Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht literally means “night of crystal” and it is commonly referred to as the “night of broken glass.” Kristallnacht was the violent anti-Jewish pogrom (organized massacre of a particular ethnical group) that took place on November 9-10^th, 1938 throughout Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia.

It is thought that the violence erupted because of a situation between Ernst vom Rath and Hershel Grynszpan. Grynszpan (17 year old boy) shot Rath after learning that his parents were among the Jewish Polish citizens that were expelled from the Reich. Joseph Goebbels, a chief investigator of the pogrom, said a statement in which people interpreted as starting the violent pogrom.

The pogrom was viciously violent. Many buildings that were tied to Jewish people were destroyed, including hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish owned businesses. Police officers were also given permission to arrest as many Jewish people as they could hold in jail. Jewish people were also publically humiliated and 91 Jewish people died within those 2 days. There were also a large number of rapes and suicides in the aftermath of the violence.

Many of the Jewish people that were arrested during these 2 days were transferred to local prisons and concentration camps. Here, more and more Jewish people died. Many Jewish people were allowed to be released, as long as they agreed to start emigrating out of Germany. This was the German government’s way of starting the emigration of the Jewish people out of Germany.

After the 2 days were over, the German government stated it was the Jews’ own fault. Many Jewish businesses went to Aryan ownership. From this point on, the German government continued to rid Jews from the public life—Jewish people could not have drivers licenses, could not go to theatres, cinemas, or concert halls.

“Thus, Kristallnacht figures as an essential turning point in Nazi Germany's persecution of Jews, which culminated in the attempt to annihilate the European Jews.”

References

Germans pass broken window of Jewish-owned shop [Photograph]. (2013). Retrieved from the Jewish Virtual Library website: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kristallnacht.html

The Destruction of Synagogues on Kristallnacht [Map]. (2013). Retrieved from the Jewish Virtual Library website: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/destruct.html

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2012). Kristallnacht: A nationwide pogrom, November 9-10, 1938. In Holocaust encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201

View Krems, Melk, and the Vienna Explorer in a larger map City Temple was the only Synagogue left standing after the Kristallnacht.