The events of Kristallnacht represented one of the most important turning points in National Socialist antisemitic policy. Historians have noted that after the pogrom, anti-Jewish policy was concentrated more and more concretely into the hands of the SS. Moreover, the passivity with which most German civilians responded to the violence signaled to the Nazi regime that the German public was prepared for more radical measures.

Some lawmakers who hoped to change the country’s restrictive immigration quota laws saw an opportunity in the wave of sympathy among Americans for refugees after Kristallnacht. On February 9, 1939, Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-NY) and Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R-MA) introduced identical bills into Congress to offer refuge to 20,000 children under 14 from the Greater German Reich. Despite widespread support, the Wagner-Rogers Bill died in Congress. The quota system remained unchanged throughout the war and into the 1960s. A Turning PointIn its aftermath, German officials announced that Kristallnacht had erupted as a spontaneous outburst of public sentiment in response to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath. Vom Rath was a German embassy official stationed in Paris. Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, had shot the diplomat on November 7, 1938. A few days earlier, German authorities had expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany from the Reich; Grynszpan had received news that his parents, residents in Germany since 1911, were among them. Pogrom November 1938: Testimonies from Kristallnacht, Edited by Ruth Levitt, book review: Night hope was shattered NARRATOR: Hitler's Reich in the 1930s - the propaganda of the Nazi regime appeals to the German ethnic community, and decides who belongs where, from childhood onwards. Those who don't fit the picture, such as the Jews, are disdained, disenfranchised, persecuted. It begins with the boycotting of Jewish businesses, and leads ever more frequently to violence. Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, was arrested as a member of the anti-fascist resistance during the war and deported to Auschwitz. His impassioned attempt to understand the 'rationale' behind the concentration camps was completed shortly before his death in 1987.

Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence. Assassination of Ernst vom Rath During the pogrom, some 30,000 Jewish males were rounded up and taken to concentration camps. This was the first time Nazi officials made massive arrests of Jews specifically because they were Jews, without any further cause for arrest. The president also announced that he had recalled the US ambassador to Germany, Hugh Wilson. The United States was the only nation to recall its ambassador and would not replace him until after the end of the war in 1945.We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. In the immediate aftermath of the pogrom, many German leaders, like Hermann Göring, criticized the extensive material losses produced by the antisemitic riots, pointing out that if nothing were done to intervene, German insurance companies—not Jewish-owned businesses—would have to bear the costs of the damages. Nevertheless, Göring and other top party leaders decided to use the opportunity to introduce measures to eliminate Jews and perceived Jewish influence from the German economic sphere. The violence was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA ( Sturmabteilung : commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth. It’s easy enough to think that the Holocaust is simply a relic of the past; that it belongs only in history textbooks or in museum displays. Yet, the devastation and destruction it caused lives on today, which is why remembering it is so important. How did the events of Kristallnacht compare to previous anti-Jewish actions and violence in Germany under the Nazis?

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.” Significantly, Kristallnacht marks the first instance in which the Nazi regime incarcerated Jews on a massive scale simply on the basis of their ethnicity. Hundreds died in the camps as a result of the brutal treatment they endured. Most did obtain release over the next three months on the condition that they begin the process of emigration from Germany. Indeed , the effects of Kristallnacht would serve as a spur to the emigration of Jews from Germany in the months to come. Aftermath

November 9–10

LORE MAY: "There were 500, 600 people - Germans, shouting and singing. There was a lady, I couldn't see her face. They pulled her down the street by her hair."