On Nov. 9, 1938, a massive nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich. The pretext for this orgy of violence against German Jews was the shooting in Paris two days earlier of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish refugee.
The state-organized pogrom, instigated by Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, resulted in the burning or damaging of more than 1,000 synagogues, the ransacking of about 7,500 businesses, the murder of at least 91 Jews and the deportation of another 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.
This murderous onslaught against German Jewry, cynically described by the Nazis as the "Night of Broken Glass," or Kristallnacht , was a major turning point on the road to the "Final Solution" of the so-called "Jewish Question." It signified that the Nazi regime had crossed a Rubicon and would no longer be deterred by Western public opinion in its "war against the Jews." The economic expropriation of German Jewry, its complete social ostracism and public humiliation swiftly followed. Jews were banned from public transport, from frequenting concerts, theaters, cinemas, commercial centers and beaches, or using public benches.
Only a fortnight after "Crystal Night," the SS journal, Das Schwarze Korps, chillingly prophesied the imminent annihilation of German Jewry through "fire and sword."
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