Today is the 80th anniversary of #Kristallnacht.
A personal story:
My grandfather fought in WWII. He never spoke about it, so we didnt know much about his time in the service, but based on the patches on his uniform, we think he did something in intel.

The next part takes place two years ago.
He died, and I'm cleaning out his house with my mom and sister.
We find a photo album.
When I open it, I feel like it might burn a hole in my hands.

The first few pages have pictures of Jewish homes being ransacked; people are in robes and pajamas. Several are bleeding.

Here, some jolly Nazis stealing Jewish holy books, later to be burned.

Now we move on to the stores:

The next section is like a gut-punch. They enter a synagogue, overturn everything. You can see prayer shawls strewn everywhere.

Then they get to the holy ark, and pry it open to steal the silver and burn the Torah. At this point I feel tears welling up in my eyes.

Then they pour accelerant, and set the whole thing ablaze. I had never before seen pictures of a shul on fire from the inside.

At this point, I take out some of the pictures and turn them over. This is what I find: November 10, 1938. Nuremburg.
A shiver goes through me. When I google the names, I find they were Nazi photojournalists.

These are behind-the-scenes pics of happy Nazis on a rampage, presumably on Kristallnacht.
What they were doing was COMPLETELY LEGAL.

You tell us "never again."
I'm not so sure.
#Kristallnacht #kristallnacht80

For those who have asked, I forgot to add: we have NO idea how he came to own these.

This is what the synagogue in Fürth looked like after the fire. Thank you to @shakenbeck who pointed me to the right one.

Thanks again to @shakenbeck, this actually appears more similar to the interior photos. https://www.juedische-allgemeine.de/article/view/id/23221 Adass Jisroel in Nürnberg. The scrollwork on the bimah is pretty unique.

Update:
I've been in touch with several Holocaust memorial institutions, so thanks to all who helped with that. At the moment, the decision about what to do with them will be left up to the family member who has possession of the album. I'll let you all know what happens to them.

Pseudo-update: I am still investigating the provenance of the photos with the help of several historians. It seems they may already be archived elsewhere, and I can't give them to any one newspaper to publish. Will update further when it's all ironed out.

In an odd twist, it seems that some people attempted to intentionally mislead me into thinking the photos were already well known and archived. Pro-tip: don't lie to well-meaning strangers for no conceivable benefit

Also, since this seems to be a common misunderstanding, my grandfather was NOT A NAZI. We’re Jewish.

OK, I've untangled a few things.

The municipal archives in Nürnberg have two of the same photos I have, and it seems the rest have never been seen before. Now I'll take all this info back to my family for them to mull what to do with them. (It's not up to me.)

For all the people who pointed out that I should call it “reichspogromnacht” maybe think twice before you instruct a Jew how to talk abt their own genocide

The family (not me, higher-ups) have decided to donate the collection to Yad Vashem. I also learned some more about how we came to have them.

My grandfather was a counter-intelligence interrogator, and he interrogated Julius Streicher, the publisher of Der Stürmer. Apparently, they were given permission to "liberate" basically whatever they wanted from these homes.

In addition to these photos and some other memorabilia (an airman's compass doohickey, a few other things) he took a bound copy of every issue from the first year of Der Stürmer. He donated that to Yad Vashem while he was alive.

As of now, that's all I know, folks!