Kristallnacht (1938)

Wed Nov 09, 1938

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Kristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, was an anti-Semitic pogrom against Jewish people that began on this day in 1938, carried out by the Sturmabteilung, Nazi paramilitary forces, and civilians.

The name Kristallnacht (“Crystal Night”) comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed.

The official pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew, after Grynszpan learned that his parents had been deported to the Polish frontier. Within hours of Rath’s death, the Kristallnacht was launched against Jewish communities in Germany.

Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.

Estimates of the amount of people killed vary from 91 to as high as 638. Historians view Kristallnacht as a prelude to the Final Solution and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.