Excavating Kristallnacht

"The ninth of November is a symbol because it was the beginning of the end," Mr. Blumenthal said of Kristallnacht, a Nazi euphemism meaning "night of broken glass."

Curiously, though, physical evidence of the state-sponsored pogrom has always been extremely scarce. The Jewish Museum, for example, holds many letters describing the night. But the only other related object in its collection is a 38-second black-and-white film of a synagogue burning in Bielefeld, a university town in western Germany.

Last week, however, an Israeli researcher reported finding a trove of such evidence -- piles of looted Jewish possessions -- in this town 30 miles north of Berlin.

Finding it turned out to be as simple as asking one of Klandorf's 180 residents for the whereabouts of the local trash dump.

The day after Kristallnacht, trains loaded with personal and religious items arrived in the woods outside Klandorf. Political prisoners from a nearby camp unloaded the material and threw it all in a dump here.

Posted by David on November 3, 2008 9:47 PM