The mobs attacked Jewish people, beating them and humiliating them in the streets and killing at least 96 people. And they rounded up an estimated 30, Jewish men, arresting them and sending most to concentration camps.
Though the attacks seemed random, most were carried out by Nazi Party adherents who had been given instructions to riot as police looked the other way. The damage was devastating, but it was only the beginning. In the aftermath, the German government blamed the Jews for the attacks against them, levied a massive fine on German Jews, and forced them to hand over insurance payouts they received for the damage. A series of strict anti-Jewish laws followed.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Twice a week we compile our most fascinating features and deliver them straight to you. Rath died two days later from his wounds, and Hitler attended his funeral.
Kristallnacht was the result of that rage. Starting in the late hours of November 9 and continuing into the next day, Nazi mobs torched or otherwise vandalized hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and damaged, if not completely destroyed, thousands of Jewish homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries.
Nearly Jews were murdered during the violence. Nazi officials ordered German police officers and firemen to do nothing as the riots raged and buildings burned, although firefighters were allowed to extinguish blazes that threatened Aryan-owned property.
In the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, the streets of Jewish communities were littered with broken glass from vandalized buildings, giving rise to the name Night of Broken Glass. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Additionally, more than 30, Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Dachau , Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germany—camps that were specifically constructed to hold Jews, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state.
On November 15, , Franklin D. Roosevelt , the American president, responded to Kristallnacht by reading a statement to the media in which he harshly denounced the rising tide of anti-Semitism and violence in Germany. He also recalled Hugh Wilson, his ambassador to Germany. One reason was anxiety over the possibility that Nazi infiltrators would be encouraged to legally settle in the U.
A more obscured reason was the anti-Semitic views held by various upper-echelon officials in the U. State Department. One such administrator was Breckinridge Long , who was responsible for carrying out policies relating to immigration. The violence of Kristallnacht served notice to German Jews that Nazi anti-Semitism was not a temporary predicament and would only intensify. As a result, many Jews began to plan an escape from their native land.
Arthur Spanier and Albert Lewkowitz were two who wanted to come to the U. After Kristallnacht, he was sent to a concentration camp, but was released upon receiving a job offer from the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Hebrew Union College.
Spanier applied for an American visa, but none was forthcoming. Julian Morgenstern , president of the college, traveled to Washington, D. Morgenstern was told that Spanier was denied the visa because he was a librarian and, according to U. State Department rules, a visa could not be issued to an academic in a secondary educational position even if a major American educational institution had pledged to support him.
Lewkowitz, a philosophy professor at the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary, was granted a visa. He and Spanier traveled to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, but were trapped there when the Germans invaded in May Bureaucrats at the American consulate suggested that he acquire another visa from Germany.
It would become known as Kristallnacht , "the night of broken glass. On the night of November 9, , rampaging mobs attacked Jews in the street, in their homes, and at their places of work and worship.
Nazi storm troopers allowed the destruction and arrested as many Jews as the jails could hold. Broken glass littered the streets in front of burning synagogues. By the end of the night, 91 Jews were dead, more than synagogues were burned, nearly 7, Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30, Jewish men had been deported to concentration camps. The following day Goebbels wrote in his diary: "As was to be expected, the entire nation is in uproar. This is one dead man who is costing the Jews dear.
Our darling Jews will think twice in future before simply gunning down German diplomats.
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