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Kristallnacht
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Kristallnacht (; literally "Crystal night") or the Night of Broken Glass or "night of shattered crystal" was a pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9–10, 1938. On a single night, 91 Jews were murdered and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps. It is often called Novemberpogrom or Reichspogromnacht in German.
The Nazis coordinated an attack on Jewish people and their property in Germany and German-controlled lands as a part of Führer Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic policy.
The consequences of this violence were disastrous for the Jews under the Third Reich.
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Encyclopedia
Kristallnacht (; literally "Crystal night") or the Night of Broken Glass or "night of shattered crystal" was a pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9–10, 1938. On a single night, 91 Jews were murdered and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps. It is often called Novemberpogrom or Reichspogromnacht in German.
The Nazis coordinated an attack on Jewish people and their property in Germany and German-controlled lands as a part of Führer Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic policy.
The consequences of this violence were disastrous for the Jews under the Third Reich. In a single night, Kristallnacht saw the destruction of more than 200 synagogues and the ransacking of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes. A business originally ran by a Jew wasn't allowed to reopen unless managed by a non-Jew. While many view Kristallnacht as the beginning of the systematic eradication of the Jews and served as a prelude to the Holocaust that was to follow, many historians view Kristallnacht as part of an evolving Nazi policy which eventually led to mass genocide.
Context
By the end of the 1920s, most German Jews were fully integrated into German society, living as German citizens with German interests. They served in the German army and navy and contributed to every field of German science, business and culture. The Nazis were elected to power on January 30, 1933, although Hitler did not gain absolute power until the Enabling act was passed on March 23, after the Reichstag fire. By 1938, Jews had been almost completely excluded from German social and political life. Many sought asylum abroad, and thousands did manage to leave, 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."
Historian Eric Johnson notes that in the year before Kristallnacht, the Germans “had entered a new radical phase in anti-Semitic activity.” Although controversial, some historians believe that the Nazi government had been contemplating a planned outbreak of violence against the Jews for some time and were waiting for an appropriate provocation; there is evidence of this planning that dates back to 1937. The Zionist leadership in Palestine wrote in February 1938 “a very reliable private source – one which can be traced back to the highest echelons of the SS leadership, that there is an intention to carry out a genuine and dramatic pogrom in Germany on a large scale in the near future.”
Background
Kristallnacht was the result of more than five years of discrimination and persecution. From its inception in Germany, Hitler's regime moved quickly to introduce anti-Jewish policy. The roughly 500,000 Jews in Germany, who accounted for only 0.76% of the overall population, were singled out by the Nazi propaganda machine as the enemy within who were responsible for Germany's defeat in 1918 and her subsequent economic difficulties.
During 1933, the German government enacted 42 laws restricting the rights of German Jews to earn a living, to enjoy full citizenship and to educate themselves. The most severe of these laws, the law "for the reconstruction of the civil service", forbade Jews to work in any branch of the civil service. The pressure against the Jews continued unabated. Historian Jesse Irwin and many others believe that the program was the start of the Holocaust. During 1934, a further 19 discriminatory laws were introduced. During 1935, the government enacted a further 29 anti-Jewish laws. The Nuremberg Laws "for the protection of German blood and honour" were signed personally by Hitler. These laws prohibited Jews from being citizens of the Reich and forbade the Jews, Roma (Gypsies), blacks, or their offspring to be engaged to "those of German or related blood".
In an attempt to provide help to those affected by these laws, an international conference was held on July 6, 1938 on the shores of Lake Geneva. The conference hoped to address the issue of Jewish and Gypsy immigration to other countries. When the conference was held, more than 250,000 Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by Germany in March 1938. However, more than 300,000 German and Austrian Jews were seeking shelter from the oppression. As the number of Jews and Gypsies wanting to leave grew, the restrictions against them also grew with many countries tightening their rules for admission.
More than 75,000 German and Austrian refugees from Nazism arrived in Britain in the 1930s. Later one in seven of the German and Austrian refugees who came to Britain between 1933 and 1939 volunteered for, and enlisted in, the British Forces; a surprisingly high percentage. They took the unprecedented step of swearing allegiance to King George VI even though, with a few exceptions, they did not receive British nationality until after World War II.
Expulsion of Jews from Germany
On October 28, 1938, more than 12,000 Jews were expelled from Germany on Hitler's orders. These were Polish-born Jews who had been living in Germany legally for many years. They were ordered to leave their homes in a single night, and were only allowed one suitcase per person to store their belongings. As the Jews were taken away, all of their remaining possessions were seized as booty by both the Nazi authorities and by their neighbors.
The deportees were taken from their homes to the nearest railway stations, where they were put on trains to the Polish border. The Polish border guards sent them back over the river into Germany. This stalemate continued for days in the pouring rain, with the Jews marching without food or shelter between the borders. Four thousand were granted entry into Poland; however, the remaining 8,000 were forced to stay at the border. There, in harsh conditions, they waited for the Polish government to allow them into the country. Hundreds more, one British newspaper told its readers, "are reported to be lying about, penniless and deserted, in little villages along the frontier near where they had been driven out by the Gestapo and left."Conditions in the refugee camps "were so bad that some actually tried to escape back into Germany and were shot," recalled a British woman who was sent to help those who had been expelled.
Vom Rath shooting
One expelled couple, who had been living in Hanover for more than 27 years, had a seventeen-year-old son, Herschel Grynszpan, living in Paris. From the border his sister Berta sent him a postcard describing their expulsion: "No one told us what was up, but we realised this was going to be the end." Her final appeal: "We haven't a penny. Could you send us something…?"
Grynszpan received his sister's short message on November 3. The next day he read a graphic account of the deportations in a Paris Yiddish newspaper. Seeking to alleviate the situation, he appealed repeatedly over the next few days to Ernst vom Rath, Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, who could not help him. On the morning of Sunday, November 6, he bought a pistol and loaded it with five cartridges. The next day, Monday, November 7, 1938. Grynzpan went to the German embassy where, "in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews," he shot Vom Rath, hitting him in the stomach. He attempted and missed three additional shots. Two days later, on November 9, vom Rath died.
Germany's response
On November 8, the first collective punitive measures in response to the vom Rath shooting were announced. All Jewish newspapers and magazines were to cease publication immediately. This ban cut off Jews from their leadership, whose task was to advise and guide them, particularly about emigration. It was a measure, one British newspaper explained, "intended to disrupt the Jewish community and rob it of the last frail ties which hold it together." There were at the time three German Jewish newspapers with a national circulation, four cultural papers, several sports papers, and several dozen community bulletins, of which the one in Berlin had a circulation of 40,000.
It was also announced that Jewish children could no longer attend "Aryan" state elementary schools, something that had hitherto been allowed where there were not sufficient Jewish elementary schools. At the same time all Jewish cultural activities were suspended "indefinitely."
Kristallnacht
Following vom Rath's death, the assassination served as a pretext for launching a rampage against Jewish inhabitants throughout Germany.
Planning
Word of vom Rath's death reached Hitler during his “Old Fighters” dinner with several key members of the Nazi party. After intense conversation Hitler left the assembly abruptly without giving his usual address. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivered the speech instead, in which he commented that “the Führer has decided that such demonstrations should not be prepared or organised by the party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” This may seem a fairly innocuous comment, but attending chief party judge Walter Buch later stated that the message was clear; with these words Goebbels had commanded the party leaders to organise the pogrom that would later be known as Kristallnacht.
Some leading party officials disagreed with Goebbels’s actions, fearing the diplomatic crisis it would provoke, and Heinrich Himmler even went so far as to write “I suppose that it is Goebbels’s megalomania…and stupidity which are responsible for starting this operation now, in a particularly difficult diplomatic situation.” Friedlander, among other historians, believes that Goebbels had personal reasons for wanting to bring about Kristallnacht. Goebbels had recently suffered humiliation in the ineffectiveness of his propaganda campaign during the Sudeten crisis, and was in disgrace over an affair with the Czech actress, Lída Baarová. Goebbels thus needed a chance to prove himself in the eyes of Hitler, and Kristallnacht was such an opportunity.
At 1:20am on November 10, 1938, Reinhard Heydrich sent an urgent secret telegram to "All Headquarters and Stations of the State Police, All Districts and Sub-districts of the SA" containing instructions regarding the riots.
Riots
The timing of the riots varied from unit to unit. The Gauleiters started at about 10:30pm, only two hours after news of vom Rath’s death reached Germany. They were followed by the SA at 11pm, and the SS at around 1:20am. Most were wearing civilian clothes and were armed with sledgehammers and axes, and soon went to work on the destruction of Jewish property. The orders given to these men were very specific, however: no measures endangering non-Jewish German life or property were to be taken (synagogues too close to non-Jewish property were smashed rather than burned); Jewish businesses or dwellings could be destroyed but not looted; foreigners (even Jewish foreigners) were not to be the subjects of violence; and synagogue archives were to be transferred to the S.D. The men were also ordered to arrest as many Jews as the local jails would hold, the preferred targets being healthy young men.
The SA shattered the storefronts of about 7500 Jewish stores and businesses, hence the appellation Kristallnacht (Crystal Night). Jewish homes were ransacked all throughout Germany, with a mixture of Stormtroopers (SA) and a few German citizens going to destroy buildings with sledgehammers, leaving the streets covered in smashed windows of destroyed businesses the next morning (the origin of the name “Crystal Night”). Although violence against Jews had not been explicitly condoned by the authorities, there were cases of Jews being beaten or assaulted.
This pogrom damaged, and in many cases destroyed, about 1,574 synagogues (constituting nearly all Germany had), many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores. Some Jews were beaten to death while others were forced to watch. More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps; primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. The treatment of prisoners in the camps was brutal, but most were released during the following three months on condition that they leave Germany.
The number of German Jews killed is uncertain. The number killed in the two-day riot is most often cited as 91. In addition, it is thought that there were hundreds of suicides. Counting deaths in the concentration camps, around 2,000-2,500 deaths were directly or indirectly attributable to the Kristallnacht pogrom. A few non-Jewish Germans, mistaken for Jews, were also killed.
The synagogues, some centuries old, were also victims of considerable violence and vandalism, with the tactics the Stormtroops practiced on these and other sacred sites described as “approaching the ghoulish” by the United States Consul in Leipzig. Tombstones were uprooted and graves violated. Fires were lit, and prayer books, scrolls, artwork and philosophy texts were thrown upon them, and precious buildings were either burned or smashed until unrecognisable. Eric Lucas recalls the destruction of the synagogue that a tiny Jewish community had constructed in a small village only twelve years earlier:
After this, the Jewish community was fined 1 billion reichsmarks. In addition, it cost 4 million marks to repair the windows.
Events in only recently annexed Austria were no less horrendous. Of the entire Kristallnacht only the pogrom in Vienna was completely successful. Most of Vienna's 94 synagogues and prayer-houses were partially or totally destroyed. People were subjected to all manner of humiliations, including being forced to scrub the pavements whilst being tormented by their fellow Austrians, some of whom had been their friends and neighbours.
Official figures released after the event by Reinhard Heydrich stated that 191 Synagogues were destroyed, with 76 completely demolished; 100,000 Jews were arrested; three foreigners were arrested; 174 people were arrested for looting Jewish shops; and 815 Jewish businesses were destroyed.
The Daily Telegraph correspondent, Hugh Carleton Greene, wrote of events in Berlin:
Concentration camps
The violence was officially called to a stop by Goebbels on November 11, but violence continued against the Jews in the concentration camps despite orders requesting “special treatment” to ensure that this did not happen. On November 23 the News Chronicle newspaper of London published an article on an incident at one concentration camp Sachsenhausen. Sixty-two Jews suffered punishment so severe that the police “unable to bear their cries, turned their backs”. They were beaten until they fell, and when they fell, they were further beaten. For half an hour they were submitted to this “orgy” of violence. At the end of it, “twelve of the sixty-two were dead, their skulls smashed. The others were all unconscious. The eyes of some had been knocked out, their faces flattened and shapeless”. The 30,000 Jewish men who had been imprisoned during Kristallnacht were released over the next three months, but by then over 2,000 had died.
Aftermath
The top Nazi official Hermann Göring met with other members of the Nazi leadership on November 12 to plan the next steps after the riot, setting the stage for formal government action. In the transcript of the meeting Göring said,
'I have received a letter written on the Führer's orders requesting that the Jewish question be now, once and for all, coordinated and solved one way or another... I should not want to leave any doubt, gentlemen, as to the aim of today's meeting. We have not come together merely to talk again, but to make decisions, and I implore competent agencies to take all measures for the elimination of the Jew from the German economy, and to submit them to me.'
The persecution and economic damage done to German Jews did not stop with the pogrom, even as their places of business were ransacked. They were also forced to pay "Judenvermögensabgabe", a collective fine of 1 billion Marks for the murder of vom Rath (equal to roughly $US5.5 billion in today’s currency), which was levied by the compulsory acquisition of 20% of all Jewish property by the state. Six million deutchmarks of insurance payments for property damage due to the Jewish community were to be paid to the government instead as "damages to the German Nation".
The number of emigrating Jews surged as those who were able left the country, and this was a desirable outcome for the Nazi party. In the ten months following Kristallnacht, more than 115,000 Jews emigrated from the Reich. The majority went to other European countries, the US and Palestine, and at least 14,000 made it to Shanghai. As part of government policy, the Nazis seized houses, shops, and other property the emigres left behind.
Several major nations condemned the acts, though the Nazi party never faced significant repercussions, and came to see that the world would tolerate the persecution of Jews on a mass scale.
Responses to Kristallnacht
of November 11, 1938 refers to the attacks occurring "under the direction of Stormtroopers and Nazi party members", but also said that Goebbels called a stop to it.]]
From the Germans
The reaction of non-Jewish Germans to Kristallnacht was varied. Martin Gilbert believes that “many non-Jews resented the round up”, his opinion being supported by German witness Dr. Arthur Flehinger who recalls seeing “people crying while watching from behind their curtains”. Some even went as far as to help Jews, but the majority merely sat inside watching in horror, feeling helpless to do anything. Other non-Jewish Germans took part in the violence, as it was not just Stormtroopers rioting. Evidence of this can be established in that riots broke out on the night of November 7 and continued in some places after the pogrom was called to a halt; thus it may be surmised that these successive actions were not those of the Nazis. Also, several sources mention women and children as participating in the riots, and these were clearly not Stormtroopers but ordinary citizens. The number of German citizens involved in the riots is impossible to know, as many Stormtroopers were wearing civilian clothes and were thus indistinguishable.
Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after the Kristallnacht; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On November 10, 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." Diarmaid MacCulloch argued that Luther's 1543 pamphlet On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht.
In an article released for publication on the evening of November 11, Goebbels ascribed the events of Kristallnacht to the "healthy instincts" of the German people. He went on to explain: "The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."
Eyewitness accounts show the general response. Reports of the destruction are the main focus of the article.
"They ripped up the belongings, the books, knocked over furniture, shouted obscenities,"
The scholarly response in that article is very much the same:
"Houses of worship burned down, vandalized, in every community in the country where people either participate or watch,"
There are reports of "destroying...family heirlooms" and many other acts of vandalism.
From the global community
The Kristallnacht pogrom sparked international outrage. It discredited pro-Nazi movements in Europe and North America, leading to eventual decline of their support. Many newspapers condemned Kristallnacht, with some comparing it to the murderous pogroms incited by Imperial Russia in the 1880s. The United States recalled its ambassador (but did not break off diplomatic relations) while other governments severed diplomatic relations with Germany in protest.
As such, Kristallnacht also marked a turning point in relations between Nazi Germany and the rest of the world. The brutality of the program and the Nazi government's deliberate policy of encouraging the violence once it had begun, laid bare the repressive nature and widespread anti-Semitism entrenched in Germany, and turned world opinion sharply against the Nazi regime, with some politicians even calling for war.
Kristallnacht as a turning point
Kristallnacht changed the nature of persecution from economic, political, and social to the physical with beatings, incarceration, and murder; the event is often referred to as the beginning of the Holocaust. In the words of historian Max Rein in 1988, "Kristallnacht came…and everything was changed."
While November 1938 predated overt articulation of "the Final Solution," it nonetheless foreshadowed the genocide to come. Around the time of Kristallnacht, the Schutzstaffel newspaper "Das Schwarze Korps" called for a "destruction by swords and flames." At a conference on the day after the pogrom, Hermann Göring said: "The Jewish problem will reach its solution if, in any time soon, we will be drawn into war beyond our border—then it is obvious that we will have to manage a final account with the Jews."
Specifically, the Nazis managed to achieve in Kristallnacht all the theoretical targets they set for themselves: confiscation of Jewish belongings to provide finances for the military buildup to war, separation and isolation of the Jews, and most importantly, the move from the anti-Semitic policy of discrimination to one of physical damage, which began that night and continued until the end of World War II.
The event nonetheless showed the public attitude was not solidly behind the perpetrators. Many Germans at the time found the pogroms troubling, as they equated them with the days of the SA street rule and lawlessness. The British Embassy at Berlin and British Consular offices throughout Germany received many protests and expressions of disquiet from members of the German public about the anti-Jewish actions of the time.
Etymology
The incident was originally referred to as die Kristallnacht (literally "crystal night" or the "night of the broken glass"), alluding to the enormous number of shop windows (mostly at Jewish-owned stores) that were broken that night.
The prefix Reichs- (imperial) was later added (Reichskristallnacht) as a sardonic comment on the Nazis' propensity to add this prefix to various terms and titles like Reichsführer-SS (Himmler) or Reichsmarschall (Göring). This was also done in other contexts to ridicule and criticize aspects of the Nazi dictatorship (e.g. Reichswasserleiche - "National Drowned Body" for actress Kristina Söderbaum, who frequently played tragic heroines in her husband Veit Harlan's anti-Semitic melodramas, two of whom committed suicide by drowning.)
Other names
Reichskristallnacht , meaning Imperial crystal nightPogromnacht , meaning pogrom nightReichspogromnacht , meaning Imperial pogrom nightNovemberpogrome, meaning November pogromsCrystal Night, literal English translationNight of [broken] glass, the meaning of the phrase
Modern response
Many decades later, association with the Kristallnacht anniversary was cited as the main reason against choosing November 9 ("Schicksalstag"), the day the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, as the new German national holiday; a different day was chosen (October 3, 1990, German reunification).
Avant-garde guitarist Gary Lucas's 1988 composition "Verklärte Kristallnacht", which juxtaposes the Israeli national anthem, "Hatikvah," with phrases from "Deutschland Über Alles" amid wild electronic shrieks and noise, is intended to be a sonic representation of the horrors of Kristallnacht. It was premiered at the 1988 Berlin Jazz Festival and received rave reviews. (The title is a reference to Arnold Schoenberg's 1899 work "Verklärte Nacht" that presaged his pioneering work on atonal music; Schoenberg was an Austrian Jew exiled by the Nazis).
The German power metal band Masterplan's debut album, Masterplan (2003), features an anti-Nazism song entitled "Crystal Night" as the fourth track.
The popular German band BAP published a song titled Kristallnaach in their Cologne dialect, dealing with the emotions of the Kristallnacht.
Recent archeological finds
A dumping ground for the destroyed remains of Jewish property plundered during Kristallnacht has been found in Brandenburg, north of Berlin by Yaron Svoray, an investigative journalist.
The site, which is the size of four football pitches, contains an extensive array of personal and ceremonial items looted during orchestrated nationwide riots against Jewish property and places of worship on the night of November 9 1938. It is believed the goods were brought by rail to the outskirts of the village and dumped on designated land. Among the items found were glass bottles engraved with the Star of David, mezuzot, painted window sills, and the armrests of chairs found in synagogues, in addition to an ornamental swastika.
See also
Further reading
Books in English
Books in German
- Hans-Dieter Arntz "Reichskristallnacht". Der Novemberpogrom 1938 auf dem Lande - Gerichtsakten und Zeugenaussagen am Beispiel der Eifel und Voreifel, Helios-Verlag, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-938208-69-4
ISBN Unknown. ASIN B0014NJ88M. Available at (PDF)
Online resources
- Hitler 'led henchmen' in Kristallnacht riots, Daily Telegraph, Oct. 21, 2008
- Hitler gave the order, Haaretz, Oct. 31, 2008
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