"Beginning systematically in the early morning hours in almost every town and city in the country, the wrecking, looting and burning continued all day. Huge, but mostly silent, crowds looked on and the police confined themselves to regulating traffic and making wholesale arrests of Jews 'for their own protection."
Otto Tolischus, The New York Times, November 10, 1938
A crowd gathers to watch the Boerneplatz Synagogue in Frankfurt am Main burn on November 9, 1938. CL:LBI/NY
Arrest and deportation of male Jews of Zeven to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on November 10, 1938. CL:LBI/NY
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Jewish shop in Berlin with shattered windows. CL:Wiener Library. London
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Polish Jewish student living in Paris, in reprisal for the expulsion of his family from Germany, shot Ernst -vom Rath, a German diplomat. It was a convenient pretext to escalate the campaign against the Jews.
As revenge for vom Rath's murder, Josef Goebbels coordinated a nationwide night of antisemitic terror, subsequently known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). On the night of November 9, 1938, synagogues were burned, Jewish shops looted, Jewish homes vandalized, Jews were beaten and abused. Ninety-one were murdered and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
Deportation of male Jews of Berlin to Sachsenhausen concentration camp on November 10, 1938 CL:LBI/NY
"The Fuehrer could really have picked no better man than Heydrich for the campaign against the Jews. For them he was without mercy or pity." Heinrich Himmler, August 25, 1942
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