(gentle music)
- [Narrator] As we remember those
whose lives were lost in the Holocaust,
we're confronted by the question
could it have been prevented?
While at the time, few saw that the events
of 1938 were leading to the Holocaust,
there were warning signs.
(gentle music)
Can our understanding of these events help us anticipate
and prevent genocide in our own time?
(gentle music)
- 1938 is such a key year because it marked an escalation
both of the persecution of the Jews,
the violence against Jews, it became more widespread.
(gentle music)
It also marked an escalation
of the Nazi policy of expansion.
(gentle music)
This is where we can see all the dominoes begin to fall.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] From the time that Adolf Hitler
and the Nazi party rose to power in 1933,
German Jews had gradually seen
their rights as citizens stripped away,
and their employment options severely limited.
(gentle music)
But in those early years
of the Third Reich,
no one could imagine the physical annihilation
of the Jews of Europe.
- My parents, and a lot of other
of that generation tried to ignore it.
They said, "Oh, this isn't going to last.
This man is crazy.
It's not going to last."
Well, they were wrong.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] An initial warning sign of 1938
came in mid-March when Germany annexed
neighboring Austria, an act known as the Anschluss.
(gentle music)
Within hours, an explosion of violence engulfed
the Jewish population in Vienna.
It spread throughout Germany in the following months,
accompanied by new anti-Jewish legislation.
Jews no longer felt safe
and tried to get out while they could.
(gentle music)
- Beginning in March, 1938, you have a real push
for the first time since 1933 in Germany
of large numbers of people trying
to get out at any cost,
even if they had to give up all of their assets.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] But despite official Nazi policy demanding
that the Jews leave Germany,
immigration was not a simple matter.
(gentle music)
- My parents really tried to leave, but where to go?
We had some very distant relatives in the United States
and some friends, but you needed an affidavit,
and even if you had an affidavit,
there was a quota number.
- There are several reasons
why governments didn't open their doors.
The main one is cold, calculated self-interest.
In the United States, you know, looking
to the issues that were on the front burner in this country,
the Depression, the widespread isolationism
of the American population, the antisemitism.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] The United States was not alone
in its refusal to raise its immigration quota.
- Many of the world's government showed sympathy
for the plight of the Jews in Germany
and also showed obviously concern
for Nazi intentions elsewhere in Europe.
But few were willing to take significant steps
to meet either crisis.
- This became clear in July of 1938
at the Evian Conference,
convened by President Franklin Roosevelt
to address the growing humanitarian crisis
faced by German Jews.
- With the exception of the Dominican Republic,
every single country refused to open its doors
to expand its immigration quotas.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] Over the summer of 1938,
Germany threatened to invade Czechoslovakia
to take control of the Sudetenland,
a western border region
where the majority of the population was ethnic German.
Unprepared for war, Great Britain, France,
and Italy agreed to let Germany annex the Sudetenland
in an attempt to guarantee peace.
(somber music)
- This was a cause for great tribulation
in much of Europe because it was believed
that war had been forestalled or prevented all together.
Other Europeans realized though
that this was just Germany flexing its muscles and seeing
whether or not the world would back down.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] And soon, Nazi policy toward Jews
became even more aggressive.
(somber music)
On November 9th and 10th, the Nazi party unleashed a wave
of anti-Jewish violence throughout greater Germany.
(somber music)
- Kristallnacht, the "Night of the Broken Glass," represents
the first national, organized, physical attack on the Jews.
It was a very public event.
Germans saw it happening and many participated in it.
(somber music)
- I saw the smoke and the fire of the synagogue burning
and we, both of us, my sister and I, started screaming from fear.
- Mid-morning came a horde of people to the door,
just smashed the door down, came in with scissors
and all kinds of instruments
and just demolished the whole apartment.
(somber music)
- It was so dreadful when my mother went
into the house that she, at that point, internalized
what was going to happen to us and to all the other Jews.
(somber music)
- To me, this was the true beginning of the Holocaust.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] German police rounded up
about 30,000 Jewish men
and held them in concentration camps.
In the weeks that followed,
German authorities closed Jewish communal organizations
and schools and forced Jews
to sell their businesses, property, and stocks
to non-Jews, usually at a great loss.
- I mean, no more business,
no more income, nothing, nothing.
The business was closed.
They just put things in front of it,
plywood or whatever it was, they nailed it down.
So nobody could come in anymore.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] In spite of the escalating violence,
very few nations, individuals, or groups chose to help.
(gentle music)
Those who did made a difference.
A small group of British and German Jews
persuaded the British government
to allow unaccompanied Jewish children
to enter the United Kingdom
under a program known as the Kindertransport.
- It's a poignant success story
because these are children who were,
you know, their families put them on these trains
to get out of harm's way,
knowing full well that they might never see
their children again,
and in many cases didn't see their children.
But the children survived.
These were 10,000 lives that were rescued.
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] As 1938 ended, Nazi Germany's intentions
were increasingly clear.
In the coming year, Germany would occupy the Czech lands
and invade Poland, igniting World War II.
Efforts to rescue Jews,
such as the Kindertransport, were effectively shut down.
Looking back at the events of 1938,
the signs of impending war
and the Holocaust are clearer today than they were then.
(gentle music)
Unfortunately, acts of genocide have continued
into the 21st century,
but there's hope that the world has begun
to heed the warning signs.
- We've learned enough.
We've seen enough.
We've studied enough.
The case of the Holocaust and the cases since the Holocaust
to understand what those signs are.
(gentle music)
- The choice is not just between sending
in the 101st Airborne and doing nothing.
There's diplomatic efforts, there's intelligence,
there's financial sanctions.
There's a range of different things
that governments can do to prevent genocide.
(gentle music)
- The thing that we need
to be conscious of is how quickly these events can develop
into an act that cannot be undone.
(gentle music)
And so why not take preventative steps early on
so that we're not dealing with the effects
of true mass violence and genocide?
(gentle music)