To Remember and To Resist
10 November 2025
Kristallnacht Remembrance The Nazi-organized November pogrom (violent attacks on Jewish communities with the aid or indifference of the government) took place on November 9-10. 1938. It was a threshold moment for Hitler and the Nazis who had been given power in 1933 and had destroyed checks to his power, destroyed the Weimar constitution, assumed control of the military and police, and changed German society. This evening marked a radicalizing shift in policy and actions towards Jews. Synagogues, businesses, and homes were violated and destroyed, and tens of thousands of German Jews were arrested or murdered. There were willing collaborators across society and fire and police departments stood by, generally refused to help German Jews, and hosed down adjacent buildings as synagogues and Torah scrolls burned. A new level had been reached, and anti-Jewish policy was increasingly radicalized as World War II approached. For years I helped to direct an annual Kristallnacht Remembrance in partnership with Keene NH’s Colonial Theatre to remember the violence and remind our community that mass atrocity crimes are a process not an event. By paying attention to that process, we have the power to intervene, to stop the acceleration. It was a public event that included the Jewish community, mayor, fire and police chiefs, survivors, witnesses, community organizations like MoCo Arts, school groups, interfaith community, and other community members and officials. City institutions chose to use the remembrance as an opportunity to repeat their mission of service and protection to all – in the light of a time when that was not true. Remembrance allowed us to come together, for each other, and use memory to teach responsibility and awareness. It fortified us and sustained us for many years and created a community alert to antisemitism, hate, and targeting. We are a resilient people when we take care of each other.
Hate in the 1930s Of the many friends Hitler had in the United States in the 1930s, I would like to focus on Fritz Kuhn and Fr. Charles Coughlin. Kuhn was a German World War I veteran who immigrated and became a US citizen in 1934. Germany had the second highest immigration quota due to the 1924 Immigration Act that gave preference to white Europeans. The act, being heralded today by some in the administration, was written and passed by members of the KKK and others who jumped on the Anti-immigrant bandwagon. The KKK’s slogan and soon to be allied movement, was “America First!” Kuhn was a fascist, pro-Hitler, isolationist, and antisemite. He created the German American Bund on the hopes of being Hitler’s man in the U.S. and recruited mostly immigrants who were anti-Communist to his movement. At first, the Nazis offered funding but became increasingly concerned that Kuhn’s antics might draw too much attention at a time when Germany was content to let America be isolationist and ignorant. Fr. Charles Coughlin was a Catholic priest born in Canada who became a U.S. citizen. He was an antisemitic, anti-Communist, pro-Nazi, outraged radio host whose audience was the largest in American history (29 million listeners out of 130 million Americans). His newspaper, Social Justice, had a circulation of 200,000 in 1940. He had his own paramilitary, the Christian Front militia (“Fr. Coughlin’s Brownshirts”) organized like a terrorist cell. In Boston, they showed Nazi military propaganda films. Like the Oath Keepers today, they recruit from military and police for weapons and credibility. His followers were poor and working class Irish and Germans from Northeast and Midwest. His National Union for Social Justice was a political movement focused on replacing capitalist democracy. He published the fraudulent, Russian-invented antisemitic conspiracy fantasy, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Nazi propaganda; Goebbels’ speeches; and praised was praised by Der Stürmer. He verbally attacked refugees as communists and Jews and ranted about the “left-wing” “liberal” media. He worked closely with the German-American Bund. His rallies were replete with American flags and crowds riled up by hatred.
The America Frist Committee The AFC brought together isolationists, failed Bundists, Coughlin supporters, far-right extremists, antisemites, religious bigots, the disenfranchised, and the greedy. Many respectable business leaders and politicians gave it legitimacy. They opposed the New Deal and President FDR and feared that war would undermine their European investments and markets. In September 1940 America First became an official nonprofit. They called for “Anglo-Saxon purity” and launched an antisemitic magazine, The Cross and the Flag.
Resisting Leaders must constantly remind us to push back against hate, anger, and fearmongering that are toxic to democracy and dignity. President FDR responded to threats and problems with caution, patience, timing, and education. He was clear about believing in democratic norms and helped to reshape American attitudes in ways that would lead to the civil rights movement. Leadership matters. But we can be leaders too. We must reject political violence, anti-democratic forces, and accept our responsibility to build a “more perfect union”. We must have confidence and courage.
Resisting the Bund In 1937, Kuhn’s German American Bund tried to establish a Hitler Youth-type training camp in Southbury, CT. Kuhn stated: “The principles of the Bund and the KKK are the same”. How did the people of Southbury respond? How did they meet the challenge? Rev. M. Edgar N. Lindsay was one of two pastors who used the Sunday before Thanksgiving to preach about the Nazi “menace”. The Southbury churches rallied behind their neighbors and demonstrated peacefully, and through zoning regulations, prevented a Bund camp from being built. Southbury is about 25 miles from Yale University where the America First Committee (AFC) began.
The German American Bund Loses In 1938 Nazi Germany cut off funding for Kuhn’s Bund and forbade membership for German citizens. Hitler was intent on keeping the U.S. isolationist. In 1939, Kuhn pulled off his greatest event, a rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden. 22,000 attended as Nazi drums pounded and uniformed Nazis marched and gave speeches. The film of the rally is often used today as a frightening warning. However, what most people forget is that 100,000 protested outside the arena. Mayor LaGuardia was outraged by Kuhn and ordered an investigation into Bund financial records. They discover that the $14,000 raised at MSG rally had been embezzled by Kuhn and he was arrested and convicted. Other Bund leaders were jailed for various offenses and membership dwindled. After December 1941, the Bund was outlawed by the U.S. Fritz Kuhn was imprisoned for larceny and forgery from 1939 to 1943. In 1943, he was reinterned as an enemy agent. In 1945, he was deported and imprisoned in post-war Germany before dying in 1951.
Father Coughlin Loses Fr. Charles Coughlin ranted and justified the Nazi November 9-10 pogrom (Kristallnacht): on air by claiming they had it coming to them because Christians were being persecuted. The owner of the WMCA station that hosted Coughlin’s broadcasts immediately ended them. The Nazi German press decried his censoring as the silencing of free speech by "Jewish organizations camouflaged as American.” In 1942 the U.S. government suspended the free mailing privilege of “Social Justice” and the Archbishop of Detroit forced Coughlin to close his newspaper and forbade its distribution by mail. Coughlin vanished from the public arena, working as a parish pastor until retiring in 1966. He died in obscurity in 1979.
My Turn Kuhn and Coughlin were defeated because Americans took responsibility for each other and trusted in their confidence in democratic norms. We must resist the temptation to respond to hate with hate. We respond with confidence, humor, discipline, peaceful protests, and the ballot box. We find strength by recalling the destructive events that took place in the past, the people affected by them or targeted today, and we stand together. At the Cohen Center’s annual Kristallnacht Remembrances, the participants recommitted themselves to being members of a community that stands against hatred and violence. Together they would say:
We remember that night as a moral obligation to the victims and the survivors as well as for ourselves, for the sake of our children, and for our community. We recognize our responsibility to care for others in our midst who might be overlooked, targeted, or victimized in their circumstances. We remember so that individuals may refuse to become perpetrators, “bystanders” or collaborators. We remember in the hope that present and future generations take responsibility for building a world free of antisemitism, bigotry, intolerance, and hate. Therefore, we remember Kristallnacht to remind ourselves to care for one another, to build peace, and be a community in which compassion, respect and justice thrive.