Kristallnacht

Crystal Night or Night of the Broken Glass

On November 9th and 10th 1938 a pogrom
was conducted throughout Germany and
Austria. It was officially presented as a
spontaneous outburst provoked by the
assassination of a secretary of the
German embassy in Paris by a seventeenyear-old Polish Jew. The name
Kristallnacht refers to the broken shop
windows of Jewish stores.

Nazis Smash, Loot, and Burn Jewish Shops

and Temples until Goebbels Calls Halt
Otto D. Tolischus
New York Times
November 10, 1938
Berlin, Nov 10 A wave of destruction and looting unparalled in Germany since the Thirty
Years War swept over Germany today as National Socialist thugs took vengeance on Jewish
shops, offices, and synagogues for the murder by a young Polish Jew of Ernst von Rath,
third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris.
Beginning systematically in the early morning hours in almost every town and city in the
country, the wrecking, looting, and burning continued all day. Huge but mostly silent
crowds looked on and the police confined themselves to regulating traffic and making
wholesale arrest of Jews for their own protection.
All day the main shopping districts as well as the die streets of Berlin and many other
places heard the shattering of shop windows falling to the pavement, the dull thuds of
furniture and appliances being pounded to pieces and the clamor of fire brigades rushing
to burning shops and synagogues. Although shop fires were quickly put out, synagogue fires
were merely kept from spreading to adjoining buildings.
As far as could be learned the violence was mainly confined to property. Although
individuals were beaten, reports so far tell of the death of only two persons a Jew in
Polzin, pomeranis, and another in Bunzdorf.
The total damage from the days outbreaks was worse even than those of the 1918 revolution
and by nightfall there was scarcely a Jewish shop, caf, office, or synagogue in the
country that was not wrecked, burned severely, or damaged.
After the destruction, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels issued the following
proclamation: The understandable anger of the German people over the cowardly Jewish
murder of a German diplomat in Paris was the reason for last nights rioting. In numerous
cities and towns of the Reich retaliatory action has been undertaken against Jewish
buildings and businesses. Now a strict request is issued to the entire population to cease
immediately all further demonstrations and actions against Jewry, no matter what kind. A
final answer to the Jewish assassination in Paris will be given to Jewry by way of
legislation and ordinance.
What this legal action is going to be remains to be seen. It is known, however, that
measure to expel foreign Jews are already being prepared in the Interior Ministry, and
some towns, like Munich, have ordered all Jews to leave within forty-eight hours. All
Jewish organization, cultural, and publishing activity has been suspended. It is assumed
that the Jews, who have know lost most of their possessions and livelihood, will either be

thrown into the streets or put into ghettos and concentration camps, or forced into labor
brigades and put to work for the Third Reich, as the children of Israel were once before
for the Pharaohs.
In any case, all day in Berlin, as throughout the country, thousands of Jews, mostly men,
were being taken from their homes and arrested in particular prominent Jewish leaders,
who in some cases, it is understood, were told they were being held as hostages for the
good behavior of Jewry outside of Germany.
In Breslau they were hunted out even in the homes of non-Jews where they might have been
hiding.
Berlin papers also mention many cities and towns in which it is reported, synagogues were
raided and burned and shops were destroyed. But in general the press reports only local
destruction so as to disguise the national extent of the outbreak, the full spread of
which will probably never be known.
Generally the crowds were silent and the majority seems gravely disturbed by the
proceedings. Only members of the wrecking squads shouted occasionally, Perish Jewry! and
Kill the Jews! and in one case a person in the crowd shouted, Why not hang the owner in
the window?