On the night of November 9th and 10th a devastating event occurred.  All through the streets a Germany, Jewish shops were ransacked, synagogues were destroyed.  Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps and all because they were Jewish.

 
  It all started when Adolf Hitler became Chancellor.  He started discriminating against the Jews of Germany in such ways as passing laws against them that state that all Jews must carry identification cards that law was effective January 1, 1939.  On October 28, around 17,000 Jews of Polish decent were arrested, loaded into cattle trains like animals and shipped to the Polish border.  When the Polish Government would not admit them into Poland.  The Jews were forced to stay at relocation camps on the Polish-German border.  

 

        Among these Jews that got sent off were Zindel Grynszpan and his family.  Zindel was born in Poland and later moved to Hanover where he started a small store.

 

   When his 17-year-old son Herschel Grynszpan found out what cruel things are being done to the Jews in Germany he got really mad.  On November 7, he went to the German Embassy in Paris, where he was living with his uncle.  Planning the whole time to kill the Ambassador.  When he found out that the Ambassador was gone he settled for the Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath.  Rath was wounded badly and two days later died November 9.  

 
 This killing allowed Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Chief of Propaganda the reason he needed to start a pogrom against Germanys Jews.  Goebbels translated Herschel Gyszpan’s attack into a conspiratorial attack by “International Jewry” against Hitler himself.  

 
   The nights of November 9th and 10th will never be for gotten.  The ungodly mobs of brown coats going throughout Germany and territories in Austria and Sudetenland awfully attacked Jews on street corners, in their homes, in their work places, and their places of worship.  

 

 
Throughout the night of broken glass also known as “Kristallnacht” there was around 100 killed and hundreds more injured.  More than a 1,000 or maybe even closer to 2,000 synagogues were destroyed or burned.  Almost 7,500 Jewish owned, rented, or even leased businesses, shops, and stores were destroyed or had all the windows broken out of them.  There were a lot ofJewish schools and cemeteries were vandalized.  On this horrible night around 30,000 Jewish men, women, and children were taken to concentration camps where they were raped, beaten or even worse murdered.  

 
Two or three days later November 12, Herman Goering called a meeting of top Brown shirts and Nazi officials. The meeting was held to try and find a reason to blame the Kristallnacht on the Jews.  Some present at the meeting were Goering, Goebbels, Reinhard, Walter Funk, and some other top Nazis.  They were going to use the shooting of Rath to blame the Jews with.  

 
The Germans at the meeting decide that by removing the Jews it would make Germany a better economy.  By blaming the Jews the Germans could make the Jews pay the 1 billion marks.  And the insurance companies 6 million marks.  

        After the meeting a new set of laws were made for the Jews:

1. Jews were required to turn over all precious metals to the Government.

2. Pensions for Jews dismissed from civil service jobs were arbitrarily reduced.

3. The German State can alienate Jewish-owned bonds, stocks, jewelry, and artwork.

4. Jews were physically segregated within German towns.

5. A ban on the Jewish ownership of carrier pigeons.

6. The suspension of Jewish drivers licenses.

7.The confiscation of Jewish-owned radios.

8. A curfew to keep Jews off the streets between 9:00 P.M. and 5:00 A.M. in the summer and in the winter 8:00 P.M. and 6:00 A.M.

9. Law protecting tenants were made non-applicable to Jewish tenants.

 
          The historians that study the Kristallnacht believe that the Kristallnacht is what caused the start of the Holocaust.

 

 
Josey McDiffett

Rossville Jr. High-7th Grade

2002 Holocaust Project

Bibliography