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Pogrom
conducted throughout Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938. It
was officially presented as a spontaneous outburst provoked by the
assassination of the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris,
Ernst vom Rath, by a 17-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan. The
name Kristallnacht comes from Kristallglas (beveled plate glass) and
refers to the broken shop windows of Jewish stores.
The Kristallnacht riots were the culmination of Nazi assaults made
upon the Jews in Germany and Austria following the Anschluss of
March 1938. Nazi decrees and laws had gradually been undermining the
Jews' public and personal status and increasing their segregation
from the general public. Hermann Goering had made practical and
legal preparations for the “Aryanization” (“Arisierung”) of
Jewish property. The Gestapo and the SS under Heinrich Himmler and
Reinhard Heydrich had launched massive arrests of Jews, who were
then imprisoned in the concentration camps of Dachau, Buchenwald,
and Sachsenhausen. Beginning in July 1938, these camps were being
prepared to receive an even greater number of Jews. Moreover,
functionaries of the National Socialist party, the Gauleiter, and
the SA (Sturmabteilung; Storm Troopers) instigated local assaults on
Jewish businesses and synagogues.
Furthermore, the authorities had increasingly taken to coercing Jews
into leaving the German Reich, disregarding the enormous obstacles
to emigration. More and more individual Jews and entire groups were
forcibly expelled, mainly from Austria and from Czechoslovakia after
the latter had been truncated by the Munich Conference. The
catalytic incident was the deportation of about 17,000 Polish Jews,
who were driven into a no man's land between the two countries on
October 28, 1938. Most of the deportees were left stranded near the
border town of Zbaszyn. Herschel Grynszpan's parents were in this
group. It was news of their plight that drove the desperate youth to
his act of revenge.
Following the shooting of vom Rath on November 7, an inflammatory
editorial appeared in the Voelkischer Beobachter, the official
Nazinewspaper, and sporadic anti-Jewish rioting started on November
8. On the afternoon of November 9, vom Rath died. That same evening,
Joseph Goebbels harangued the “old fighters” of the party who
had gathered in Munich at their annual commemoration of Hitler's
abortive putsch of November 8- 9, 1923. Apparently with Hitler's
consent, Goebbels hinted that this was the hour for action against
the Jews.
Although Goebbels's initiative surprised many top Nazi officials,
instructions for actions were immediately conveyed to all parts of
the country. Spurred on by the SA, mass frenzy broke out: Synagogues
were destroyed and burned; Jewish homes were assaulted; and
Jewish-owned stores were shattered and looted. In many places, Jews
were physically attacked. About 30,000 Jews -- especially the
influential and wealthy -- were arrested, often in accordance with
previously prepared lists, and were thrown into the three
above-mentioned concentration camps, where they were treated with
great cruelty by the SS. This was the first time that riots against
the Jews of Germany, accompanied by mass detention, had been
organized on such an extensive scale. Though the violent onslaught
was officially terminated on November 10, in many places it
continued for several days. In Austria, it started only on the
morning of November 10 but was particularly fierce.
On November 11, Heydrich reported to Goering that 815 shops, 29
department stores, and 171 dwellings of Jews had been burned or
otherwise destroyed, and that 267 synagogues had been set ablaze or
completely demolished (in fact, this was only a fraction of the
synagogues destroyed). The selfsame report refers to 36 Jews killed
and the same number severely injured, but it was later officially
stated that the number killed was 91. In addition, hundreds perished
in the concentration camps.
The pogrom was followed by administrative and legal orders issued
with a fourfold objective: to complete the process of
“Aryanization” to the benefit of the government's disrupted
revenues; to expedite the Jews' emigration; to isolate the Jews
completely from the general population; and, to abolish the still
quasi-autonomous organization of the Reichsvertretung der deutschen
Juden (the representative body of German Jewry) and other official
Jewish institutions. These goals were laid down in a meeting on
November 12 that was called, and presided over, by Goering, who
announced that Hitler had charged him with the implementation of the
Reich's Jewish policy. In the ensuing discussion, the damage to
Jewish property was estimated at several hundred million reichsmarks,
and the insurance payments due to owners of 7,500 demolished stores
was said to be 25 million reichsmarks.
Decisions taken on economic issues included imposing a fine of 1
billion reichsmarks on the Jewish community under the pretext of
reparation for the murder of vom Rath, confiscating the insurance
payments, and, at the same time, making the Jewish store owners
liable for the repairs. “Aryanization” was to be implemented
along the lines already practiced by Hans Fischbock, the Austrian
Minister of Commerce. On Heydrich's suggestion, it was decided to
coordinate the Jews' emigration through a Zentralstelle fuer
juedische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) to be
established in Germany along the lines of the one developed by Adolf
Eichmann in Austria. Some of the economic measures were announced
the same day; additional steps were promulgated during the following
months. The Kristallnacht prisoners surviving in the concentration
camps were released early in 1939 for immediate emigration, or for
the “Aryanization” of their property, and often for both.
The sharp reaction to Kristallnacht in the form of outrage and shock
expressed by the Western press and public did not affect the Nazis.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt recalled the United States
ambassador, Hugh Wilson, in protest, the German ambassador in the
United States was likewise recalled home, because of “American
interference in internal German affairs.” Public pressure did,
however, force most of the Western European governments to admit
more refugees, especially children.
Kristallnacht was the Nazis' first experience of large-scale,
anti-Jewish violence. It opened the way for the complete eradication
of the Jews' position in Germany.
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