Today in History: Kristallnacht
Conditions inside the Third Reich for Jews only worsened in November 1938 after Ernst vum Rath, a German foreign service officer in Paris, was shot and killed by Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew angered over the deportation of his parents from Germany. Joseph Goebbels labeled Rath’s murder an act of “World Jewry” and sanctioned widespread violence against Jews.
In virtually every city in Germany and Austria, from November 9 to 10 1938, Nazis burned down synagogues, defaced Jewish cemeteries, smashed windows of Jewish businesses, and, for the first time, arrested Jews in large numbers.
While this “spontaneous” outburst of violence wasn’t openly accepted or challenged by many Aryan-Germans there was a aversion to it. Many witnesses would later recount the events they watched occur as “nauseating” and a feeling of powerless to “do anything but turn horror-stricken eyes from the scene of abuse, or leave the vicinity.” In one case at the University of Jena, three Aryan professors were arrested and taken to concentration camps after they had “voiced disapproval of this insidious drive against mankind.”
In history the event became known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), or to the world as “The Night of Broken Glass”. In the post-war world the Allies would later use Kristallnacht as evidence at the Nuremberg trials as proof that there was a steady escalation in violence towards the Jews in Germany and this was the first step towards the Final Solution.
In virtually every city in Germany and Austria, from November 9 to 10 1938, Nazis burned down synagogues, defaced Jewish cemeteries, smashed windows of Jewish businesses, and, for the first time, arrested Jews in large numbers.
While this “spontaneous” outburst of violence wasn’t openly accepted or challenged by many Aryan-Germans there was a aversion to it. Many witnesses would later recount the events they watched occur as “nauseating” and a feeling of powerless to “do anything but turn horror-stricken eyes from the scene of abuse, or leave the vicinity.” In one case at the University of Jena, three Aryan professors were arrested and taken to concentration camps after they had “voiced disapproval of this insidious drive against mankind.”
In history the event became known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), or to the world as “The Night of Broken Glass”. In the post-war world the Allies would later use Kristallnacht as evidence at the Nuremberg trials as proof that there was a steady escalation in violence towards the Jews in Germany and this was the first step towards the Final Solution.
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