Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews had been murdered.
About Kristallnacht in brief
Kristallnacht was a pogrom against Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. Some historians believe that the Nazi government had been a planned outbreak of violence against the Jews and were waiting for an appropriate provocation. Historians view Kristallnacht as a prelude to the Final Solution and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews had been murdered. When deaths from post-arrest maltreatment and subsequent suicides are included, the death toll reaches the hundreds, with Richard J. Evans estimating 638 deaths by suicide. Many sought asylum abroad; hundreds of thousands emigrated, but as Chaim Weizmann wrote in 1936, ‘The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter.’ The international Évian Conference on 6 July 1938 addressed the issue of Jewish and Gypsy immigration to other countries. By the time the conference took place, more than 250,000 Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by Germany in March 1938. More than 300,000 German and Austrian Jews continued to seek refuge and asylum from oppression. Many historians believe there is evidence of the Gauleiters of the NSDiters planning to seize Jewish property and property.
This was only one aspect of the origin of the November pogom. In the fall of 1938, increased pressure on the Jewish property nourished the Jewish party’s ambition, especially since Hjalmar Schmar had been ousted as Reich minister for economics. The need for money for money, however, was one of the reasons for the pogrome. In a 1997 interview dating back to 1937, Hans Mommsen claimed that a major motive was the desire to seize the property of the Jewish Party of Germany (Gauleiterkreis) and its local and regional organizations. He said: ‘If you want to make a difference in the world, you have to make the difference in your own life. You can’t do that if you’re a Jew or a Jew-American. You have to be able to stand up for what you believe in and say what you think is right and to do what you feel is right for your own people.” He added: “You have to have the courage to stand your ground and say that you are a Jew and that you believe that you have the right to be a Jew.“. The name KristallNacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.
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This page is based on the article Kristallnacht published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 07, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
