A German diplomat was shot by a Jew in early November 1938. By the next day an uprising of intense anger and hatred and violent retaliation against the Jews began. Kristallnacht-the Night of Broken Glass, November 10, 1938, was a night of fiery destruction. Jewish businesses and synagogues and homes were destroyed. Jewish people were rounded up and abused and murdered. This night, set the tone of continued violent antisemitism that lasted until the end of World War II. The Nazi regime expanded and radicalized measures aimed at removing Jews entirely from German economic and social life in the forthcoming years. The regime moved eventually toward policies of forced emigration, and finally toward the realization of a Germany “free of Jews” ( judenrein) by deportation of the Jewish population “to the East.”

Centuries of culture and communities vanished with the Final Solution. In Rodinsky’s Room by Rachel Rubinstein and Iain Sinclair, she speaks of visiting Poland and finding abandoned, overgrown Jewish cemeteries with no Jews living in the vicinity. The synagogues either gone or abandoned. It’s as if they never existed.Pätzold, Kurt; Runge, Irene (1988). Kristallnacht: Zum Pogrom 1938 (Geschichte) (in German). Köln: Pahl-Rugenstein. ISBN 3-7609-1233-8. That night 91 Jews were murdered, and 25,000-30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps. Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe's House Divided, 1490-1700. New York: Penguin Books Ltd, 2004, pp. 666–67. The Kindertransports of children took many. Sir Nicholas Winton saved many and Captain Foley in Berlin and Dr Feng Shan Ho in Vienna undoubtedly saved thousands by issuing many visas. And some ordinary Germans stood against the tide and did what they could.

Martin Gilbert tells the story by making it real by recounting the experiences of survivors and descendants He writes of the occasional heroes who risked their lives to save others; the diplomats who ignored their governments' instructions and issued visas to allow people to escape and the ordinary people who did their best to hide Jewish neighbours from the Gestapo. Polenaktion" und Pogrome 1938 – "Jetzt rast der Volkszorn. Laufen lassen" ". Der Spiegel (in German). 29 October 2018. Archived from the original on 30 March 2019 . Retrieved 9 November 2018.Kristallnacht: Damages and Death". Holocaust Denial On Trial. Emory University. 2018. Archived from the original on 22 January 2020 . Retrieved 9 September 2019.

NEW CAMPAIGN AGAINST JEWS NAZI OUTBREAKS". 11 November 1938. p.1. Archived from the original on 6 June 2021 . Retrieved 1 May 2017– via Trove. Walter Buch to Goring, 13.2.1939, Michaelis and Schraepler, Ursachen, Vol.12, p. 582 as cited in Friedländer, p. 271. Connolly, Kate (22 October 2008). "Kristallnacht remnants unearthed near Berlin". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 3 September 2013 . Retrieved 7 May 2010. Six million people died as a direct result of the Nazi Final Solution. They died because they were Jewish and for no other reason. Status, accomplishment, and religious practice did not matter. They were German, Austrian, Polish, Russian, French, Dutch, Belgian, and others. This number does not include those killed because the Nazis thought them somehow inferior or the soldiers who died in the World War that began when Germany invaded Poland. We tend to think of the whole history of the Second World War and often ignore its component parts. The great contribution of Martin Gilbert's book is that it shows us what led up to Kristallnacht in November of 1938 and the months before the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Kristallnacht changed the nature of Nazi Germany's persecution of the Jews from economic, political, and social exclusion to physical violence, including beatings, incarceration, and murder; the event is often referred to as the beginning of the Holocaust. In this view, it is not only described as a pogrom, it is also described as a critical stage within a process in which each step becomes the seed of the next step. [80] An account cited that Hitler's green light for Kristallnacht was made with the belief that it would help him realize his ambition of getting rid of the Jews in Germany. [80] Prior to this large-scale and organized violence against the Jews, the Nazi's primary objective was to eject them from Germany, leaving their wealth behind. [80] In the words of historian Max Rein in 1988, "Kristallnacht came...and everything was changed." [81]In the early hours of November 10, coordinated destruction broke out in cities, towns and villages throughout the Third Reich. a b c d "Kristallnacht". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 18 May 2018 . Retrieved 19 May 2018. After the end of World War II, there were hundreds of trials over Kristallnacht. The trials were conducted exclusively by German and Austrian courts; the Allied occupation authorities did not have jurisdiction since none of the victims were Allied nationals. [79] Kristallnacht as a turning point [ edit ] In 1989, Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee and later Vice President of the United States, wrote of an "ecological Kristallnacht" in The New York Times. He opined that events which were then taking place, such as deforestation and ozone depletion, prefigured a greater environmental catastrophe in the same way that Kristallnacht prefigured the Holocaust. [84] Durance, Jonathan. "Silence and Outrage: Reassessing the Complex Christian Response to Kristallnacht in English-Speaking Canada." History of Intellectual Culture 10.1 (2013). online

The violence was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA ( Sturmabteilung : commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth. Between January 1933 and March 1938 more than 35 000 German Jews were granted immigration certificates to Palestine. Following the 1936 Arab Revolt, the British restricted Jewish immigration the Holy Land to 3000 a year. The world’s newspapers reported the unfolding events in mounting horror as a civilised society descended into barbarism and Germany fell into chaos. One newspaper spoke of ‘the racial hatred and hysteria that seemed to have taken complete control of otherwise decent people.’Kristallnacht: A Nationwide Pogrom, November 9–10, 1938". Holocaust Encyclopedia. US Holocaust Memorial Museum . Retrieved 20 May 2008. Foreign countries issued statements of condemnation. Hugh Wilson, the American ambassador to Germany, was summoned home for “consultations” and never returned. In spite of the words, though, most countries, including the United States, kept their restrictive immigration policies against European Jews in place, and there were few ramifications for the Nazis. In view of this being a totalitarian state a surprising characteristic of the situation here is the intensity and scope among German citizens of condemnation of the recent happenings against Jews. [69]