Kristallnacht Unleashes Nationwide Anti-Jewish Violence
- Date
- 1938
- Category
- Social & demographic
- Region
- Europe (Germany)
- Era
- Modern
- Significance
Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," was the state-orchestrated pogrom that turned Nazi persecution of Jews from legal exclusion into open physical violence.
On the night of 9–10 November 1938, Nazi leaders unleashed coordinated attacks across Germany and annexed Austria, using the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Polish Jew as a pretext. Stormtroopers and civilians burned more than 1,400 synagogues, smashed and looted thousands of Jewish-owned shops and homes, and desecrated cemeteries; the name derives from the shattered glass littering the streets. Roughly 100 Jews were murdered outright, and about 26,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to concentration camps. The regime then compounded the cruelty by fining the Jewish community one billion Reichsmarks in a so-called "atonement payment" and barring them from most economic life. Widely reported in the international press, the violence shocked world opinion yet prompted little concrete rescue. Historians often mark Kristallnacht as the moment persecution tipped toward the systematic terror that would culminate in the Holocaust.
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Empires active in 1938
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- Empire of Japan1868 CE – 1947 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
Related social & demographic events
- Nazi Germany Enacts the Nuremberg Laws1935
- The Holocaust and the 'Final Solution'1941–1945
- Bengal Famine of 19431943–1944
- Influenza pandemic of 1918–19201918–1920
- Emancipation of the serfs in Russia3 March 1861 (19 February O.S.)
- The Great Irish Famine1845–1852
Further reading
The wider story
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