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  • I'm up to part I - chapter 2 and at this point:

    1. Kristallnacht (which means "Night of Broken Glass")
    • The nazis torched synagogues across the country over a two day span.
    • People across the country felt uneasy before it happened. Some had no idea what the nazis were planning but they had a "feeling" something bad was about it happen.
    • Read various creepy personal accounts regarding various towns and townspeople re: the Kristallnacht.
    • Lots of assholes blindly trusting the shithole nazi party but two that stick out the most to me were: i) a dad hearing his shitty 14 year old verbally dehumanizing Jewish people and being disgusted about it but being unable to speak against it because the nazi party had already spread fear into the countryside and ... ii) There is a policeman who isn't for the nazi party and wanted to investigate the burnings of synagogues.
    1. Reichstagsbrand: Justifications for the national attack on the Jewish houses of worship
    • The nazis most likely (imo) started a fire (in German: brand) that burnt the German parliament (in German: Reichstag) down.
    • Goebbles blamed Reichstagsbrand on the Jewish population and had been telling the Germans that all the crime and violence that was in the country was organized by the Jewish population. There was a mention of Jewish Zionists being a part of the issue too. Though, I guess the nazi party lumped them all into one.
    • As "retribution" Germans who weren't even self-identifying nazis, just towns people, believed the nazis burning the synagogues down was fair.
    1. Rounding the Jewish Men Up
    • Following the burning of the synagogues, Goebbles and Reinhard Heydrich told police across the country to round up and arrest Jewish men ages 16-60. The policeman I was reading about who got the order was against nazis and was reluctant to carry out the orders. He even seemed to be friendly with one of the sweet old Jewish man he took into custody, telling him to take some food and a blanket with him and that it was just for one night. "For his protection." He definitely lied to the man but he also wasn't told what was going to happen to his list of arrestees. Not sure how normalized the violence was to him by then. Probably fairly normalized so despite the shit happening around him being all shapes of wrong, he may have not been able to see it. Which I guess is the point of this book.