Kristallnacht & Christabel- The wickedness of hatred

Today is the 85^th anniversary of Kristallnacht [the Night of the Broken Glass] the horrible night in Nazi German when Nazis destroyed Jewish businesses, synagogues, and beat up and killed many Jewish people. There is a movie, Christabel, that I always think of when I hear a reference to Kristallnacht &, The movie is based on the true story of Christabel Bielenberg, and taken from her memoir, “The Past is Myself: Looking Back on the Years 1932-45.”

Christabel, although British married a German lawyer and they lived in Germany during the Nazi years. Her husband was part of the underground that attempted to kill Hitler and was imprisoned in Ravensbrūck. Many of their friends were hanged for their righteous attempt. In the movie I first saw on PBS, although not in the one I own there is a poignant scene where Christabel is in a church on Christmas Eve, they are singing Silent Night, at the same time the viewer is seeing one of the friends being hanged. But this is not why the reference to Kirstallnacht always reminds me of the movie.

There is a scene where Christabel and her husband are returning home from a concert and they come upon a street filled with violence—windows of shops broken, Jewish people being harassed and beaten, buildings on fire. They then know that it is time to act—they must be against the Nazis. They must, although underground, plot to end the horror happening in Germany. Violence in this case is a signal that complacency must end.

As I listen to the various videos of protests against Israel and the Jewish people, and watch the videos of protesters tearing down pictures of those who have been kidnapped by Hamas, I am aware that there is a great deal of ignorance about Israel and the history of the Jews and the Holocaust. One young person being questioned suggests that if the Jewish state is annihilated the Jews just go back to whatever country they came from undoubtedly not realizing that the Jews were chased out of those countries.

 And many of the protestors sound as though they have never heard of the Holocaust or perhaps don’t understand how it was that 6 million Jews were murdered because of the lies told about them.  But at the same time there is a strong whiff of ugliness, wickedness to be exact, in their comments.  Idealism (the attempt to be altruistic or always choose the good), too often turns to wickedness when it is centered in secular paganism; that is a kind of religious bent that is centered in natural super naturalism, a materialism that leaves out the image of God in humanity. So one makes their own decision about right and wrong, emotion is the main authority. What is called good may in reality be evil. Such as celebrating the killing of children and babies, the mutilation and burning of families in the name of helping Palestinians. Right and wrong, good and evil have been turned upside down.

The people I wrote about above, the Bielenbergs and their friends, saw evil and knew evil when they saw it. At first they didn’t realize the enormity of the crimes committed against Jews and others, but their knowledge grew and their courage. After the war they moved to Ireland and the lawyer became a farmer. But this is the scary part: too many today see the evil and think it is good. May there be mercy from a gracious God to fall on us in torrents.