To the editor:

The German calendar notes Nov. 9, 1938, as “Kristallnacht” or “the night of broken glass.” Until this night the Nazis had treated German Jews poorly, but no one said genocide. On this night Nazi gangs broke into Jewish businesses and destroyed everything breakable. Police did not interrupt the vandalism, mayors did not call for law and order, firemen did not extinguish fires in synagogues. Within a week the SS could pluck a Jew from his home and condemn him to a concentration camp. The end result was six million Jewish corpses.

I reject the claim that Jews deserved the Holocaust. I reject the accusation that Germans were cruel, spiteful people. The Holocaust happened because no one (or only a few) said, “No.” Now we have an American government that has twisted the Constitution into a rag that favors elite insiders, a government that plucks innocent people off the street and sends them to foreign prisons without trials, a government that attacks anyone who disagrees.

I hope we say,”No.”

Lowell Zellmann

New Ulm