On Nov. 9, 1938, a massive nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich. The pretext for this orgy of violence was the shooting in Paris two days earlier of a German diplomat by a 17-year-old Polish- Jewish refugee.

The state-organized pogrom, instigated by Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, resulted in the burning or damaging of more than 1,000 synagogues, the ransacking of about 7,500 businesses, the murder of at least 91 Jews and the deportation of another 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps. This murderous onslaught, cynically described by the Nazis as the “Night of Broken Glass” — Kristallnacht — was a major turning point on the road to the “Final Solution” of the so-called “Jewish Question.” It signified that the Nazi regime had crossed a Rubicon and would no longer be deterred by Western public opinion in its “war against the Jews.”

The economic expropriation of German Jewry, its complete social ostracism and public humiliation swiftly followed. Only a fortnight after Crystal Night, the SS journal, Das Schwarze Korps, chillingly prophesied the final end of German Jewry through “fire and sword” and its imminent complete annihilation.

Today, shocking to relate, the specter of such apocalyptic anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe and other continents, while often assuming radically new forms.

Islamist anti-Semitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of Crystal Night and its horrific aftermath during the Holocaust. For example, the pervasive use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with its perennial theme of the “Jewish conspiracy for world domination.”

Equally fashionable (and increasingly popular in Europe) is the slanderous identification of Israel with Nazism or “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.

The scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim media is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst. Yet the Western world largely turns a blind eye to the likely genocidal consequences of such a culture of hatred, much as it did 70 years ago.

My own extensive research into this phenomenon has, unfortunately, convinced me that the Holocaust did not truly succeed in neutralizing the scourge of anti-Semitism. In a sinister and sometimes devious manner, the widespread defamation and demonization of Israel has, in effect, revived fantasies of completing the murderous work of the Third Reich. This is especially palpable in the case of Iran.

Hence, the anniversary of Crystal Night raises two fundamental moral questions. Are we capable of learning from history, and will Jewish people once again have to stand alone in the face of threats to annihilate them?

Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.