Other than Jack Ruby’s live TV murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, 24-Nov-04 was a pretty boring day in history:

1926 KVI-AM in Seattle WA begins radio transmissions
1947 John Steinbeck’s novel “The Pearl” published
1947 Un-American Activities Committee finds “Hollywood 10” in contempt because of their refusal to reveal whether they were communists
1954 1st US Presidential airplane christened
1963 1st live murder on TV-Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald
1966 400 die of respiratory failure & heart attack in killer NYC smog
1969 Apollo 12 returns to Earth
1971 Dan “DB” Cooper parachutes from a Northwest AL 727 with $200,000
1989 Communist Party resigns in Czechoslovakia

’[Reinhard] Heydrich reported 7,500 Jewish businesses destroyed, 267 synagogues burned (with 177 totally destroyed) and 91 Jews murdered during Kristallnacht. Heydrich then requested new decrees forbidding Jews from having any social contact with Germans by excluding them from public transportation, schools, and hospitals, essentially forcing them into ghettos or out of the country. Goebbels said the Jews would be made to clean out the debris from burned-out synagogues which would then be demolished and turned into parking lots.’

I’m watching Shoah again. Haven’t seen it since it aired on PBS in 1986 or so. Just as shattering as I remember.

From « Shoah Film Handouts »:

‘Henrik Gawkowski (Malkinia) — heard the screams coming from the cars behind his locomotive. It was distressing to him since he knew the people behind him were human, like him. He was paid with liquor, and drank every drop he could get: it was the only way to stand the stench when he got to the camp. … Told of foreign Jews who rode in passenger cars to the camp, and one instance when a foreign Jew left the train to buy something at the bar, and as the train pulled out this man ran to catch up to it.