Kristallnacht – A Documentary Part 1 of 5

On the night of November 9, 1938, violence against Jews broke out across the Reich. It appeared to be unplanned, set off by Germans’ anger over the assassination of a German official in Paris at the hands of a Jewish teenager. In fact, German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and other Nazis carefully organized the pogroms. In two days, over 250 synagogues were burned, over 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted, dozens of Jewish people were killed, and Jewish cemeteries, hospitals, schools, and homes were looted while police and fire brigades stood by. The pogroms became known as Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” for the shattered glass from the store windows that littered the streets.

The morning after the pogroms 30,000 German Jewish men were arrested for the “crime” of being Jewish and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds of them perished. Some Jewish women were also arrested and sent to local jails. Businesses owned by Jews were not allowed to reopen unless they were managed by non-Jews. Curfews were placed on Jews, limiting the hours of the day they could leave their homes.

After the “Night of Broken Glass,” life was even more difficult for German and Austrian Jewish children and teenagers. Already barred from entering museums, public playgrounds, and swimming pools, now they were expelled from the public schools. Jewish youngsters, like their parents, were totally segregated in Germany. In despair, many Jewish adults committed suicide. Most families tried desperately to leave.

Key Dates

October 28, 1938
Germany expels Polish Jews
About 17,000 Polish Jews are expelled by Germany and forced across the border with Poland. Poland refuses to allow the Jews to enter. Most of the deportees are stranded in the no-man’s-land between Germany and Poland near the town of Zbaszyn. Among the deportees are the parents of Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, France.

November 7, 1938
German diplomat shot in Paris
Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, shoots Ernst vom Rath, a diplomat attached to the German embassy in Paris. Grynszpan apparently acts out of despair over the fate of his parents, who are trapped along with other Polish Jewish deportees in a no-man’s-land between Germany and Poland. The Nazis use the shooting to fan antisemitic fervor, claiming that Grynszpan did not act alone, but was part of a wider Jewish conspiracy against Germany. Vom Rath dies two days later.

November 9, 1938
Joseph Goebbels demands radical action
German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels delivers a passionate antisemitic speech to the Nazi party faithful in Munich. The party members are gathered in commemoration of the abortive Nazi Putsch of 1923 (Adolf Hitler’s first attempt to seize power). After the speech, Nazi officials order the Storm Troopers (SA) and other party formations to attack Jews and to destroy their homes, businesses, and houses of worship. The violence against Jews lasts into the morning hours of November 10th, and becomes known as Kristallnacht—the “Night of Broken Glass.” Several dozen Jews lose their lives and tens of thousands are arrested and sent to concentration camps.

November 12, 1938
Nazis fine Jewish community
The Nazi state imposes a fine of one billion Reichsmarks ($400,000,000) on the Jewish community in Germany. Jews are ordered to clean up and make repairs after the pogrom. They are barred from collecting insurance for the damages. Instead, the state confiscates payments owed by insurers to Jewish property holders. In the aftermath of the pogrom, Jews are systematically excluded from all areas of public life in Germany.

Kristallnacht… Night of the Broken Glass

Kim Angell

Merkel to address Kristallnacht ceremony at Berlin synagogue

Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent,
and Louise Osborne in Berlin

Event will commemorate 80th anniversary of Nazi terror that led thousands of Jews to flee

Visitors look at a photo of a synagogue burning in 1938 at a Berlin exhibition on Kristallnacht. Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, will address a ceremony at a Berlin synagogue to mark the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of Nazi terror across Germany and Austria that led thousands of Jewish families to flee.

Merkel will be joined by the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, for the commemoration on Friday at the Rykestrasse synagogue, organised by the Central Council of Jews in Germany.

The Jewish Community of Berlin has also organised a number of events, including a ceremony at the state parliament during which the names of all 55,696 Jews from the city who were murdered during the Holocaust will be read out at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

The anniversary will also be marked by Jewish communities across the world. In the UK – the destination of almost 10,000 children put on Kindertransport trains following Kristallnacht – a multi-faith service of remembrance will take place at Westminster Abbey on Thursday evening, and synagogues will leave lights on over Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath.

More than 1,400 synagogues and other Jewish premises were looted and destroyed across Germany and Austria in a series of pogroms unleashed by Nazis on the night of 9-10 November 1938.

The windows of Jewish shops, businesses and homes were smashed as police stood by during the antisemitic rampage, giving it the name of Kristallnacht (night of broken glass).

Scores of synagogues burned down as firefighters watched; their orders were only to intervene if the flames threatened to spread to other buildings.

At least 91 Jewish people were killed in the violence, and up to 30,000 men were rounded up and taken to concentration camps.

In the weeks that followed, the German government passed dozens of laws and decrees targeting Jews and their property. Many families fled the country or sent their children to safety.

A woman and her child pass by smashed shop windows after Kristallnacht in Magdeburg, Germany, in November 1938. Photograph: The Weiner Library/Rex

Martin Winstone from the UK-based Holocaust Educational Trust said: “Everything that happened on Kristallnacht had already happened, but until then it was localised and not orchestrated. Kristallnacht was a new level of radicalism and systematic, nationwide violence against Jews.

“Many Jews had already left Germany and Austria, but for the rest, Kristallnacht “represented a moment of reluctant realisation that there was no future for them there.”

The commemoration this year is “probably the last landmark anniversary where there are still living witnesses to what happened. And it is given an extra dimension because of the resurgence of antisemitism in Europe, and the issue of how we deal with people displaced from their homes is again very much on the agenda,” he added.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said: “The images of the burning synagogues and destroyed Jewish shops have become part of our collective memory.

“The memory of the November pogroms is important because it shows us the horrible consequences of social exclusion of a group. And it shows that civil society did not resist or protest against the violence against Jews. Resist the beginnings – that is the message of that date.”

After the Holocaust, “it was not taken for granted that Jewish life would develop again in Germany”, Schuster added. But the country’s Jewish population more than trebled between 1990 and 2002, with many Jews relocating from the former Soviet Union.

The number of Jews living in Germany has fallen from 106,435 in 2008 to 97,791 last year, according to statistics portal Statista. Between 2015 and 2017, the number of antisemitic crimes recorded by the federal interior ministry rose from 1,366 to 1,504, although figures are lower than a decade ago, when they climbed to about 1,600.

Some politicians have blamed incoming migrants for the recent rise, but the data showed that in 2017, almost 95% of incidents had a rightwing motive.

However, many antisemitic incidents are not reported to authorities, according to some monitoring groups. RIAS, which tracks antisemitic incidents in Berlin, recorded 947 incidents in the German capital alone, almost double that of 2016, when the figure was 590.

Anecdotally, some Jews talk of no-go areas in Berlin and other German cities. All major Jewish sites, including synagogues, are guarded by police.

Ilan Kiesling, a spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Berlin, said: “Our community members have become used to that over the decades – community life virtually taking place behind protective fences and under surveillance cameras.”

The rise in antisemitism in Germany and across Europe has made events such as the commemoration of Kristallnacht even more important, he said.

Hella Pick, who arrived in the UK from Vienna in 1939 at the age of eight, said Austria had not confronted its past to the same extent as Germany.

“Germany has really tried to understand what happened. Every schoolchild has to learn about the country’s history. That’s a great contrast with Austria,” she said. All children should be taught Jewish history, “not just the Holocaust, but the contribution Jews have made to literature and the arts and so on”.

Pick, who spent 35 years working for the Guardian, said she had very little memory of her childhood in Vienna in the 1930s. “I’ve somehow blotted it out of my mind,” she said.

The interior of Rykestrasse synagogue was destroyed during Kristallnacht, although the building’s structure survived the bombing of Berlin during the second world war almost undamaged.

In 1940, it was confiscated by the Wehrmacht and used as a stables and for storage. Its restoration was completed in 2007, and it is now the second-biggest synagogue in Europe with a capacity of 2,000.