Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was
a night of bloody attacks against Jews throughout Nazi
Germany and Nazi-ruled Austria and the Sudetenland, on
November 9 and 10, 1938.
Jewish homes and businesses were ransacked, as as Nazi
Sturmabteilung stormtroopers and civilian Nazi supporters
attacked shops, towns and villages, destroying
Jewish-owned buildings with sledgehammers and leaving the
streets covered in pieces of smashed window glass; the
origin of the name "Night of Broken Glass." Ninety-one
Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jewish men were taken to
concentration camps, where they were tortured for months,
with over 1,000 of them dying. Between 1,000 and 2,000
synagogues were attacked, and 267 set on fire. Almost
7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, and Jewish
cemeteries and schools were vandalized.
Martin Gilbert writes that no event in the history of
German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported
as it was happening, and the accounts from the foreign
journalists working in Germany sent shock waves around
the world. The Times of London wrote at the time: "No
foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before
the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings,
of blackguardly assaults on defenceless and innocent
people, which disgraced that country yesterday."
The event that gave the Nazis an excuse to launch the
attacks, was the assassination of the German diplomat
Ernst vom Rath by a German-born Polish Jew named Herschel
Grynszpan, in Paris, France. Grynszpan's father's shop in
Hanover had been confiscated by the Nazis a few days
earlier, and his family deported to Poland. The younger
Grynszpan had intended to assassinate the German
ambassador to France in retaliation, but settled on the
Third Secretary, von Rath, instead. This rash act gave
Hitler's Chief of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, the
perfect rationalle for inciting more hatred and violence
against the Jews in Germany.
On November 11, the Nazi Minister of the Interior
issued regulations prohibiting Jews' possession of
weapons. This law prohibited Jews from "acquiring,
possessing, and carrying firearms and ammunition, as well
as truncheons or stabbing weapons. Those now possessing
weapons and ammunition are at once to turn them over to
the local police authority." This form of gun control
ensured that Jews could not effectively fight back as the
Nazis planned more attacks on the Jewish community.
The Kristallnacht attacks was followed by increased
economic and political persecution of Jews in Germany.
Kristallnact and is seen by many historians as the
beginning of Hitler's Final Solution and the Holocaust
against the Jews. Hitler was encouraged by the passive
response of the German population, specifically the
German churches, and knew he could go much further in his
war on the Jews in Germany.
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