In the early hours of this morning, 87 years ago, Nazis entered the stores, schools and homes of their Jewish neighbors smashing and destroying. Thousands of men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

The world watched #kristallnacht happen. Some people took action.

"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." -Lord Acton
#government #power

"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." -Winston Churchill
#appeasement

The more things change....

#flowers #roses

In 1933, Hitler set up new courts to try political opponents. In 1934, he created "People's Court", which sentenced thousands of people deemed a threat to the regime to death.

"A quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing."
-Neville Chamberlain, British Prime Minister, after agreeing that Czechoslovakia must surrender its land to Hitler

"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him."
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The very weaknesses of human nature are what make it so important that we keep a constantly watchful eye on our government, and that in turn our government watches over us with equal care." - Eleanor Roosevelt "My Day" October 23, 1942

"True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Material security alone will never be enough to make us happy. After all, we're human beings, with free opinions and our own beliefs. A regime which would tamper with these things has lost every spark of respect for man."

- Robert Scholl, 'The White Rose', on Hitler's promise to end unemployment

"He had the backing ... how he sold them, I have no idea.  I think maybe the background of it was money or, or power...  But he had the backing of the big industrialists in Germany. Germany, you know, today Germany, tomorrow the world."

-Edward Adler on Hitler
collections.ushmm.org/search/catal...

The Opium Wars: that one time illegal drugs got so bad that China had to go to war with a 19th century drug cartel - the British government.

“We all thought it was a joke, ‘Ah, it won’t amount to nothing, just another political party.'”⁠
- Edward Adler, Holocaust survivor, on the rise of the National Socialists in Germany

collections.ushmm.org/search/catal...

In 1933, with pressure from his son and the German tech moguls, President Hindenburg reluctantly appointed Hitler as Chancellor. Though powerful, he was not a dictator yet...

www.theholocaustexplained.org/the-nazi-ris...

"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim."
 
- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, 1986

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace...