This is the night, the night of Kristallnacht, when all Jewish Synagogues were destroyed.  Families were torn apart and many were killed.  

Shops ruined along with homes.  This was Kristallnacht.  It felt like the end when it was only the beginning.  200 synagogues were burnt down,

91 were killed instantly, and thousands were taken prisoner on this one night.

One of the major reasons Kristallnacht even came about was that a Jewish family was being forced to move.  Their daughter, Berta Grynszpan, wrote a letter to her brother, Herschel Grynszpan, saying they had been forced to move and they were penniless.  Hearing this Herschel became enraged.  The next day he came to Germany and when he got there he bought himself a gun.  This day was November 7, 1983, he entered the German Embassy and shot Ernst vom Rath a minor official.  Two days later vom Rath died.  that night, November 9, 1938, Minister of Propaganda  Joseph Goebbels  and the Nazi's broke into synagogues and burnt them to ash, killed and arrested Jews, and destroyed shops.  This was only the beginning.
Richard Weilheimer is one of the many survivors of Kristallnacht.  He is telling what he remembers from his childhood on the night of Kristallnacht.  From his apartment window in Ludwigshafen, Germany, 65 years ago, Richard Weilheimer gazed down onto a horrifying scene.  People were being beaten and arrested.  They had taken his father away already.  When it was their turn they were very frightened.  His mother took his brothers and sisters and him for a walk.  "It was humanity gone berserk," said Weilheimer.  They went back to their home to find dishes destroyed, clothes and linens had been piled in the center of their living room and ink and molasses had been pored all over them.  "I will never forget the smell of it," he said.  Fred M. Margulies, now 76, remembers and tells what happened to him on Kristallnacht.  He was only eleven at this time.  "It brings back painful memories," he said.  "It fueled the fate for us that life for Jews was over."  He remembers his mother showing up at his school.  His father had been arrested two weeks earlier.  His mother devised a plan for a place to meet in emergency.  This was the entrance of a luggage store.  While waiting for his sister there he saw Torah-Scrolls burning.  He began to cry.  "I kept asking my mother if God had died," she said "What you see today you must never forget for the rest of your life; I cannot forget this and I will never forget this."  Margulies was the only survivor from his family.  His mother Rosa, his father Wolf, and his twelve year old sister Thea.  Weilheimer lost both of his parents Max and Lilly.  Steven Ross is another survivor from Kristallnacht.  "I cherish America, and I kiss the ground that I walk on," he said "I never forget those men that saved me."  Ross had been sent to ten different Nazi labor camps over a span of five years.  He showed items from the camps such as; a hat a part of their uniform, a dish they used to eat off of, and a pair of shoes.  Also he showed figures made from crushed bones from Jews.  "You knew you were going to die, but you didn't want to."  "The only thing that kept  us alive was our religion."

The actual date of Kristallnacht is November 9, 1938.  30,000 Jews were arrested and at least 91 killed on the spot.  Those who were arrested were sent to functioning concentration camps as in, Buchenwald, Dachau, and Sachsenhausen.  The murder of six million Jews, twenty-thousand Gypsies, seventy-thousand handicapped and mental patients, and ten-thousand homosexuals were all murdered.  Kristallnacht means The Night of Broken Glass.  It got its name from all of the shattered glass from synagogues but mainly shop windows.  They were shattered all over the streets and floors of shops.  All of the Jews that were left were forced to clean this mess up out of streets and shops they were made to do this for humiliation.  
The Star of David was a Jewish symbol.  This separated Jews from others.  They were painted on the windows or doors of their shops.  Also a German guard would stand outside a shop to show it was owned by Jews.  Jews were made to wear the Star of David as a patch on either an armband or on their clothing.  This star is unlike our regular five point star.  It has six points and an open center.  If they didn't wear the patch they wore dog tags and carried a pocket book marked with a "Z" meaning Zsido or Jew.  The Star of David was "a mark of shame."
Many were killed many lived but those who lived their lives will never be the same.  They were abused by others just because of their race and religion.  Their life would never be the same after this.  Their families were torn apart  in many families only one or two survived sometimes none survived.  They were humiliated by the Germans because they were of different race and religion.  This was Kristallnacht and will always be remembered. 

 

 

 

Amanda Cahill

7th Social Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust Project

2004

 

Bibliography