BAP - Kristallnaach 1982 with English Subs

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• published: 10 Jun 2015
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"Kristallnaach" (English) - "Night of the broken glass" (9-10 November 1938), also known as the "Reichspogromnacht" German Rock band BAP with one of their biggest hits: "Kristallnaach". The recording seems to be made in the studios of one of the major German TV stations, the WDR, also in Cologne. Nearly all of BAP's lyrics are written in "Kölsch", the local dialect of Cologne, Germany. More: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BAP_%28German_band%29 The lyrics have been translated into "normal" German as people from other parts of Germany will not understand much of the text in this specific dialect. As a 2. Generation Holocaust Survivor (both my parents survived camps and hiding), knowing German and Cologne Dialect very well (my family comes from this area in Germany and I studied and lived for 6 years in Cologne), I decided to translate this very interesting text into understandable English as it describes very intensively what must happen before a pogrom or public hate-crime can occur. It's also a sign for the change in attitude towards the Holocaust which later in the eighties became discussable in wide circles of the German population. Kristallnight - Night of the broken glasses by: Wolfgang Niedecken, text composer, vocalist and bandleader. Written in 1981 at a location in Greece he visited before while the military junta was still ruling. (Niedecken's own account in a TV talk show in 1988) It happens that I think, something rattles, that something gets lost inside me. A sound, not even loud, sometimes it rattles familiar, very rarely that you see through it at once. You wake up, rub your eyes and see an image between Bruegel and Bosch, nobody who cares about sirens, 'cause the "all-clear" signal only half as much costs. It smells of "Kristallnacht". In the calm before the storm, what's that? Who so sneakingly is leaving town? Dignitaries, incognito, scramble past, officially they don't like to be around, when the public opinion - always ready in direction boiling-point rages and screams: "Hail - Mort" and boundless horny for vengeance roars, trembling with envy in the "Kristallnacht". But all those who it bothers, what is different, those who go with the flow as is right and proper, those who see gays are criminals, and foreigners as outcasts, they all need someone who perverts them. No cavalry to the rescue, No Zorro who cares. At most he pisses a 'Z' in the snow and tumbles slurring with casualness: "So what? - Kristallnacht!" In the church with the Franz-Kafka-clock, without hands, only with marks on it, a blind reads to a deaf the Slovenly Peter behind triple-locked door. And the jailer with the keys seriously thinks of himself as some genius, because he pulverizes escapes and sells them against claustrophobia in the "Kristallnacht". Meanwhile, on the market square maybe, without mask now showing one's true colors, collects stones, sharpens the knife for those already betrayed, rehearses the lynch-mob for Doomsday. And only moored hastily to load - the galleys long under steam - waiting at port for slaves, for the leftovers from the unequal fight from the "Kristallnacht". There, where Darwin is good for anything whether to expel or torture people, there, where money is behind power, where to be strong is the world, disfigured by obeying and standing at attention. Where one even blows hymns with a comb, in barbaric greed for profit, "Hosanna" and "Crucify him!" shouts, if one beliefs it brings any advantage, there every day is "Kristallnacht".