Page 203 - Was Hitler a Riddle?

190 The American Diplomats

in one series of reports, ambassador Wilson focused on the racial un-
derpinnings of Nazi anti-semitism. a government decree issued in august
1938 stated that as of January 1, 1939, all male Jews would have to use the
given name “israel” and all female Jews the name “sara.” those who failed
to register the new names with authorities or to use them at all times would
face at least one month’s imprisonment. early in November, the U.s.
116
embassy called an official at the reichsärztekammer (reich Physicians’
Chamber) to inquire whether a visiting american, who was not Jewish,
could be treated by a Jewish doctor. the official hastened to point out that
the law of July 26, 1938, prohibited Jewish doctors from treating any “non-
Jewish persons, irrespective of whether they were of German or foreign
nationality, and that no exception would be made.” to emphasize the seri-
ousness of the restriction, the German official sent “copies of the law” to
the embassy. 117
immediately after Kristallnacht, during which the Nazis unleashed the
bloodiest and most far-reaching campaign of violence against Jews to date,
american diplomats diligently reported on the rampage of Nazi hooligans
throughout the country: on their destruction of the windows of Jewish
shops before looting them; their desecration of synagogues, many of which
were then burned to the ground; and, finally, their arrest of about thirty
thousand Jewish men between the ages of eighteen and eighty, all of whom
were sent to one of three concentration camps. the american diplomats
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made it clear that they lent no credence to Goebbels’s claim that the attacks
were a spontaneous response of the German people to the assassination by
a Jew of ernst vom rath, an official of the German embassy in Paris.
some of the most dramatic and detailed accounts of Nazi bestiality came
from consuls in cities other than Berlin. On November 21, 1938, david H.
Buffum, the american consul in leipzig, wrote a report on the “anti-se-
mitic onslaught,” as he called it, that revealed both the sadism of the Na-
zis and their fascination with bizarre rituals. this report also sheds much
light on the mindset of National socialism, and it provides additional evi-
dence in support of the now generally accepted view that the attack on Jews
throughout Germany on Kristallnacht and the following few days was well
orchestrated.
several hours before the attacks started, local Nazis in leipzig staged an
elaborate ritual in a square known as the altermarkt. Nazi officials had ex-
humed the remains of the bodies of some of their comrades “who had been
considered rowdyish violators of law and order” by the authorities and had
been killed at least five years earlier. Now they were considered martyrs to