RemembranceMaimon Schwarzschild

It is November 11, the 88th anniversary of the First World War armistice of 11.00-11-11.  Armistice Day in the US, and Remembrance Day throughout the Commonwealth.  If you have ever been in London in November, you might have attended the solemn Remembrance Sunday ceremony led by the Queen at the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

This week is also the 68th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms in Nazi Germany, the night of  November 9 -10, 1938.  These coordinated “spontaneous” attacks on Jews throughout Germany were the curtain raiser for the murder of Europe’s Jews.  My father – age 14 – and family lived in Berlin at the time.  My grandparents had apparently been warned, and advised to buy train tickets and to stay on overnight trains during the pogroms, which they did.  No one would be arrested or molested on the trains, they were told, and so it turned out.  They were all able to leave Germany soon thereafter.  Others, of course, couldn’t.

What odds for a less ferocious 21st century?