Karen A. Wyle

Did you know Medina, the city Mohammed conquered and established the first sovereign Muslim community, got its name from a Hebrew word meaning, "the city?" Medina (think State of Israel - "Medinat Yisrael") had a large Jewish population that had built its wells, fortresses, and date plantations centuries before Mohammed's arrival. Mohammed had hoped the Jews there would accept his new faith. When they refused, the answer was a combination of mass murder, expulsion, and looting. Centuries-old Jewish communities in Arabia were wiped from existence. After Mohammed, the Covenant of Omar was established, which reduced Jews to dhimmi status everywhere Muslims conquered: to name a few, special taxes were levied, restricted dress enforced, and yellow patches or belt were used to mark Jews subordinate. The yellow badge marking Jews began in the Islamic world, centuries before the Nazis. The idea of "coexistence" of Jews under Islamic rule was entirely predicated on the Jew knowing his or her place as subordinate to Muslims.

On this day-November 9, 1938 Kristallnacht: Nazi-led mobs burned synagogues, destroyed thousands of Jewish businesses, and sent 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps. Most ordinary Germans disapproved, but almost none spoke out. Goebbels' propaganda claimed it was a spontaneous reaction to the Paris shooting of a German diplomat. But the pogrom was organized from the top with Nazi agitators dressing in civilian clothes to make it seem grassroots. The next day, Hitler's regime imposed a one billion mark "atonement fine" on the Jews, and ordered the Aryaniation of all remaining Jewish property. But it was the silence from the public that made the next steps toward Jewish annihilation so much easier.