88 year ago today, on Kristallnacht, the Holocaust began in Germany & the countries they had already occupied.
The world knew about it, but collectively ignored the 
November pogrom(s), a prolonged series of violent… attacks on Jewish people, homes, businesses and synagogues. It was the Nazi pogrom which foreshadowed the Holocaust.
So “Are the Jews being paranoid?”
When i thought about her question later that day, this is what i came up with:
1) Paranoia is the irrational and persistent feeling that people are ‘out to get you’ or that you are the subject of persistent, intrusive attention by others.
2) Traumatic Fear: Fear and anxiety are two immediate and long term reactions to traumatic life-threatening events in which the victims’ control disappeared. Perceptions about safety and their victimization by the world they live in feed fear for victims, their families, and their offspring. Beliefs about life are all questioned and the ground they walk on no longer feels solid.
3) Traumatizing persecution of Jews historically: From 1189 to 1190, the anti-Jewish pogroms in London, York, and numerous other cities and towns displayed cruelty and barbarity never before seen by English Jews. Indeed, these acts of violence distinguished themselves as some of the worst atrocities committed against European Jews in the Middle Ages. But that wasn’t when Jewish persecution began; from the ancient period to the middle ages and the modern era, antisemites targeted Jews first for religious and then racial discrimination, with examples of scapegoating cropping up throughout.
And what about the Palestinians, and Hamas? Are they responding to their own demons?
Kristallnacht: What Happened on the ‘Night of Broken Glass’?
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish refugee living in Paris, walked into his city’s German Embassy and assassinated Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath.
Grynszpan had just learned that his Polish-Jewish parents, along with thousands of other Jews, had been herded into boxcars and deported from Germany. His actions would later be used as justification for Kristallnacht, the violent antisemitic pogrom which took place on November 9 -10, 1938.
From the day Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933, anti-Semitism had become encoded in the governmental policies of Nazi Germany. For years, Jews experienced state-sponsored discrimination and persecution, and Grynszpan had seen enough.
Nazi Regime Launches Vast Pogrom
Hitler sent his personal physicians to Paris to treat vom Rath, but two days later the diplomat died from his wounds. The Nazi regime found the murder to be a welcome excuse to launch a vast pogrom against the Jews living inside its borders. Until then, Nazi policies toward the Jews, such as boycotts and deportations, had been primarily nonviolent, but that all changed in the hours after vom Rath took his last breath.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels orchestrated a “spontaneous” reaction to the political assassination. He sent a teletype message to state police stations and secret service headquarters with detailed instructions on organizing and executing a massive attack on Jewish properties.
Goebbels ordered the burning of Jewish houses of worship, businesses and homes. He ordered the storm troopers to arrest as many Jews as the prisons could hold—“especially the rich ones”—and to prepare the concentration camps for their arrivals. Firemen were told to do nothing to stop the blazes unless the fires began to threaten Aryan-owned properties.
Jewish Properties, Synagogues Destroyed, Jews Murdered
Starting in the late hours of the night of November 9, 1938, and continuing well into the next day, Nazis in Germany and Austria torched approximately 1,000 synagogues and vandalized thousands of Jewish homes, schools and businesses.
Nearly 100 Jews were murdered during the violence, and approximately 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Following the night of terror, the shattered windows of vandalized Jewish businesses littered the sidewalks of Germany and Austria, which led to the rampage being known as Kristallnacht, German for “crystal night.”
After ruining their property and their temples in a murderous attack, the Nazis then made their victims pay for all the damage from the “night of broken glass.”
The insurance companies paid the Jews in full, but the Nazi government confiscated all the money to pay back the insurance companies to prevent them from bankruptcy due to the catastrophic losses.
The Nazis also fined Germany’s Jews $400 million for their “abominable crimes,” including the killing of vom Rath in Paris. Hermann Göring, Hitler’s second-in-command, said the sanctions would ensure “the swine won’t commit another murder.”
The Holocaust Begins
US Condemns, But Continues to Restrict Immigration
Foreign countries issued statements of condemnation. Hugh Wilson, the American ambassador to Germany, was summoned home for “consultations” and never returned. In spite of the words, though, most countries, including the United States, kept their restrictive immigration policies against European Jews in place, and there were few ramifications for the Nazis.
A week following the assassination in Paris that was used as a pretense for the state-sponsored “spontaneous demonstration,” vom Rath’s coffin, draped with the Nazi swastika flag, was paraded through the streets of Dusseldorf as thousands of mourners raised their arms in salute of the murdered diplomat.
Grynszpan was transferred from prison to prison in France until the Nazi invasion during World War II when he was extradited to Germany where he was incarcerated in a concentration camp. His ultimate fate is unknown, but he may well have been among the 6 million killed during the Holocaust, the genocide that was foreshadowed on that November “night of broken glass.”
Americans Were Shocked by Kristallnacht—But Their Outrage Soon Faded
The 1938 pogrom sparked harsh criticism, but not much action,
Mobs attacked 7,500 Jewish-owned stores and businesses and killed 96 people.
The Resolver 