November Pogrom (Kristallnacht) 1938 Educational Resource Video

Germans pass by the broken shop window of a Jewish-owned business that was destroyed during Kristallnacht. ——Image from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park

Kristallnacht The Night of Broken Glass. 9-10 November 1938.

Nationwide violence against the Jews of Germany and Austria erupted on 9 November.

Hitler Youth, bolstered by thousands of locals as well as Nazis, unleashed a night of terror, violence and destruction. Synagogues and Jewish schools were set ablaze; Jewish businesses and shops had their windows smashed leaving the streets strewn with broken glass. Jewish homes and shops were looted and cemeteries desecrated.

Over a thousand Jews were beaten to death and many committed suicide out of despair. Some 35,000 Jewish men were thrown into concentration camps. After the destruction, the Jewish communities were fined one billion Reichsmark to pay for the damage.

After years of official harassment of Jewish people in Nazi Germany, the state-sanctioned violence of Kristallnacht marked the acceleration of Jewish Persecution that would ultimately culminate in the Holocaust.