Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, bringing approximately 200,000 additional Jews under Nazi rule. The Nazi regime quickly extended anti-Jewish legislation to Austria. At the time, the majority of Austrian Jews lived in Vienna, the capital and an important center of Jewish culture and education.
![Austria, 1933 [LCID: aus19010]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/1a9842a9-bdfb-4342-bc0e-2e8e50e984e6.gif "Austria, 1933 [LCID: aus19010]")
!["Kristallnacht": nationwide pogrom [LCID: ger76080]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/e3709631-2b18-41c6-98fd-7f2b4d0d025e.gif "\"Kristallnacht\": nationwide pogrom [LCID: ger76080]")
Kristallnacht, often referred to in English as the "Night of Broken Glass," was a violent pogrom (anti-Jewish riot). It took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 throughout Germany, which by then included both Austria and the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. During Kristallnacht, Nazis burned more than 1,400 synagogues, vandalized thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, broke into Jewish people’s apartments and homes, and desecrated Jewish religious objects. They also humiliated, assaulted, and killed Jewish people. As part of Kristallnacht, the German police imprisoned about 26,000 Jewish men in concentration camps just because they were Jewish.
Item View![Vienna environs, 1942 [LCID: vie49030]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/9f49509b-5033-4654-9e46-ffd96a3ac495.gif "Vienna environs, 1942 [LCID: vie49030]")
![Deportations from Vienna, 1941-1945 [LCID: vie39043]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/9e575d32-7f6b-4fa6-ac85-439f49cf009d.gif "Deportations from Vienna, 1941-1945 [LCID: vie39043]")
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