Eyewitness reports regarding the November Pogrom

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This is a collection of 356 reports gathered in the weeks and months following the November Pogrom of 1938 by the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO) in Amsterdam. Each report has a unique number in the sequence from B.1 to B.353 (B. presumably is an abbreviation of Bericht [report]) with five additions (B.62a, B.175a, B.333a, plus B.1001 and B.1002 at the end), and two unused numbers (B.342 and B.343). Most of the dated reports were created in November and December 1938; others were prepared in January and February 1939, and the remainder sporadically in the following weeks. The last few were typed in the early summer of 1939, just before the JCIO was packed up and moved to London in August 1939. The reports vary in length, from a mere 13 words to about 12,400 words. The medium-length reports average around 800 words. Almost all (333 or 93%) of the reports were written in German, although 18 reports are in Dutch, five in English and one in French.

The collection consists of eyewitness reports regarding the November Pogrom and also covers the run-up to the event and its aftermath. The accounts include reports from across Germany, the newly annexed Austria and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The first events covered in the reports are the wave of arrests of Jewish men in June 1938 and their mistreatment in concentration camps, as well as escalating antisemitic propaganda, economic measures and policies such as the expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany in October 1938.

The main focus of the eyewitness reports is the November Pogrom in Germany and Austria, with a particularly strong representation of events in Berlin and Vienna. The reports also describe the aftermath of the pogrom: the continued persecution of the Jewish population and the devastation of Jewish religious, cultural and economic life in the Germany and the annexed territories (notably there are several accounts of antisemitic events in Prague and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939). Numerous eyewitnesses express the urgent need to emigrate, and the difficulties in finding emigration opportunities as well as the economic obstacles encountered. Included in the collection are excerpts of letters written to the Kindercomité in Amsterdam, asking for help to rescue Jewish children from Germany and Austria. The experiences of prisoners in the concentration camps Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald are also well documented. These eyewitness reports give a detailed insight in the mistreatment and deaths of Jewish men imprisoned in the camps in 1938 and 1939. In addition to eyewitness reports and letters, the collection includes a small number of contemporary newspaper reports which provide information on the destruction of synagogues and the fate of Jewish individuals (deaths and suicides).

The majority of the reports primarily describe the personal experiences of the eyewitness. Some of the writers illustrate and discuss the situation of the Jews in Germany and Austria more generally. Their reports include statistics (e.g. the numbers of Jewish men arrested and killed), analysis of antisemitic policies, as well as providing insights into the situation of the Jewish community both culturally and economically. A number of lists of synagogues destroyed and of individuals who have been killed, arrested or injured are also included in the collection.