What happened on kristallnacht and why?

Answer 1

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) was a government-sponsored outbreak of violence against the Jews in Germany - a pogrom. It began in the night of 9-10 November 1938 and lasted for some days.

During this night in November 1938 all German and Austrian synagogues were ordered burned by Goebbels in retaliation for the murder of a German by an angry Polish Jew.

Windows of Jewish owned businesses were smashed, homes were wrecked, 400 Jews were killled and about 30,000 Jews were sent to concentration camps. By Christmas 1938 two thousand of these Jews were dead.

Immediate backgroundOn 28 October 1938, about 17,000 Polish Jews, many of whom had been living in Germany for 15-20 years or longer, were arrested and sent to the Polish border. The Polish government (which was very anti-Jewish) only admitted about about 25% of them and refused to admit the others, claiming they were stateless. These Jews were interned in camps on the German-Polish frontier in a kind of no-man's-land.

The son of one of these unfortunate people assassinated a minor official at the German embassy in Paris.

"Kristallnacht"On the night of 9-10 November 1938 Stormstroopers, acting on orders, smashed up Jewish shops, homes and every synagogue the length and breadth of Germany and Austria. In some places the Stormtroopers wore civilian clothes in order to make it look as it enraged members of the public were spontaneously committing the violence. About 30,000 Jews were seized and sent to concentration camps and were only released if they obtained visas to enter foreign countries. (Of these, about 2,000 were dead by Christmas 1938).

The Nazi regime ordered the Jewish community to pay for the damage done to its own property and also imposed a collective fine on it!

The event is significant as it marked a major intensification of the persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany. It was the first time that the Nazis used organized, widespread violence against Jews simply because they were Jews. It became clear that they were no longer safe in Germany. Those who were able to do so, left Germany after this.

Why was it called 'Kristallnacht'?It is called that because of the broken glass. In English 'Kristallnacht' is often referred to as the 'Night of the Broken Glass'. (The German 'Kristall' refers to the high grade 'crystal' glass often used at the time for shop windows). Further comments and answersKristallnacht (the 'Night of the Broken Glass) was a planned attack by Goebbels who thought an attack against the Jews would please Hitler and other Nazis. However, the Nazis claimed that Kristallnacht was a spontaneous attack by the German public as a retaliation of the murder of a Nazi official in Paris by a Jew. This was a lie. This murder was not the cause of Kristallnacht. The attacks were carried out by the SS and SA, many dressed in plain clothes, and services such as the firemen were to be seen to putting out fires either side of Jewish houses but not the Jewish houses themselves. The damage caused was devasting. Jewish houses, shops, businesses, synagogues were ruined, 91 (?) Jews were killed and 30,000 were deported to concentration camps. To add insult to injury the Nazis then demanded from the Jews millions of Reichsmarks to compensate for the damage done to their own property!

Note. More recent research (in the 1980s) indicates a figure of 400 Jews killed during Kristallnacht and the next two days or so. The often quoted figure of 91 was that issued by the Nazis themselves and is completely unreliable.

AnswerJewish busineses, shops and synagogues were pillaged and burned. Jews were beaten up and killed and some Jewish women were raped by Stormtroopers.

The night of broken glass, a.k.a. Kristallnacht was a massive beating up of Jewish people throughout Germany on November 9th to 10th, 1938. Many Jewish homes were broken into and destroyed, leaving the streets lined with broken glass (hence its name). Jews were beaten to death; 30,000 Jewish men were taken to concentration camps. Throughout Germany, Austria, and part of Czechloslovakia, Jews were beaten, raped and murdered. Afterwards, protests began againast Kristallnacht in foreign countries, including in America. In New York, German goods were boycotted and swastika flags were burned in Chicago ...

Why the Nazis organized KristallnachtSome Jews had left Germany from 1933 onwards, but many were still in the country in 1938. The annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland had significantly increased the number of Jews in Germany. The main purpose of the pogrom was to bully the German and Austrian Jews into getting out of the country. There was a sudden stampede to get out of Germany.

Answer 2

Kristallnacht means night of the broken glass on 9-10 November 1938 At least 91 Jews were killed in the attacks, and a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in concentration Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers.Over 1,000 synagogues were burned (95 in Vienna alone), and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.

The attacks left the streets covered with broken glass from the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings, and synagogues.

Answer 3

Reichskristallnacht, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, was an antisemitic pogrom (series of attacks) on Jews that took place on the night of 9/10 November 1938. Jewish homes, shops, towns, and villages were ransacked. Windows were smashed and buildings were destroyed. The streets were covered in broken glass from the windows, hence the name. According to the Synagogue Memorial 1,406 synagogues and prayer rooms were destroyed. A further 7,500 Jewish properties, including shops, houses, apartments, and cemetery chapels, were also destroyed.

On this infamous night, approximately 400 Jews were murdered or driven to suicide. Between 10th and 13th November 1938, nearly 30,000 Jews out of a total population of 490,000, were taken to concentration camps, where they underwent months of torture. Concentration camp records show that 10, 911 Jews were sent to Dachau, 9,845 to Buchenwald and at least 6,000 but more probably closer to 10,000 were incarcerated at Sachsenhausen.

Hundreds of Jewish victims were murdered or died as a result of the conditions they were forced to endure. According to camp records, 207 died in Buchenwald and 185 in Dachau, whilst the death figure from Sachsenhausen is not known. It is estimated however that the real figure is much higher, as dozens of Jews were shot immediately upon arrival at the concentration camps, and hundreds more died trying to escape or through forced labour.

One survivor said they were forced to stand to attention for whole nights in freezing temperatures and were repeatedly told: Ihr seid nicht in einem Sanatorium, sondern in einem Krematorium. [...] Die SS hat das Recht, auf Euch zu schießen, wann sie will. (You are not in a sanatorium but in a crematorium.... The SS have the right to at shoot you whenever they want.)

The majority of those who managed to survive were released by the beginning of August 1939 on condition that they leave the country and hand over all their property to the Nazi state.

This attack on the German and Austrian Jewish population was a painted as a spontaneous response to the assassination of Ernst Eduard vom Rath, a German diplomat, by Polish Jew Herschel Feibel Grynszpan (born in Germany), although not many Germans believed this. The attack on the Jewish population was planned by Joseph Goebbels to the last detail with Goebbels issuing instructions that every Jewish business in the Reich was to be destroyed and every synagogue razed to the ground. He also issued orders that the fire brigade was not to intervene, except if the neighbouring property of an Arian was in danger.

Shortly before midnight on 9 November 1938, Heinrich Müller, Chief of the Gestapo department for enemies of the state, sent a telegraph to all police headquarters ordering: Es ist vorzubereiten die Festnahme von etwa 20-30.000 Juden im Reiche. Es sind auszuwählen vor allem vermögende Juden (Preparations shall be made for the arrests of 20-30,000 Jews in the Reich. First and foremost, rich Jews should be chosen).

In order to "assist" in the arrest of rich Jews, the Nazis had introduced laws earlier that year forcing the Jews to declare all assets over and above 5,000 Reichsmarks.

Ironically, the pogrom drew criticism from leading Nazis, which was directed towards Goebbels, who was accused by Göring of ordering the destruction of valuable property through economic ignorance.

The looting and violence was also criticised by local Nazi party members, forcing Hitler to set up "tribunals" to investigate any complaints of "ill-discipline" by members of the SA who had taken part in the Reichskristallnacht - headed by the very Gauleiters who had executed the pogroms. In the end only 16 murders were "investigated" and only two culprits "punished" and given "warnings"

On 11 November Heydrich wrote to Himmler, stating that 91 people had been killed and 267 synagogues destroyed.

Nazi minutes of a meeting held on 12 November 1938 revealed that many of the "Jewish" shops and apartments that were attacked on the night, were in fact Arian-owned (but rented by Jews), leaving the insurance companies with a 225 million Reichsmark billl for the clean-up. This prompted Göring to shout at Himmler: "Mir wäre lieber gewesen, ihr hättet 200 Juden erschlagen und hättet nicht solche Werte vernichtet" (I would rather you battered 200 Jews to death than destroy such values).

As a result, the Nazis introduced a Jewish Capital Levyof 1 billion Reichsmarks as "reparation" for the "hostile attitude of Jewry towards the German people". However this money (raised by the Jews) was not used to reimburse Jewish victims of the Reichskristallnacht but helped fund the war, one of the main goals of which was the total annihilation of the Jewish people.

Following the pogroms there was hardly any public outcry in Germany and Austria. The lack of condemantion from the churches was particularly notable. The Protestant church historian Günter Brakelmann put forward the following theory as explanation:

-most clergy were nationalistic and fundamentally agreed with the authoritarian Führer-state and the domestic policies it introduced since 1933.

-the Nazis' ideological antisemitism was partially congruent with the clergy's own traditional anti-judaism and therefore acceptable to the clergy.

-the clergy were so preoccupied with their own self-preservation that they didn't dare protest, so as not to endanger what little influence and room for manouevrability they had left.

In the end it boiled down to individual consciences. Several clergy did speak out and suffered a similar fate to their Jewish counterparts. The most notable case was that of Julius von Jan, a priest in Württemberg. The Sunday after the pogroms (16 November, ironically coinciding with the Day of Repetance and Prayer (Buß- und Bettag) in the Christian Calendar), von Jan gave a sermon quoting passages from the Book of Jeremiah (Ch. 22) and ending with the prophetic warning that Germany would reap what it sowed. He was subsequently nearly beaten to death by the SA, placed in "protective custody, tried for subversive agitation, and imprisoned. Despite being unfit for military duty, he was sent to a penal unit on the Russian front in 1943, but after four months was sent back to Germany having contracted jaundice.

The significance of the Night of Broken Glass is two-fold:

The Nazi state finally gave up all pretences of being a democratic state bound by laws and finally exposed its hatred of the Jews (which it had never hidden) for all the world to see.

It led to a new level of consciousness within certain quarters of the Nazi state that finally accepted the necessity of armed resistance against the party and the state (such as The Freiburg Circle, made up of leading economists and members of the Protestant and Catholic Churches). Several of the group were arrested and executed in 1944 for attempting to overthrow the Nazi state. The survivors went on to play leading roles in the re-building of Germany after the war.

Today, German historians avoid using the term Reichskristallnacht or Kristallnacht because in their opinion the name conjures up images of festivals. Instead it is referred to as the Novemberpogrome (the November Pogroms). Other historians have argued that the name should be retained for the following reasons:

Reichs: indicates that this was not an isolated incident but occurred throughout Greater Germany (including Austria). Also an indicator that every German citizen was complicit in the Nazi atrocities and their propagandistic justification

Kristall: ironic euphemism for the destruction of happiness, life property and community.

Nacht: metaphor for the political darkness that Germany entered into until 8 May 1945.

Although the main events of took place on the night of the 9/10 November, attacks on Jewish citizens and their property continued until 13 November

----

Reichs- was ironic and does not have the significance given to it above. Almost anything that was nationwide in Germany from 1871-1945 or was prefixed by Reichs-. The was a Reichskanzler, the Reichsbahn, the Reichspost, the Reichsschuld (national debt, by the way - nothing as exciting as national guilt) and the Reichs-you-just-name-it. (In those days the Germans did not use national for nationwide, as its main meaning was nationalistic). (Compare with the use of Bundes- in modern Germany).

The pseudo-poetic senses attributed to Nacht and Kristall above are completely novel and fail to reflect the essential jocularity of the orginal. Kristall referred simply to the smashed high-grade 'crystal glass' then widely used for shop windows. Note that the terms were widely used by ordinary Germans already in November 1938 and they certainly did not think they were entering a period of darkness. Some German Jews have objected to the term Kristallnacht (and certainly to the more obviously jocular Reichskristallnacht) on the grounds that it suggests the SA (Stormtroopers) had a 'smashing time' and that the whole thing was fun.

The key significance was that it made it clear to those German Jews who were not yet aware of the fact, that they were no longer physically safe in Germany and needed to leave the country.

--------------

Obviously none of the above "poetic"/ironic explanations for the name given to the attrocities were in use in November 1938, but have been put forward as interpretations as to why the term should be kept today. At the time these attrocities were given several names by different witnesses. The Jewish prisoners generally referred to it as the Rath-Aktion (the Rath campaign, after the murdered Nazi diplomat) or Mordwoche (week of murder). The Jewish literary scholar and writer Walter Klemperer called it the Grünspan-Affäre, while Jewish writer Walter Tausk made reference to Bartholomäusnacht (Bartholomews Night), a reference to the murder of thousands of Hugenots on 24 August 1572 in France. Eye-witnesses referred to the night as Glasnacht (night of glass), gläserner Donnerstag (glass Thursday), and Kristallnacht (Night of Crystal).

Not even official Propaganda referred to it as (Reichs)Kristallnacht, instead it was referred to as Judenaktion (campaign against the Jews), Novemberaktion (November campaign), Vergeltungsaktion (reprisal campaign) or Sonderaktion (special campaign). The town gatherings that were ordered by the Nazis the following day referred to the attacks as antijüdische Demonstrationen(anti-Jewish demonstrations) or gerechte Vergeltungskundgebungen (justified manifestations of reprisal). Members of the SA, SS and Hitler Youth who took part called it die Nacht der langen Messer (Night of the long knives, as they had the Röhm Putch).

The original term was NEVER meant to convey jocularity. According to the Jewish politician Adolf Arndt, who was a lawyer in Berlin in 1938, the expression (Reichs)Kristallnachtoriginated amongst Berliners and their gallows humour as an expression of their powerlessness against, and disgust of, the Nazi apparatus and its attrocities. Many German individuals were fully aware of the political and cultural "darkness" the Nazis had led their country into but as individuals were powerless to prevent it. The term was not used by the Nazis until June 1939.

For political scientist Harald Schmid, the term Reichskristallnacht remains "a useful linguistic stumbling block, because the etymological and semantic controversy leads directly to a debate of the whole Nazi era, critical anaysis of it and the pursuit of moral accuracy".

The Jewish population in Germany was, prior to November 9, 1938, more than aware that they were not safe in the country. Hitler had made his postition regarding world Jewry quite clear in his book Mein Kampf. Nazi persecution of Jews, which began in April 1933, increased after the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and many families did leave the Reich - half of Germanys 900,000 Jews had left the country by then. This flood of refugees led to the Evian Conference, in France, in July 1938. Not one of the 32 countries which attended agreed to accept any more Jewish refugees than they already were allowing to enter. Some (Australia, Canada, Luxemburg, Switzerland) refused point blank to accept any more. As a result, the Nazi government cancelled the passports of German Jews, thereby preventing them from leaving the country legally.

Until this point the Nazis had been content to allow Jews to emmigrate and so remove them from Germanic life, and many observers saw the failure of the Evian Conference (described by Ronnie S. Landau in his book The Nazi Holocaust as "an exercise in Anglo-American collaborative hypocracy") as encouragement to the Nazis to move onto their monstrous climax - The Final Solution to the Jewish Question, because "no-one wants the scum", as Goebbels is reported to have said.

Answer 4

See Related Links for info about Kirstallnacht.

This happened because no one stood up.