Anti-Semitism did not begin with Adolf Hitler: Anti-Semitic attitudes date back to ancient times. Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945), the Nazi minister for public enlightenment and propaganda, immediately seized on the assassination to rile Hitlers supporters into an anti-Semitic frenzy. Please note: a visit to the museum is currently only possible with a time slot ticket which you have to buy online in advance. A visualization of documented acts of violence against individuals, Jewish institutions and businesses, Documents, photographs, and other objects related to Kristallnacht (in German), Michal Friedlander on the commemoration of 9 November 1938. Beginning on 28 October 1938, around 17,000 people were violently expelled across the German/Polish border. However, prior to Kristallnacht, these Nazi policies had been primarily nonviolent. In 1987, Edith Stein was beatified as a Catholic martyr by Pope John Paul II (1920-2005). Internationally, particularly in English, Kristallnacht is an established term. They were preceded by the first mass deportation of Jews from the German Reich, specifically Jews who had Polish citizenship (the Polenaktion or Polish Action). As retaliation, on November 7, 1938, the agitated teenager shot Ernst vom Rath (1909-38), a German diplomat in Paris. During World War II (1939-45), Hitler and the Nazis implemented their so-called Final Solution to the what they referred to as the Jewish problem, and carried out the systematic murder of some 6 million European Jews in what came to be known as the Holocaust. It only references the physical damage, specifically broken windows and crystal chandeliers. The violence of Kristallnacht served notice to German Jews that Nazi anti-Semitism was not a temporary predicament and would only intensify. One reason was anxiety over the possibility that Nazi infiltrators would be encouraged to legally settle in the U.S. A more obscured reason was the anti-Semitic views held by various upper-echelon officials in the U.S. State Department.

Founded in 1919 as the German Workers Party, the group promoted German pride read more, In the waning days of World War II (1939-45), Raoul Wallenberg (1912- c. 1947), a Swedish businessman-turned-diplomat based in Budapest, was responsible for the rescue of thousandssome estimates are as high as 100,000of Hungarian Jews from extermination by the Nazis. Notably, there are eyewitness reports in letters and diaries, but also sworn declarations from the postwar reparation process. After Kristallnacht, Lindbergh declined to return the medal. The assassination provided a welcome pretext to strike out against the Jewish population with unprecedented brutality. Hundreds of these Jews were murdered or died from the belated consequences of their detainment. Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. Indeed, in some regions, there were some early violent anti-Jewish riots in the late afternoon of 7 November and attacks on synagogues, homes, and businesses. During the gathering, news broke of the embassy secretarys death. Organized and initiated centrally by the Nazi leadership, the violence was carried out at local and regional levels by members of the SA and SS with a high level of autonomy. Hitler spoke with Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, who announced the news to all the present party leaders, Gauleiters, and SA leaders and authorized them to organize spontaneous campaigns of national rage against the Jewish population although the Partys role as the organizer would not be publicized. However, because pogrom signifies an act of violence initiated by the common people, its use is in danger of hiding the states central role in planning and directing the violent actions of 910 November 1938. U-Bahn: U6 (to Kochstrae) Bureaucrats at the American consulate suggested that he acquire another visa from Germany. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. In the immediate aftermath of Kristallnacht, the streets of Jewish communities were littered with broken glass from vandalized buildings, giving rise to the name Night of Broken Glass. Spanier lost his life there, while Lewkowitz was released in 1944 during a prisoner exchange. The SS at the camps vented their anger at the new detainees with particular cruelty. In May 1933, the writings of Jewish and other un-German authors were burned in a communal ceremony at Berlins Opera House. You can find literature on this topic from our museum library in the librarys online catalog. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was at work at the German embassy in Paris when Herschel Grynszpan, a read more, Our synagogue is burning! Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky dropped the phone and ran to his place of worship. Both men soon found themselves in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Kristallnacht was the result of that rage. Our website is designed to use JavaScript. The destroyed Etz Chaim Synagogue in Leipzig on 10November1938; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2016/342/1, purchased.

Lewkowitzs visa was destroyed as the Germans bombarded the city.

Further information on this document can be found in our online collections (in German). It was 2 a.m., but the sky was already bright. The financial punishment of the Jewish populace after Kristallnacht, The Childrens World of the Jewish Museum Berlin, General Terms and Conditions of Business and Payment. Public transit: The tax authorities collected the money: any Jew who possessed more than 5,000 Reichsmarks in assets had to surrender 20 percent to the state. Approximately 400 people were murdered or driven to commit suicide. Rath died two days later from his wounds, and Hitler attended his funeral. However, on the night of November 9, all that changed dramatically. Mendel Max Karps lengthy account about his deportation from the German capital on October 28, 1938, during the Polenaktion. On November 9 to November 10, 1938, in an incident known as Kristallnacht, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! As a result, many Jews began to plan an escape from their native land. Additionally, more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to the Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen concentration camps in Germanycamps that were specifically constructed to hold Jews, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state. Josef Hochfeld shortly after his discharge from Sachsenhausen concentration camp, January 1939; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2011/245/93, gift of Frank R. Hochfeld and Hanna Renning. That year, he settled in Palestine. At the meeting, it was resolved to take further state measures against members of the Jewish minority to compel them to emigrate and thus make Germany free of Jews. During the meeting, Gring was angry about the damage to property, which was estimated to be worth more than 225 million Reichsmarks. After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse. read more, Herschel Grynszpan carried a revolver and thoughts of revenge with him as he walked through the streets of Paris on the morning of November 7, 1938. The riots began before midnight. However, other sources claim he survived the war and resettled in Paris, where he married and started a family under an assumed name. Without enabling JavaScript, you are unable to expand the elements in the main navigation menu. In 1942, as the Germans began deporting Jews from the Netherlands, Edith Stein successfully applied for a visa that would allow her to move to a convent in neutral Switzerland. Did you know?

One of them was the Grynszpan family from Hanover. Starting in the late hours of November 9 and continuing into the next day, Nazi mobs torched or otherwise vandalized hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and damaged, if not completely destroyed, thousands of Jewish homes, schools, businesses, hospitals and cemeteries. More than 1400 synagogues and places of worship as well as about 7500 businesses and homes were destroyed. Their seventeen-year-old son Herschel then attempted an assassination at the German Embassy in Paris. Spanier had been the Hebraica librarian at the Prussian State Library and an instructor at the Hochschule fr die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Higher Institute for Jewish Studies), both located in Berlin, Germany. Jews were publicly humiliated, abused, and terrorized. The Nuremberg Laws, passed in September 1935, decreed that only Aryans could be full German citizens. The 17-year-old German refugee had just learned that his Polish-Jewish parents, along with thousands of other Jews, had been herded read more, Ethnic cleansing has been defined as the attempt to get rid of (through deportation, displacement or even mass killing) members of an unwanted ethnic group in order to establish an ethnically homogenous geographic area. Nazi officials ordered German police officers and firemen to do nothing as the riots raged and buildings burned, although firefighters were allowed to extinguish blazes that threatened Aryan-owned property. After Kristallnacht, he was sent to a concentration camp, but was released upon receiving a job offer from the Cincinnati, Ohio-based Hebrew Union College. Facing economic, social, and political oppression, thousands of German Jews wanted to flee the Third Reich but found few countries willing to accept them. Kristallnacht marked a turning point toward more violent and repressive treatment of Jews by the Nazis. This, plus his ensuing anti-Semitic comments, stained his status as an American hero. Arthur Spanier (1899-1944) and Albert Lewkowitz (1883-1954) were two who wanted to come to the U.S.; however, their task was not a simple one. On November 15, 1938, Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945), the American president, responded to Kristallnacht by reading a statement to the media in which he harshly denounced the rising tide of anti-Semitism and violence in Germany. Despite Roosevelts condemnation of the Nazi violence, the U.S. refused to ease the immigration restrictions it then had in place, constraints that prevented masses of German Jews from seeking safety in America. Lewkowitz, a philosophy professor at the Breslau Jewish Theological Seminary, was granted a visa. The Nazi Holocaust is historys most extreme example of anti-Semitism. Broken glass. Not all those who were impacted by Kristallnacht were practicing Jews. The Jews were forced collectively to pay a reparation of 1 billion Reichsmarks to the German Reich.

As for Herschel Grynszpan, whose shooting of a German diplomat was used as an excuse by the Nazis to perpetrate the Kristallnacht violence, his fate remains a mystery. For years already, the Nazi regime had been pursuing a plan of forcibly expropriating Jews and, in particular, Aryanizing Jewish businesses to finance Germanys re-armament process. All Rights Reserved. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the Night of Broken Glass, some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. Our holdings also include, for example, a once privately-owned silver bowl that still bears the scars of that nights destruction to this day. Literally, pogrom means devastation or riot. In Germany, the term pogrom has become a widespread designation for the events of 910 November 1938. In 1933, she was accepted as an initiate at the Carmelite convent in Cologne, Germany, and took the name Teresa Benedicta a Cruce. https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/kristallnacht. The term Kristallnacht (or Reichskristallnacht), meaning Night of Crystal (i.e., broken glass), as the non-Jewish majority called the acts of terror, is generally avoided in German today because it is a euphemism. Although there is no straight line leading to the mass murder of the Holocaust, the acts of terror of 910 November 1938 mark a drastic turning point. You can find more information on this document in our online collections (in German), Destroyed synagogue in Wilhelmshaven, 10November1938; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2015/666/0, purchased. The violence did not abate until the afternoon of 10 November. As he approached the Synagogue Prinzregentenstrasse in Berlin, pushing his hat down so he wouldnt be read more, The National Socialist German Workers Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and ruled Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945). The acts of violence on 910 November 1938 must be seen in the context of the radicalization of antisemitism in the Nazi Germany of 1938. During the violence, businesses designated as Jewish were also destroyed and often looted. The destroyed Bamberger & Hertz department store on 10November1938, Leipzig; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2016/342/2, purchased. Most of the surviving detainees were gradually released from December 1938 onwards provided that they made a commitment in writing to emigrate from Germany as quickly as possible and leave their assets to the state. However, Rosa was unable to obtain a visa and Edith declined to leave the Netherlands without her. It emerged in the 1880s during the czarist Russian Empire to designate massacres of Jews. In some places, there were recurring riots over the next several days. After Kristallnacht, the Steins left Germany and resettled in a Carmelite convent in Echt, the Netherlands. You can find more information on this photograph in our online collections (in German). Shortly before Kristallnacht, U.S. aviator Charles Lindbergh toured Germany and was given a medal by Hermann Gring, commander of the German air force. On 9 November 1938, the Nazi Party leadership had gathered in Munich, like every year, to commemorate the failed putsch of 1923. Though cleansing campaigns for ethnic or religious read more, The systematic persecution of German Jewry began with Adolf Hitlers rise to power in 1933. The wave of arrests is particularly well documented. During the campaign of violence, the entire German Reich saw an unprecedented wave of arrests. Mass arrests. Most of the surviving detainees were released again after a few weeks or months. Message from Max Weinberg about his mail being blocked at the Buchenwald concentration camp; Buchenwald in Weimar, November 1938; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2007/17/277, gift of Erwin Weinberg. Eventually, under Hitlers read more, Anti-Semitism, sometimes called historys oldest hatred, is hostility or prejudice against Jewish people. Bus line M29 (to Lindenstrae/Oranienstrae) The museums collection contains numerous documents, photographs, and objects related to 9 November 1938 and its aftermath. She was joined there by her older sister Rosa, who had also become a Catholic. The events of 9 November 1938 mark the transition from the discrimination against the Jewish population that had been ongoing since 1933 to their subsequent systematic persecution. By the end of 1938, Jews were prohibited from schools and most public places in Germanyand conditions only worsened from there. According to some accounts, Grynzpan was eventually executed by the Nazis. The fire departments and police simply looked on, and only intervened if a fire was in danger of spreading to neighboring buildings. He was presented with the letter on 28 October 1938 in Berlin, then immediately detained and deported with many others to the Polish border; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2013/263/14, gift of Jack Wolkenfeld. In his lecture on the eve of November 9, Brian Klug also dealt with the terms "Kristallnacht / Pogromnacht" and their connotations. Next, telegrams were sent to branch offices, agencies, and local Nazi groups throughout the country. Beyond this, any insurance claims were seized. For Jews living in Germany, it finally became unmistakably clear (if it was not already) that they could no longer even take their lives for granted. Morgenstern was told that Spanier was denied the visa because he was a librarian and, according to U.S. State Department rules, a visa could not be issued to an academic in a secondary educational position even if a major American educational institution had pledged to support him. On 7 November 1938, he shot the diplomat Ernst vom Rath, who died of his injuries two days later. Within two years, German businesses were publicly announcing that they no longer serviced Jews. There were some gawkers and bystanders, but others played an active role. Furthermore, it became illegal for Aryans and Jews to marry or have extramarital intercourse. Between November 9 and 10, 1938, the pogrom now known as Kristallnacht resulted in the destruction of over 7,500 Jewish businesses, 1,000 synagogues, and any sense of security Jewish people in Germany and its read more, When Ernst vom Rath went to work on the morning of November 7, 1938, he had no idea he would soon be mortally woundedor that his death would serve as the excuse for a two-day terror attack on German Jews. In the few months before the war broke out, around 200,000 Jews left the Reich. The SA and SS broke into private homes and demolished them. During World War II, Hitler and the Nazis implemented their so-called Final Solution to what they referred to as the Jewish problem, and carried out the systematic murder of some 6 million European Jews (along with, by some estimates, 4 million to 6 million non-Jews) in what came to be known as the Holocaust. As Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan, Gring called a meeting after Kristallnacht, which took place on 12 November 1938 in Berlin. Nearly 100 Jews were murdered during the violence. About 9 November 1938 (Kristallnacht) and other topics, Historical sources on the antisemitic violence in Germany between 1930 and 1938 in the holdings of the Jewish Museum Berlin, Online Features: The Background and Ramifications of 9 November 1938 (5). The employees of our Archive have combed through our archival holdings and assembled materials on various topics related to the violent riots against Jews that took place on 9 and 10 November 1938. They were herded through the streets and eventually transported to the three concentration camps that existed at the time: Buchenwald, near Weimar; Dachau, near Munich; and Sachsenhausen, close to the German capital. Further information on this document can be found in our online collections (in German), Certificate of discharge from Sachsenhausen concentration camp for Heinrich Wohlauer, Oranienburg, 14 December 1938; Jewish Museum Berlin, accession 2003/176/8, gift of Ursula Warner. Spanier applied for an American visa, but none was forthcoming. In reaction to the November Pogroms, the Kindertransport program of 193839 rescued ten thousand children from the Nazis violent regime. The ways in which the non-Jewish majority responded to the public terror remain disputed. In a letter, David Fiks records an extensive account of his experiences in Berlin on 9 November 1938 and the days that followed. Jewish cemeteries and other Jewish community institutions were ravaged. After 9 November 1938, the number of them who made efforts to emigrate skyrocketed. The museum's holdings were seized after 9 November 1938. In read more. Julian Morgenstern (1881-1976), president of the college, traveled to Washington, D.C., for an explanation. Torched synagogues. German Jews had been subjected to repressive policies since 1933, when Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) became chancellor of Germany. One such administrator was Breckinridge Long (1881-1958), who was responsible for carrying out policies relating to immigration.

What an apparently innocuous postcard reveals. Learn more about available offers and programs, events, and public tours, or buy a ticket online for your planned visit. The Nazis held the German-Jewish community responsible for the damage and imposed a collective fine of $400 million (in 1938 rates), according to the U.S. In the following days, the Gestapo arrested around 30,000 Jewish men and hauled them to concentration camps, where hundreds were murdered or died. In August 1942, the Nazis arrested both women and dispatched them to a concentration camp at Amersfoort, the Netherlands. What is known is that he was incarcerated in a Paris prison and later transferred to Germany. A mob of SA and SS members destroyed almost all synagogues and Jewish houses of worship in the Reich, mostly by arson. The word pogrom comes from Russian (). Shortly afterward, they were sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp where they perished in a gas chamber.

From a Jewish perspective and in the memories of eyewitnesses to these events, this word is often still used to describe the events of 9 and 10 November 1938. Nazi propaganda portrayed the violence as an outbreak of spontaneous national rage sparked by the cowardly murder in Paris. 2022 A&E Television Networks, LLC. This deportation order was issued by the President of the Berlin Police and calls upon Meilech Wolkenfeld (18931954) to leave the territory of the German Reich within 24 hours. Edith Stein (1891-1942), a German philosopher and nun, was born a Jew but converted to Catholicism. U-Bahn: U1, U6 (to Hallesches Tor) READ MORE: Holocaust Photos Reveal Horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps. , Herschel Grynszpan: The Fate of a Forgotten Assassin, Database of Holocaust Survivor and Victim Names, Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center. Given the circumstances, this would be impossible. The attendees decided not only to fully eliminate Jews from German economic life, but to make the victims pay for the damage inflicted on them. He also recalled Hugh Wilson, his ambassador to Germany. The SS and the Gestapo arrested 30,000 Jewish men. In the fall of 1938, Herschel Grynszpan (1921-45), a 17-year-old ethnically Polish Jew who had been living in France for several years, learned that the Nazis had exiled his parents to Poland from Hanover, Germany, where Herschel had been born and his family had lived for years. Brick-throwing mobs. Portraits of the released detainees give us hints of their physical infirmity. Holocaust Photos Reveal Horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps. On the night of 910 November, the regional acts of terror became a nationwide wildfire, a shift that underscores the organized nature of this state-sponsored pogrom.