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BaroquenLarynx t1_ivtvbpr wrote

Reply to comment by TheLateHenry in Unseen Kristallnacht photos published 84 years after Nazi pogrom by danishistorian

My great grandma was from a Jewish family. She and my great grandpa urged their family to leave before the occupation of Poland. They didn't listen, so they fled alone to the US. We don't have any of that family left.

She asked what I was learning in school once, since she knew we had started discussing World War 2 and the Holocaust. I told her we had just discussed "Kristallnacht". She slapped me across the mouth and told me she didn't want to hear that word come from my mouth ever again. She told me to call it "reichspogromnacht", too.

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Kris_n t1_ivuljs8 wrote

It makes sense she remembered how this was the end of jewish existence in Germany, and how cruel it actually was.

As Britannica mentions:

>This name symbolized the final shattering of Jewish existence in Germany. After Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime made Jewish survival in Germany impossible.

So its clear that the name Kristallnacht for years has been a haunting memory for everyone who experienced it, and want to use a more reasonable name that shows what it really was - a government pogrom against the jewish community.

I can’t even comprehend what she and her family went through, but that reaction shows it still hurts.

Btw: im sad to hear about the part of your family that stayed behind. Have they ever told anything about them? Their names, their professions or anything about them at all?

It’s so sad to see that families got shattered or completely destroyed. I mean, just look at Anne Franks family. A whole family killed except for the father.

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