Author Description

"When on November 9, 2014, the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated with speeches, fireworks and music at the Brandenburg Gate, Michael Ruetz was also among the crowd. Stunned, he watched as no word was told that 9 November is also the day of the pogroms of 1938 - the "Kristallnacht", as the Nazis called their terror. This renewed experience of German suppression of history led him to search for pictorial documents and eyewitness accounts on 9 November 1938. Together her with Astrid Köppe, he has contacted more than a thousand local, regional and international archives to gain a concrete idea of what happened on that day of 1938: what the 'ordinary' citizen has done, approved and seen, must have known. The research brought to light an unprecedented wealth of images and eyewitness accounts that show a far-reaching complicity of perpetrators and fellow travelers: here the destructive anger and triumphant malice of the unleashed mob, there the cowardly curiosity of the audience with their hands in their pockets. The photos from all over Germany document how easy and especially in the 'province', where everyone knew each other, the violence was unleashed - and how little courage and moral courage rose against it. So marked the 9. November 1938 the trial run and the starting point of the Holocaust - under all eyes. The volume is accompanied by a speech by Christoph Stölzl, the founding director of the German Historical Museum, dated 9 November 1988, which addresses the question of what the collective memory of such a day of crime could or should look like. Because even here threatens a day of commemoration routine, as if this day would be a historic date like many others - especially since November 9, 1989, the new German sense of unity this question pushes into the background. An essay by Michael Ruetz on the German handling of the date of the 9th of November concludes the band."