Kristallnacht

In the Lid, Jeff Duntetz reminds us that 81 years ago tonight was Kristallnacht, the night the Holocaust began.

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass was an anti-Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9th-10th, 1938.—it was much more than just a pogrom. Kristallnacht was the day Hitler’s final solution “came out of the closet” with anti-Jewish riots in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.

Kristallnacht is viewed by many historians as the beginning of the Jewish genocide of the Holocaust. In a coordinated attack on Jewish people and their property, 99 Jews were murdered, and 25,000 to 30,000 were arrested and placed in concentration camps, 267 synagogues were destroyed, and thousands of homes and businesses were ransacked.

The attacks were carried out by Hitler Youth, the Gestapo, and the SS. Kristallnacht also served as a pretext and a means for the wholesale confiscation of firearms from German Jews and was part of a broader Nazi policy of Antisemitism and persecution of the Jews. Kristallnacht was followed by further anti-Semitic economic, political abuses and horrible genocide.

Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence.

The Nazis used the murder of a low-level German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew as an excuse to carry out the Kristallnacht attacks. On November 7, 1938, Ernst vom Rath was shot outside the German embassy by Herschel Grynszpan, who wanted revenge for his parents’ sudden deportation from Germany to Poland, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. Following vom Rath’s death, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered German storm troopers to carry out violent riots disguised as “spontaneous demonstrations” against Jewish citizens. Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere.

The Nazi government made an immediate pronouncement that “the Jews” themselves were to blame for the pogrom and imposed a fine of one billion Reichsmark (some 400 million US dollars at 1938 rates) on the German Jewish community. The Reich government confiscated all insurance payouts to Jews whose businesses and homes were looted or destroyed, leaving the Jewish owners personally responsible for the cost of all repairs.

In the weeks that followed, the German government promulgated dozens of laws and decrees designed to deprive Jews of their property and of their means of livelihood. Many of these laws enforced the “Aryanization” policy—the transfer of Jewish-owned enterprises and property to “Aryan” ownership, usually for a fraction of their true value. Ensuing legislation barred Jews, already ineligible for employment in the public sector, from practicing most professions in the private sector. The legislation made further strides in removing Jews from public life. German education officials expelled Jewish children still attending German schools. German Jews lost their right to hold a driver’s license or own an automobile. Legislation restricted access to public transport. Jews could no longer gain admittance to “German” theaters, movie cinemas, or concert halls.

Throughout the world, we remember Kristallnacht, the night the Nazis began the Holocaust in earnest.