Germany: Merkel warns of modern racism on Kristallnacht 80th

https://www.yahoo.com/news/german-president-calls-democratic-patriotism-100608921.html

BERLIN (AP) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel and Germany's main Jewish leader warned against tolerating modern-day anti-Semitism and racism as they marked the 80th anniversary Friday of the Nazis' anti-Jewish Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass," pogrom.

On Nov. 9, 1938, Jews were terrorized throughout Germany and Austria. At least 91 people were killed, hundreds of synagogues burned down, some 7,500 Jewish businesses vandalized, and up to 30,000 Jewish men arrested, many of whom were taken away to concentration camps.

Twenty years after Germany's defeat in World War I and 5½ years after Adolf Hitler took power, state-driven anti-Semitism "made it possible for many Germans to live out long-held resentments, to live out hatred and violence," Merkel said. "With the November pogrom, the road to the Holocaust was mapped out."

Merkel spoke in a ceremony at a Berlin synagogue. The head of Germany's Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, said the building was set alight in 1938 and the blaze extinguished relatively quickly only so as not to endanger neighboring houses.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht