of Holocaust?
Well of course because it was an ideal event that sort of was the change from legal legislation and persecution of Jews in Germany and a more extra-legal effort to persecute Jews. And so, it is an important point and it is sort of a change in the mechanism in a way Jews were persecuted in Germany. And of course Kristallnacht was important for that.

3. Did you ever hear about the murder of the third secretary, Vom Rath, of the German embassy official in Paris?
Well right, this was Herschel Grynzspan and of course he had his own personal reasons for murdering. He wanted to protect his parents deportation to Poland, they were stateless Jews. At the time Germany was deporting stateless Jews living in Germany. Many of them were several years after World War 2 and deporting them to Poland. And Herschel Grynzspan then went to the embassy where according to what we know and there might have been a motive to this, but he shot the first minister he saw that was a secretary Vom Rath. This was used as an emphasis for the Nazis and especially Joseph Goebbels. They happened to be meeting for what was for them a big day in the calendar, Nazi calendar, it was the anniversary of the Beer Hall Putsch which was the first effort of the Nazis to come to power in 1921 or no, 1923. When Vom Rath got shot and the Nazi leaders heard about this, they thought this would be an excellent chance for an extra-legal persecution of the

Jews. It was essentially a pogrom, burning of Jewish homes, temples and businesses and destroying Jewish owned property and it was a plan that was supposed to look like a mob action but in fact it was carefully choreographed in Berlin and it involved mainly German storm troopers, brown shirts and the terror military organization that belonged to the SS Nazi Party members and the members of the Hitler Youth. The murder of Vom Rath was the instigation for this and was used as an excuse to do the Kristallnacht.

4. Do you think that Kristallnacht could have been avoided without the murder?
Well I cant really say about that kind of thing. It is difficult for historians to figure out what happens if an event didnt happen. But it seems to me that this event was used as an excuse to do this particular thing. And the event happened on such a day that was very important on the Nazi calendar and perhaps they would have used another excuse to do something similar.

5. What do you think was the Germanys Jewish Society perspective?

Well of course it would mean the destruction of Jewish businesses and over 90 Jews were murdered. There was not supposed to be any physical violence towards jews but of course that was unavoidable because given the level of destruction and of course 93 Jews were murdered, Jews businesses and homes were destroyed and ransacked dirt and a lot of Jewish religious items were burnt. Over 30,000 men were also arrested. This was the first time that Jews were arrested for being Jews during the Kristallnacht. That is another reason that Kristallnacht is so important. Then they were sent to concentration camps until they could show that they were able to go into exile.

6. Did the murder transpire Germans to start the Kristallnacht and ultimately the holocaust?
Well no, I dont think so. It was used as a pre-tense. It is hard to know at what stage the Holocaust was planned but I would clearly not say that this murder inspired the Holocaust. It served as a pre-tense for a level of violence used against Jews in Germany that was not used before. I should also point out that many people high up in the Nazi party were not happy initially that this happened. That included people like Herman Goring who was the economics minister. The insurance companies had to pay for Jewish businesses which got destroyed and most of these insurance companies were owned by Germans. They had to figure out a way to get the money back so they levied fine on Jewish community to pay for the destruction. But people on the Nazi party some of them saw this through, thought this as a pretty damn idea. Among them is the example I just gave you. But the murder was a pretense to shift towards the violence. And once that shift was made it was more thinkable to do extra-legal things to Jews, such as, round them up, concentrate them, make them wear a yellow star and ultimately deport them. And it was done on Germans parole and in

front of the population. It gave them a lot of other ideas. First of all, some of the German population thought it was a good thing but some thought you shouldnt burn houses of religion and shouldnt attack these people, whats wrong with you. So it gave them another idea to completely deport them outside of Germany, basically outside of German soil. So the murder didnt inspire the holocaust but it was a pretense for shifting the nature of persecution.

7. Do you think that Grynzspan made the right choice when he assassinated Vom Rath in Paris?
I do not think it is ever a good idea to march down to an embassy and shoot someone. I really dont think that murder is a good thing. And, basically he shot whoever came out. And what will be called that act? Terrorism, right? And so Grynzspan was very upset that his parents had been expelled and he wanted someone to pay for this issue. And it happened that the ambassador did not come out but unfortunately Vom Rath. And there it is.

8. Do you believe that Kristallnacht is the turning point in the history of the holocaust? If so, please explain.
As explained earlier, yes it is.

9. What was the rest of the worlds reaction to Kristallnacht and the holocaust?
You can tell from the newspapers that it was reported widely and most places were horrified that such a pogrom took place. A pogrom is a descriptive word meaning in Russia at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century there was lot of violence by population and police against Jews in Russia. It is expected that there would be this kind of extralegal violence against Jews in such an uncivilized place but this sort of thing never happened in Germany before perhaps since middle of ages or renaissance time. And so it was shock that in this very civilized society, such was the image that Germany had before Hitler came to power that such a thing could happen. And indeed it was in a place where Jews were quite assimilated means they were merely immigrated into their community and thought themselves to be Germans. In many places Jews did not feel like they were part of the community like in Russia or in Poland but that was not the case in Germany. So it was a great shock to them as well. It gave them the first sense that Germany is not their country anymore. Many of the Germans Jews fought as Germans in the first world war and until then they believed themselves as more Germans than Germans. And this was their first warning despite all of the laws that have taken place. But of course the real discrimination, the real taking away property and real movement happened after Kristallnacht. And so it was even more apparent at this time but most Jews thought they would not send back but after Kristallnacht they had a very good sense that this could get very much of out of hand and German Jews were not in great numbers after Kristallnacht.

10.What kind of change did the Kristallnacht or the holocaust bring to the society?
Well like I said, German Jews had the sense for the first time that it might be in their back interest to leave and many Jews were already left the country. But it was violence, murder and destruction of property had not been seen in Germany on this level before. So many German Jews left after this event. It was highest peak in German Jewish immigration. And of course, the other issue was that it raised the level of persecution to extra-legal measure. Things were against the constitution, things that were against the taking away the property alienating Jewish owned businesses and things of this nature and it was the turning point towards this kind of behavior and extra-legal violence, segregation and murder of Jews. 11. Have you ever had any primary sources from that time? Please tell and

describe some of the most important or valuable sources?

Yes, of course. Historians work with primary sources. One of the most interesting things to look at is the Jewish responses from that time period, what Jews experienced during that time period. The USHMM center has just published a book on Jewish responses of the Holocaust and the first volume goes to 1939 and basically chronicles German Jews responses. And you can see one interesting thing about the stores edition we published is that memoirs written later from that time period or interviews taken from that time period, these are the actual responses of the Jews from that time period and it tells exactly what happened to Jews and what they were going thru during this period. And you can also look at the legislation came out of this. And the photographs from this time period.

12.Have you ever met a person or gone to the site where the Holocaust happened?
Yeah I did. 13. How much more information has been gained and learned since you were

young and learned about Kristallnacht and the Holocaust?

I have been working at the museum for the last 18 years. And you can imagine that I learned more information than when I first started. Obviously you learn more as you research more. And its a learning process, right? You learn as you go through and we have new documents all the time. For example, one of my colleagues discovered a room full of Jewish documents in a Jewish community that were thought to be lost or destroyed during the war. They were actually locked up in a clothes room where people used to keep clothes of the Jewish community in the city of Vienna that most important city for German Jews. Now we know much more about their immediate reaction to things like Kristallnacht. So we are always learning new things.

14.Do you think the Holocaust was one of the larger ethnic genocides of all time?
Yes.

15.What are your most vivid memories as a historian?

I go around lot of places and talk. I talk to lot of doctors and I talk to lot of individuals who have survived as well as liberators. And I think one of the vivid memories I had was a phone call from a mans daughter. The man had been in World War II he was serving in Rome with Italians during the war. And he had come across something where Italian civilians had been murdered. And he didnt know what he had seen and he stumbled on a cave filled with several hundreds of Italians murdered. They had been shot as a hostage situation in the last days of the war. And his commander told him not to report. And afterwards, he didnt know what he had seen. He only saw all these people who had died. And 60 years later, he was still having post-dramatic syndrome and nightmares and depression from this experience. And I was able to talk to him and find out where exactly the cave was. And, I was able to talk to him why these people were murdered. This made him feel better and his daughter wrote back several months later saying it helped him immensely in overcoming his depression. So, doing this kind of work sometimes help people.