I agree with Leah when she says: “I still don’t understand how so many Jews can be for gun control.”
I followed her link to David Kopel’s post about Kristalnacht and Gun Control, and then his link to Stephen Halbrook’s magazine article, Registration: The Nazi Paradigm. There I got a bad case of the heebie-jeebies, you know the kind where your skin crawls . . .
The Night of the Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)–the infamous Nazi rampage against Germany’s Jews–took place in November 1938. It was preceded by the confiscation of firearms from the Jewish victims. On Nov. 8, the New York Times reported from Berlin, “Berlin Police Head Announces ‘Disarming’ of Jews,” explaining:
The Berlin Police President, Count Wolf Heinrich von Helldorf, announced that as a result of a police activity in the last few weeks the entire Jewish population of Berlin had been “disarmed” with the confiscation of 2,569 hand weapons, 1,702 firearms and 20,000 rounds of ammunition. Any Jews still found in possession of weapons without valid licenses are threatened with the severest punishment.1
On the evening of Nov. 9, Adolf Hitler, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and other Nazi chiefs planned the attack. Orders went out to Nazi security forces: “All Jewish stores are to be destroyed immediately . . . . Jewish synagogues are to be set on fire . . . . The Führer wishes that the police does not intervene. . . . All Jews are to be disarmed. In the event of resistance they are to be shot immediately.”2
So all those helpless Jews were helpless because the Nazis made certain they were helpless by disarming them beforehand. Amazing that the Jews of Berlin had 20,000 rounds of ammunition that they gave over to the Nazis. It never occurred to me.
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by Anne Lieberman
