"Night of Broken Windows" or "Kristallnacht" - the first mass Jewish pogrom that took place in Germany and Austria, during which about a hundred Jews were killed and all their shops were destroyed.
The reason for the "Night of Broken Windows"
The reason for this event was the assassination on November 7, 1938 of the secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst Eduard vom Rath, by a native of Poland, a Jew Herschel Grinshpan. This happened when, having achieved a personal reception with vom Rath at the embassy, Grinshpan shot him with a revolver.
Despite his experience and professionalism, Ernst Eduard vom Rath served as only the third secretary of the embassy, while distinguished by anti-Hitler views and was recognized by the Gestapo as politically unreliable.
According to his own admission, Grinshpan committed this murder in protest against Germany's anti-Jewish policy. In particular, Grinshpan took revenge for the expulsion of 12,000 Jews from Germany, including his parents. He announced this in a note drawn up before the crime.
Night of Broken Windows
In response to the assassination of its diplomat, the German government closed all Jewish print media in the country and deprived the Jewish population of all civil rights. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, throughout Germany, as well as Austria and the Sudetenland annexed to it, the most massive Jewish pogrom in history took place.
By personal order of Hitler, Nazi stormtroopers and members of the Hitler Youth took to the streets of German cities at night. Their task was to completely destroy all Jewish institutions and organizations. The main target of the rioters was Jewish quarters, where Jews were wealthy enough who could afford to maintain shops and shops. In addition to the Nazis, ordinary German citizens who succumbed to their incitement or who wanted to settle personal scores with the Jews also took part in the Jewish pogroms.
Because of the multitude of broken shop windows, the fragments of which littered the streets, this night of pogroms was called the "Night of Broken Shop Windows" or, as they say more often, "Kristallnacht". In addition, Jewish schools, hospitals and synagogues were destroyed and burned. German institutions, where predominantly Jews worked, did not escape this sad fate.
According to official figures, more than 90 people were killed in one night alone, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned, and almost 7,000 other buildings were destroyed. Unofficial data claim that more than 3,000 Jews died that night.
Results of "Night of Broken Windows"
In addition to the enormous damage and sacrifices suffered by the German Jews and the citizens of Germany who sympathized with them, the consequence of the night pogroms was the expulsion of Jews from the cities, their arrests and sending them to concentration camps. The "Night of Broken Glass" was the beginning of Hitler's "final solution to the Jewish question" and marked the beginning of the Holocaust of the Jews in the Third Reich and the territories it occupied.
