What caused the Holocaust?

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By Siena Hoefling - Posted at Substack:

Published April 24, 2025

In many ways, it started with Kristallnacht, that November night police and firefighters stood down while gasoline-soaked structures burned. There was no real intervention from the public as victimized neighbors—all ages, from elderly to children—were cast into cold streets or rivers. Nor did an outraged local press demand relief for the numerous upstanding members of society suddenly displaced or missing after being torn from their beds in the dead of night and beaten.

It is estimated that Kristallnacht rushed 20,000-30,000 Jewish men into concentration camps, ready-made for extrajudicial incarceration, in defiance of the human right to just legal process. For no crime whatsoever, “rich” and “healthy” Jews were targeted for arrest.

As innocent people were dragged away and Jewish structures set ablaze, random citizens participated in the violence and screamed threats. But on the whole, the New York Times reported, the majority stood silently by, “gravely disturbed,” doing nothing.

Had there been a discernible public backlash in that moment, millions of lives would have been spared, and the Holocaust averted.