Last edited Mon Nov 17, 2025, 11:02 AM - Edit history (1)
- Holocaust Survivors Remember Kristallnacht, the Night That Changed Everything. Nov. 2025, 6 mins.
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- KRISTALLNACHT, Holocaust Encylopedia.
On the night of November 9–10, 1938, Nazi German leaders unleashed a nationwide anti-Jewish riot. The violence was supposed to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. In reality, this was state-sponsored vandalism, arson, and terror. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). It is also referred to as the November Pogrom.
KEY FACTS 1 During Kristallnacht, Nazis burned more than 1,400 synagogues, vandalized thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, broke into Jewish people’s apartments and homes, and desecrated Jewish religious objects. They also humiliated, assaulted, and killed Jewish people.
2 As part of Kristallnacht, the German police imprisoned about 26,000 Jewish men in concentration camps just because they were Jewish.
3 In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazi regime ordered the Jewish community to pay a 1 billion Reichsmark “atonement payment.” The regime also rapidly enacted many anti-Jewish laws and decrees.
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Kristallnacht was a nationwide, violent anti-Jewish riot that took place throughout Nazi Germany on November 9 and 10, 1938. During Kristallnacht, groups of Nazis and other Germans targeted Jewish places of worship, stores and businesses, homes, and people. The perpetrators included Nazi Party officials and members of Nazi Party organizations, especially the SA, SS, and Hitler Youth. German civilians unaffiliated with these Nazi organizations also participated. Many took the opportunity to steal items from vandalized Jewish homes and businesses, and to publicly humiliate their Jewish neighbors.
Top Nazi leaders coordinated and instigated the Kristallnacht riot. However, they intended for it to look like an unplanned outburst of popular anger against Jews. They portrayed the violence as a spontaneous response to a Jewish teenager’s assassination of a minor German diplomat. But the violence was not spontaneous. Nazi officials used the incident as an excuse to launch the riot.
Kristallnacht was state-sponsored vandalism and arson. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and other top Nazis actively coordinated the riot with the support of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
"Kristallnacht": nationwide pogrom...
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht
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