On this date, November 9, 1938, The Nazi
German diplomat Ernst vom Rath dies from the fatal gunshot wounds of Jewish
resistance fighter Herschel Grynszpan, an act which the Nazis used as an excuse
to instigate the 1938 national pogrom, also known as Kristallnacht (Crystal
Night). I will post information about this Holocaust antisemitic incident from
Wikipedia and other links.
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Interior of Berlin's Fasanenstrasse Synagogue, opened in 1912,
after it was set on fire during Kristallnacht
on November 9, 1938. It was destroyed entirely during an Allied air raid on
Berlin in 1943, and a Jewish Community Center was opened in its
place in 1959.
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Location
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Nazi Germany and Austria (then part of Germany)
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Date
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9–10 November 1938
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Target
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Jewish population of Germany and Austria
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Attack type
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Pogrom, looting, arson
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Deaths
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91+
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Perpetrators
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Sturmabteilung
(SA) stormtroopers, German & Austrian civilians
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Kristallnacht (German
pronunciation: [kʁɪsˈtalnaχt];
English:
"Crystal Night"),
also referred to as the Night of Broken Glass, or Reichskristallnacht
[ˌʁaɪçs.kʁɪsˈtalnaχt],
Pogromnacht, and Novemberpogrome, was a pogrom (a
series of coordinated attacks) against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria
on 9–10 November 1938, carried out by SA paramilitary forces and non-Jewish
civilians. German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht
comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after
Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues had their windows smashed.
At
least 91 Jews were killed in the attacks, and 30,000 were arrested and
incarcerated in concentration camps. Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were
ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Over 1,000
synagogues were burned (95 in Vienna alone) and over 7,000 Jewish businesses
destroyed or damaged. 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 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 defenseless and innocent
people, which disgraced that country yesterday."
The
pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom
Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. Kristallnacht
was followed by additional economic and political persecution of Jews, and is
viewed by historians as part of Nazi Germany's broader racial policy, and the
beginning of the Final Solution and The Holocaust.
Etymology
Background
Early
Nazi persecutions
Expulsion
of Polish Jews in Germany
Shooting
of vom Rath
Pogrom
Death
of vom Rath
Riots
Concentration
camps
Aftermath
Responses
to Kristallnacht
From
the Germans
From
the global community
Kristallnacht
as a turning point
Modern
response
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