Kristallnacht

(Night Of Broken Glass)

   The events of 9–10 November 1938 marked a turning point for the Jews of Germany. For the first time the government sanctioned the use of violence against its Jewish population, ostensibly in retaliation for the assassination of a German official in the French embassy by Herschel Grynspan, a 17-year-old Jewish refugee living in Paris. Grynspan’s action resulted from information he received about his parents, who-like so many Polish Jews living in Germany-had been deported to an area on the Polish–German border. Feeling helpless to aid them, he vented his rage on Ernst vom Rath, the third secretary in the German embassy, although his intention had been to assassinate the German ambassador. The German government, upon learning of the shooting, immediately retaliated against the German Jewish community.

   Joseph Goebbels organized a nationwide pogrom against the Jews. Led by Sturmabteilung (SA) groups, an orgy of violence spread through the country, with the police having been told to not interfere. Starting in Munich, about 500 synagogues were burned throughout Germany. Windows of hundreds of Jewish shops were shattered, and looters were encouraged to haul away jewelry, furs, and other items that they could carry. Jewish establishments were forcibly entered and trashed. Before it was over, 90 Jews were killed and about 30,000 Jewish men were placed under “protective custody” in concentration camps or Gestapo prisons. In Berlin, despite the prohibition on racial mixing, a number of Jewish women were raped by the Germans.

   On 12 November 1938, Hermann Goering announced a series of measures that were designed to punish the Jewish community and reduce it to poverty. Jews were prohibited from owning retail stores as well as working as independent craftsmen. Jews were banned from attending concerts, the cinema, or other forms of public entertainment. They were even prohibited from driving automobiles. The most devastating blow, however, was the announcement that German insurance companies were released from their obligation to cover the full damage done to Jewish property. Instead, Goering decreed that the Jews themselves would be fined for the cleanup. The total bill charged to the Jewish community was one billion reichsmarks, or $400 million, approximately 3,000 marks for every Jewish man, woman, and child living in Germany. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews emigrated from Germany. The pogrom also marked a change in German policy regarding the Jews. Prior to 9–10 November, Nazi strategy toward the Jews was to make their lives so miserable that they would leave voluntarily. After Kristallnacht, the German government embarked on a new policy of forced emigration, signaled by the roundup of Jews and their internment in concentration camps until they agreed to leave Germany.

   The term Kristallnacht is not used in present-day Germany. Rather, the Germans use the word Reichspogromnacht to describe the events of 9–10 November 1938. The first use of the term Kristallnacht is attributed to Hermann Goering. It struck him as humorous to describe the shattered glass from the windows of Jewish stores and the broken glass from the synagogues that glistened on the wet cobblestones as Jewish “crystals” or “diamonds.”