In the night of the 9. November 1938 are everywhere, Germany’s synagogues, shops, homes destroyed. Jews are abused and humiliated – in front of the eyes of the Germans and the world.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Nocturnal Violence Orgies
Anti-Semitic groups, led by the para-military SA, raged in Nazi Germany. They destroyed synagogues like this one in Chemnitz and other Jewish buildings or shops. The Jews were publicly humiliated and detained for at least 91 of them were killed in the nocturnal Orgy of Violence.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Broken Glass
In view of the many broken Windows, and crystal chandeliers from the synagogues, and shops, you spoke earlier of the “Reich crystal night”. Towards the end of the 1980s, this term has been problematized more and more. Today, you referred to the Attacks as the night of broken glass or November pogroms.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Assassination as a pretext
The Nazis justified their anti-Jewish pogroms with the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris on 7. November. Perpetrators of the 17-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan. This had experienced a few days previously of the violent expulsion of his family. It is not known whether Grynszpan survived the third Reich or in a concentration camp died.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Permission of Hitler
After the assassination in Paris granted Adolf Hitler’s propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, the oral permission to start with the most violent measures against the Jews. In some places of Germany, it was already came to the Assault. In the case of the Goebbels initiated Kristallnacht, only such measures that were approved, “which do not jeopardize German life or property”.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Participation in violence
The national socialist party, denied any involvement in the Pogrom, but clues in documents where “operations” and “measures” is mentioned, proved the involvement of the party and state apparatus. The majority of non-Jewish Germans kept distance to the Pogrom. But there were also citizens who welcomed the riots or to violence and looting involved.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Racism and money
Their racist ideology, the Nazis wanted to intimidate the Jews to leave Germany voluntarily. To this end, Jews often led to a humiliating way through the streets. The Nazis acted also of economic interest. Jews who fled the third Reich, were loaded with a high “emigration taxes”, their property was confiscated.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Shy in front of the press echo
At the latest after the pogrom night of world public opinion was known to the Jews hostility of the national socialists. But the third Reich under Hitler shied away from the bad international press echo. Therefore, they decided to first anti-Jewish measures, which were not open forcibly. Among other things, the Jews were forced to wear a yellow star of David on their clothes.
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Cynical Claim
The Nazi leadership launched a whole series of other anti-Jewish measures. Full of cynicism, they demanded of them a duty to pay the damages during the night from the 9. on the 10. November 1939. The second most powerful man in the third Reich, Hermann Goering, said the infamous phrase: “I don’t want to be in Germany for a Jew.”
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Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
“Prelude to genocide”
In 1938, the beginning of the Holocaust was removed for two years. But the pogrom to mass murder of the Jews in Europe, there was a continuous development, in which the Nazi leadership intensified its anti-Semitic measures. In the words of a contemporary historian, the Pogrom was a “prelude to genocide”.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Nocturnal Violence Orgies
Anti-Semitic groups, led by the para-military SA, raged in Nazi Germany. They destroyed synagogues like this one in Chemnitz and other Jewish buildings or shops. The Jews were publicly humiliated and detained for at least 91 of them were killed in the nocturnal Orgy of Violence.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Broken Glass
In view of the many broken Windows, and crystal chandeliers from the synagogues, and shops, you spoke earlier of the “Reich crystal night”. Towards the end of the 1980s, this term has been problematized more and more. Today, you referred to the Attacks as the night of broken glass or November pogroms.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Assassination as a pretext
The Nazis justified their anti-Jewish pogroms with the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris on 7. November. Perpetrators of the 17-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan. This had experienced a few days previously of the violent expulsion of his family. It is not known whether Grynszpan survived the third Reich or in a concentration camp died.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Permission of Hitler
After the assassination in Paris granted Adolf Hitler’s propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, the oral permission to start with the most violent measures against the Jews. In some places of Germany, it was already came to the Assault. In the case of the Goebbels initiated Kristallnacht, only such measures that were approved, “which do not jeopardize German life or property”.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Participation in violence
The national socialist party, denied any involvement in the Pogrom, but clues in documents where “operations” and “measures” is mentioned, proved the involvement of the party and state apparatus. The majority of non-Jewish Germans kept distance to the Pogrom. But there were also citizens who welcomed the riots or to violence and looting involved.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Racism and money
Their racist ideology, the Nazis wanted to intimidate the Jews to leave Germany voluntarily. To this end, Jews often led to a humiliating way through the streets. The Nazis acted also of economic interest. Jews who fled the third Reich, were loaded with a high “emigration taxes”, their property was confiscated.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Shy in front of the press echo
At the latest after the pogrom night of world public opinion was known to the Jews hostility of the national socialists. But the third Reich under Hitler shied away from the bad international press echo. Therefore, they decided to first anti-Jewish measures, which were not open forcibly. Among other things, the Jews were forced to wear a yellow star of David on their clothes.
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
Cynical Claim
The Nazi leadership launched a whole series of other anti-Jewish measures. Full of cynicism, they demanded of them a duty to pay the damages during the night from the 9. on the 10. November 1939. The second most powerful man in the third Reich, Hermann Goering, said the infamous phrase: “I don’t want to be in Germany for a Jew.”
-
Kristallnacht: the Night the synagogues burned
“Prelude to genocide”
In 1938, the beginning of the Holocaust was removed for two years. But the pogrom to mass murder of the Jews in Europe, there was a continuous development, in which the Nazi leadership intensified its anti-Semitic measures. In the words of a contemporary historian, the Pogrom was a “prelude to genocide”.
“I may be 10 in the Morning. November to remember,” says W. Michael Blumenthal. “My father was arrested in the early Morning. In the midst of the General excitement, and in spite of the ban of my mother, I could walk unnoticed on the street. I saw the chosen window on the Kurfürstendamm shopping street and still Smoking, but not burning of the synagogue in the fasanenstrasse.” Blumenthal was then just twelve years old. 75 years later, in 2013, he was again in Berlin, as Director of the Jewish Museum. And as an American, which was once German.
After the fire-setting of 9. November smoke the end of the synagogue in Berlin’s fasanenstrasse
Humiliated and beaten
In the night from 9. on the 10. November, there were in the whole of Germany and Austria, terrible acts of violence against Jews. Hundreds of synagogues and prayer houses were looted, destroyed and set fire to it. People have been murdered, humiliated on the open road, beaten, and in some cases – only because they were Jews. The police looked on, the firefighters extinguished the burned down synagogues and Jewish shops, but only the surrounding houses.
And this was only the beginning. Already on 10. November brought 30,000 Jewish men to concentration camps in Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. Including the father of W. Michael Blumenthal. “I still remember my mother’s words, as he was led away by two police officers. ‘What is it? What are you doing with him? What has he done? Where is he?’ Even as a twelve-year-old child, you feel the fear of adults, in this case, my mother.”
W. Michael Blumenthal was in the 70s, the US Treasury Secretary. From 1997 to 2014 he was the Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin (archive image)
Why the 9. November 1938?
Physical Assault and intimidation were in Germany already since the seizure of power by the national socialists in 1933, at the sad agenda. The Nuremberg laws established in 1935, who was a Jew, many were suddenly to ban the profession. Further laws were linearized limited access to public spaces, Jewish property was expropriated in many cases already – “” -.
But: “It is important that you understand the November 1938 as a turning point in the story,” says the historian Raphael Gross, the head of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. “After 1938, what is called the era of German Jewry was over. The German company was then a other.”
In this night, far more to break than glass. 91 people were killed, thousands of Jews on the following day arrested. Those who could, left the country.
For the national socialists welcome occasion for the Pogrom was the assassination of the Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan to the German diplomat delivers Ernst vom Rath on 7. November in Paris. After the German Radio has reported the fact, break out in some German cities, anti-Jewish riots. In Germany, the riots begin, however, until two days later – after Hitler personally gave the command to do this.
From Munich, where the entire Nazi leadership to the anniversary of the Hitler putsch has gathered, finally, Reich propaganda Minister Goebbels made a speech, in which he orders to destroy Jewish businesses and to put synagogues on fire. The police should not intervene, the fire brigade alone, “Aryan” property. Looting is prohibited.
This image of the destruction of Jewish shops on the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin went around the world: The New York Times reported on 20.11.1938
This is implemented in the same night. Not only in Berlin but also in Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt, in small cities, towns, villages, in the whole of Germany. “For various reasons the Germans have been through either or weggeguckt,” recalls Blumenthal. Even if this did not mean that all the fallen have, what happened. But: “Many of them have still and enter where’s my coffee?”
“The November 1938 happened in front of all eyes, in front of the press in the world, in front of the legations, to all citizens,” says the historian Raphael Gross.
“The Kurfürstendamm shopping street looked like a battle field”
In spite of the official ban is on 9. and 10. November plundered. “On the streets you saw gangs of young people from the Israelite houses of God showed stolen cult objects around […]”, reported the Brazilian Embassy. All Germany-based diplomats informed their countries about the incidents. “The reports are full of disgust, and words such as ‘cultural barbarism’,” says Hermann Simon. The Director of the Centrum Judaicum, it is able to collect reports from Hamburg to Innsbruck, and from Cologne to Breslau – written by diplomats from 20 countries, who were stationed in 1938 in Germany. Soon you will be to read in an exhibition.
The British Consul General in Frankfurt, Robert T. small bones not only reports, It provides thousands of travelers with which the Jews to England can escape
As the Polish Consul General in Leipzig. He describes the fate of the family of a Polish citizen Sparrow. “Sparrow’s wife was stripped naked, and the thugs tried to rape you.”
The Latvian Ambassador it is stated: “The Kurfürstendamm shopping street looked like a battle field”. The Finnish representatives reported on the “devastating criticism” of the population. “I’m ashamed as a German”, is “a very common Expression that one hears”.
The world is watching
Concrete demands or proposals for action to their home governments, the diplomats do not send. “It is a Wait and the deceptive hope that we could arrange somehow with the Regime”, says Hermann Simon. “In this respect, the Echo is on the reports is relatively low.”
Raphael Gross, disagrees: “In the Wake of the November, 1938, the children begin shipments to England. It is quite responsive States, but much too little.” That the national socialists would take the Plan to all the Jews in the world murdered, not able to refrain this time, but still, he says.
And so the Italian Counsellor writes on the 16.11.1938: “It is […] not to imagine that 500,000 people a day are all placed on the wall or to self-murder, convicted, or that it locks them into giant concentration camps.” A fatal misjudgement.
The family of W. Michael Blumenthal in 1938, is able to escape to Shanghai. It is the only place to go at this time, refugees without visas to the country.
This article was published five years ago, for the first time. The former Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, W. Michael Blumenthal (92), since 2014.
To Read More:
– W. Michael Blumenthal: In eighty years, around the world. My Life. Ullstein, 2010.
– Raphael: November 1938. The disaster before the disaster. C. H. Beck,
2013.