What Jews in Germany Gained and Lost: Amos Elon's The Pity of It All

Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743–1933 (Metropolitan Books, 2002)

In 1743, a fourteen-year-old boy entered Berlin through the Rosenthal Gate. This was the only entrance he could use—the only one Jews could pass through. That boy, named Moses Mendelssohn, would become a famous philosopher and, almost single-handedly, usher in a 200-year love-affair between Jews and Germany. It was at times a one-sided love, never without cruelty, but it was stimulating, too, and often glorious. Were the seeds of its end always there? Elon believes they were, though he lets the history speak for itself.

Today marks 87 years since Kristallnacht, when mobs swept through Germany, attacking Jews in the streets, looting their businesses, and burning synagogues. These mobs tried to erase the physical evidence of the German-Jewish love-affair.

I'm not as sure as Elon that the end was preordained, but I encourage you to read this book to decide for yourself, and to learn what Jews in Germany lost on the Night of Broken Glass. As James Fenton writes, in a poem that serves as the epigraph to this book, "It is not the memories which haunt you... / It is what you have forgotten." Let us not forget.