The Jewish community in Esslingen in the southwest decided to lock themselves in the synagogue and set it on fire rather than await their fate. As Philip Ziegler wryly notes, “it is a curious and somewhat humiliating reflection on human nature that the European, overwhelmed by what was probably the greatest natural calamity ever to strike his [sic] continent, reacted by seeking to rival the cruelty of nature in the hideousness of his own man-made atrocities.”[24]
