November 9 - Kristallnacht

This Day in History: 9 November 2020

 

9 November 1938

 

82 years ago, today, the Nazis launched Kristallnacht, a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. It was dubbed as 'Kristallnacht', meaning 'Night of Broken Glass' after the many smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments. This event left around 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged, and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalised. It is estimated that 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were subsequently sent to concentration camps and were released when they promised to leave Germany. The pogrom represented a dramatic escalation of the anti-Semitic campaign by Adolf Hitler.

 

In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazis blamed the Jews and fined them 1 billion marks for Ernst vom Rath's death, who was a German diplomat in Paris, killed by a Polish Jew. This was used as an excuse to carry out the attacks. In repayment, the government seized Jewish property and kept insurance money owed to Jewish people. Further discriminatory policies that excluded Jews from public life were enacted to create the master Aryan race. This led to the fleeing of 100,000 Jews from Germany, and outrage from other nations. Some countries broke off diplomatic relations with Germany, but the Nazis suffered no serious consequences, leading them to believe that they could get away with mass murder in the Holocaust.

 

Want to find out more about Kristallnacht? Click here for more information, or here for more about the Holocaust.

More on the wall

Here is a Berlin Wall quiz, courtesy of German magazine "Der Spiegel". There is also an interesting interview with Lieutenant-Colonel Harald Jäger, the first border guard to allow East Germans to cross into the west. He explains why he made that decision, revealing the chaos and confusion of the East German government that evening.

Der Spiegel also takes a closer look at the significance of 9 November in German history, which also marks 1918 German Revolution which brought down the Kaiser, Adolf Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, and Kristallnacht in 1938.

PS: 9 November was also the date of the execution Robert Blum, one of the leaders of the 1848 Revolution in Germany, and was the date of the foundation of the SS in 1925. It is therefore referred to in Germany as the "Day of Fate" (Schicksalstag)

PPS: Here's Pravda's take on the anniversary. Apparently the fall of the wall triggered "the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th Century"...