On November 9–10, 1938, Nazi Party officials set off a series of violent pogroms against Jews in Germany and Austria. This event came to be known as the "Night of Broken Glass."
As the synagogue in Oberramstadt burns during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass"), firefighters instead save a nearby house. Local residents watch as the synagogue is destroyed. Oberramstadt, Germany, November 9-10, 1938.
Roll call for newly arrived prisoners, mostly Jews arrested during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom), at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938.
These Torah scrolls, one from a synagogue in Vienna and the other from Marburg, were desecrated during Kristallnacht(the "Night of Broken Glass"), the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938. The pogrom occurred throughout Germany, which by then included both Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. The scrolls pictured here were retrieved by German individuals and safeguarded until after the war.
Amid intensifying anti-Jewish measures and the 1938 Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass") pogrom, Johanna's family decided to leave Germany. They obtained visas for Albania, crossed into Italy, and sailed in 1939. They remained in Albania under the Italian occupation and, after Italy surrendered in 1943, under German occupation. The family was liberated after a battle between the Germans and Albanian partisans in December 1944.
Dora, her parents, brother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins lived together in her grandfather's home in Essen, Germany. The Ungers were an observant Jewish family, and when Dora was 8, she began to regularly attend meetings of Brit HaNoar, a religious youth organization.
1933-39: In October 1938 a teacher, with tears in her eyes, came to Dora at the municipal pool, saying "Jews cannot swim here anymore." Just weeks later, on November 9, Jews were arrested and their property destroyed. A neighbor tried to protect Dora's family, but that night as her family huddled together, Nazis spotted their house. Suddenly, an axe flew through the window, landing by Dora's head. A few days later, they fled for the Netherlands.
1940-45: In Amsterdam, as refugees, her parents were not permitted to work and so they could not provide for Dora and her brother. Dora was sent by a Jewish aid organization to the Buergerweeshuis, an orphanage which had 80 Jewish refugee children. Just after the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, "Mama Wysmueller," a Dutch woman who worked to rescue thousands of children by arranging their passage to England, came and told all of them to get dressed. They were taken by bus to a pier and put on the Bodengraven, a boat.
Dora spent the remainder of the war in England. Her parents and brother perished at the camps of Sobibor and Auschwitz. Dora immigrated to Israel in 1946.
Inge was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher, religious Jews living in Kippenheim, a village in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest. Her father was a textile merchant. The family lived in a large house with 17 rooms and had servants to help with the housework.
1933-39: On November 10, 1938, hoodlums threw rocks and broke all the windows of Inge's home. That same day police arrested her father and grandfather. Inge, her mother and grandmother managed to hide in a shed until it was quiet. When they came out, the town's Jewish men had been taken to the Dachau concentration camp. Her father and grandfather were allowed to return home a few weeks later, but that May her grandfather died of a heart attack.
1940-45: When Inge was 7, she was deported with her parents to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. When they arrived, everything was taken from them, except for the clothes they wore and Inge's doll, Marlene. Conditions in the camp were harsh. Potatoes were as valuable as diamonds. Inge was hungry, scared and sick most of the time. For her eighth birthday, her parents gave her a tiny potato cake with a hint of sugar; for her ninth birthday, an outfit sewn from rags for her doll; and for her tenth birthday, a poem written by her mother.
On May 8, 1945, Inge and her parents were liberated from the Theresienstadt ghetto where they had spent nearly three years. They immigrated to the United States in May 1946.
Kristallnacht—literally, "Crystal Night"—is usually translated from German as the "Night of Broken Glass." It refers to the violent anti-Jewish pogrom of November 9 and 10, 1938. The pogrom occurred throughout Germany, which by then included both Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions all over the German Reich were attacked, vandalized, looted, and destroyed. Many were set ablaze. Firemen were instructed to let the synagogues burn but to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby structures. The shop windows of thousands of Jewish-owned stores were smashed and the wares within looted. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. Many Jews were attacked by mobs of Storm Troopers (SA). At least 91 Jews died in the pogrom.
On the night of November 9–10, 1938, the Nazi regime coordinated a wave of antisemitic violence in Nazi Germany. This nationwide riot became known as Kristallnacht or the "Night of Broken Glass." The name "Kristallnacht" is a reference to the shattered glass from store windows that littered the streets during and after the riot. Kristallnacht is also sometimes referred to as the November pogrom.
The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. In reality, Kristallnacht was state-sponsored vandalism and arson. Nazi leaders actively coordinated it with Adolf Hitler's support. On the night of November 9, Nazi leaders ordered members of the Nazi Party’s paramilitaries (the SS, the SA, and the Hitler Youth) to attack Jewish communities.
In the hours and days that followed, organized groups of Nazis wreaked havoc on Jewish life in Nazi Germany. During the riot, local Nazis set hundreds of synagogues on fire. They vandalized thousands of Jewish-owned businesses. They desecrated Jewish cemeteries. They broke into homes, smashed furniture, and terrorized Jewish families. Following orders given by Nazi leaders, police forces and fire brigades did not intervene to stop the destruction. Policemen did not protect Jews or their property. Firemen did not put out fires in synagogues.
The rioters also attacked and beat individual Jewish people. As a result, hundreds of Jews died during Kristallnacht and its aftermath. Some died of injuries inflicted during the riots. Others were deliberately killed.
During Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime ordered the police to arrest about 30,000 German Jewish men. These men had not committed any crime. The police arrested them simply for being Jewish. They were sent to concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald. In the concentration camps, the men were humiliated and violently attacked. Some even died. The arrests shocked and terrified Jewish families and communities. In the following months, the Nazi authorities released many of these men if families could prove they had plans to leave Germany.
Kristallnacht was an important turning point for Germany’s Jews. Afterwards, many Jews concluded that there was no future for them in Nazi Germany.
Key Dates
November 7, 1938 The catalyst for Kristallnacht On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan shoots Ernst vom Rath. Grynszpan is a 17-year-old Polish-German Jew living in Paris. Vom Rath is a minor German diplomat posted to the German embassy in Paris. Grynszpan apparently acts out of despair over the fate of his parents, whom the Nazi regime had expelled from Germany to Poland. The Nazis use the shooting to incite antisemitic fervor. They claim that Grynszpan shot vom Rath as part of a wider Jewish conspiracy against Germany. When vom Rath dies on November 9, Nazi leaders use this theory as a pretext for Kristallnacht.
November 9, 1938 Joseph Goebbels instigates Kristallnacht On November 9, 1938, Nazi Party leaders from across Germany are gathered in Munich to commemorate the Beer Hall Putsch, a failed attempt by Adolf Hitler in 1923 to seize power in Germany. During the commemoration of the putsch, they learn that Ernst vom Rath has died of his wounds. In response, German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels delivers a passionate antisemitic speech. With Hitler’s permission, Goebbels calls for an attack on Germany’s Jewish communities. After the speech, Nazi officials call their home districts and communicate Goebbels’ instructions. This results in the violence known today as Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass."
November 15, 1938 President Roosevelt condemns Kristallnacht At a press conference on November 15, 1938, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt denounces the Nazis' antisemitic attack. In an official statement, he writes, "I myself could scarcely believe that such things could occur in a twentieth-century civilization." To show the US government’s condemnation of the violence, President Roosevelt recalls the US ambassador to Germany.
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