See 'Extremely Disturbing' Photos of Kristallnacht Published 84 Years After Antisemitic Attacks
Yad Vashem/World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Unseen photographs from the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom have been released on the 84th anniversary of the deadly antisemitic event.
The images were found in a photo album recently donated to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Israel, by the family of a late Jewish-American soldier, according to the organization.
The soldier's daughters discovered the album while cleaning up his home after his death, Yad Vashem said in its announcement on Wednesday.
Jonathan Matthews, head of the photography section of the Yad Vashem Archives, said the "rare photos" offer new insight into the November Pogrom events.
"All this serves as further proof that this was dictated from above and was not a spontaneous event of an enraged public, as they tried to make these pogroms appear," Matthews said.
Yad Vashem/World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of the Broken Glass, was a 48-hour period of anti-Jewish violence that erupted in Europe in 1938, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Ninety-one Jewish people were murdered and approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were burglarized and vandalized across Germany, Austria and and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia during the demonstrations.
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The photos found inside the newly-donated album were taken by a pair of Nazi photographers in the Bavarian cities of Nuremberg and Fürth, according to the announcement.
Yad Vashem/World Holocaust Remembrance Center
The images depict members of the Schutzstaffel (SS) — a section of the Sturmabteilung (SA) that policed Nazi Germany, per the American Defamation League — and civilians setting the fires, vandalizing buildings and gathering books that were likely burned.
Many Jewish people, some of whom were wounded, were also photographed in bed or in their pajamas, which Yad Vashem said is classic Nazi propaganda.
"We can see from the extreme close-up nature of these photos that the photographers were an integral part of the event depicted," Matthews said in a statement. "The angles and proximity to the perpetrators seem to indicate a clear goal, to document the events that took place."
Meanwhile in some newly revealed images, onlookers appear to be "watching" the violence against their Jewish neighbors without attempting to "stop the violence or defend" them, he added.
Yad Vashem/World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan said it's "extremely disturbing and difficult" to see the "humiliation of Jews" during Kristallnacht, which is considered by some as the beginning of the Holocaust. However, Dayan believes it is important to "bear witness to the atrocities of the past."
"These photographs clearly show the true intention of the Nazis and the systematic and deliberate lengths they would go to in order to accomplish their murderous agenda," Dayan said in Wednesday's announcement.
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The Kristallnacht album was donated by the Gold Family as part of Yad Vashem's "Gathering the Fragments" project, in which Holocaust survivors and their descendants pass along their Holocaust-era possessions, according to the organization.
Yad Vashem/World Holocaust Remembrance Center
Dayan believes the photos contained in the album are "important documentary evidence of the atrocities that were inflicted on the Jews of Europe," per Yad Vashem's press release.
He also hopes the images "will serve as everlasting witnesses" as the number of living Holocaust survivors continues to shrink.
"It is critical that these images and other documentation from the Holocaust be preserved and kept at Yad Vashem forever," Dayan explained.
