Kristallnacht: 83 Years Since Nazi Germany Formalised Anti-Semitic Violence

It is crucial to recall the tragic events of November 1938 that accelerated the destruction of the European Jewry.

Radauantisemitismus.

It is not just a German word. Roughly translated to "radical anti-Semitism", radauantisemitismus is a term used by historians to describe how, until a certain point of time, Jewish people in Hitler's Germany were frequently harassed and discriminated against in a non-violent and chaotic way by the Nazi Party, by its multiple paramilitary branches, and even by the German people.

Occurring 83 years ago today, on 9 November, Kristallnacht marked the transition from rowdy and disorganised (albeit legal) anti-Semitic discrimination, to coordinated and institutionalised anti-Semitic violence.

It completely changed the magnitude of suffering that German Jews had to endure under the Third Reich. That is why it is important to remember it, and to be aware of what happened, and why.

Kristallnacht: The Events of 9 November 1938

The literal English translation of the German word Kristallnacht is "Crystal Night".

In history and popular culture, however, it is interpreted as "the Night of the Broken Glass." You'll get to know why this is the case by the end of this section.

On the night of 9-10 November 1938, the Nazi government led by Adolf Hitler organised a series of coordinated attacks on the Jewish community of Germany.

The trigger for this Nazi-perpetrated anti-Semitic violence was the assassination of German diplomat Ernst Eduard vom Rath in Paris on 7 November, by a 17-year-old Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan.

The young boy had just been made aware of his parents being deported from Germany to Poland.

In order to avenge the cruelty faced by his parents, and the socio-economic persecution of the Jewish people in Germany, Grynszpan walked into the German embassy in Paris pretending to be a spy with important intelligence documents, and shot vom Rath.

The last words that vom Rath heard before having five bullets enter his abdomen were from Grynszpan, who said,"in the name of 12,000 persecuted Jews, here is the document!"

Grynszpan was arrested immediately.

He allegedly confessed that his only motive was to avenge the Jewish people of Germany. But it is still not clear why he chose vom Rath in particular.

What is clear, however, is what the assassination led to. Within hours of vom Rath's death on 9 November, the Sturmabteilung (the Nazi Party's first paramilitary wing) had begun its assault on Jews all over Nazi Germany.

The killing of vom Rath was used as a pretext to launch Kristallnacht and the primary instigator of the violence was Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels.

He gave a speech in which he said that "the Führer has decided that … demonstrations should not be prepared or organised by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered."

In fact, his diary entry from 10 November 1938 reads: "I describe the situation to the Führer. He decides: let the demonstrations continue. Withdraw the police. For once the Jews should feel the rage of the people…. I issue corresponding instructions to the police and the party."

Goebbels' speech was interpreted to be a call for violence.

Armed members of the Sturmabteilung and Hitler Youth, a youth organisation in Nazi Germany that de facto served as a paramilitary unit of the Party, destroyed Jewish homes and businesses.

The Nazi police were specifically instructed by their superiors to turn a blind eye to the violence.

In fact, many officers of the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel dressed up in civilian clothes themselves and participated in the attacks to propagate a false narrative of the 'spontaneous' violence.

More than 90 Jewish people were murdered and more than 30,000 were arrested.

Around 7,500 Jewish businesses and stores were looted and destroyed, and hundreds of synagogues were burnt.

Fire-fighters were ordered to intervene only if the fires endangered non-Jewish property, all of which remained untouched throughout the carnage.

Additionally, not only did the German government refuse to compensate for the damages, it blamed the Jewish community for the violence and slapped a penalty of one billion Reichsmark (around $400 million at the time).

After the violence came to a halt, the German streets were filled with pieces of shattered glass that came from the windows of synagogues, businesses, and homes of the German Jewish community that were targeted during the pogrom.

The night of 9-10 November 1938 is thereby remembered as the "Night of the Broken Glass", or Kristallnacht.

What Came Before Kristallnacht: The Socio-Economic Situation of German Jews 

Jewish people in Germany were in no way living a comfortable life before the tragic events of November 1938.

While anti-Semitism was always prevalent in Europe, it had started to really intensify in public sentiment after Hitler became the German chancellor on 30 January 1933.

On 1 April 1933, the Nazi government organised an economic boycott of Jewish businesses and services, in response to what it believed was a coordinated effort by Jewish people to tarnish the image of the Third Reich.

In the same month, Jewish people started to face obstacles that were legal in nature.

The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, passed on 7 April 1933, barred anyone of "non-Aryan descent" from being a part of the national civil services of Germany.

Jews were, of course, classified as "non-Aryans".

And by 1935, the infamous Nuremberg Laws were enacted.

Also known as the "Blutschutzgesetz" or the "Blood Protection Law", the Nuremberg Laws comprised two severely discriminatory legislations.

The first was the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which prohibited marriages and sexual relations between Jews and all people "of German or related blood."

The second law was the Reich Citizenship Law, which basically outlawed the citizenship of anyone who did not have "German or related blood."

Anyone who was not a citizen based on these rules was to treated as a "state subject."

The discriminatory classifications provided by the Nuremberg Laws served as a launchpad for future laws that essentially blacklisted Jews and fast-tracked their deportation.

Two such laws that were enacted in 1938, just a few weeks before Kristallnacht, were the Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names (17 August 1938) and the Decree on Passports of Jews (5 October 1938).

The former law stated that Jewish people in Germany could only have specific Jewish first names that were already maintained on a list by the Nazi government.

The other one declared the passports of all German Jews null and void. In order to make their passports usable again, German Jews would have to take their passports though a procedure in the passport office in which the letter J would be stamped on them, making them valid again.

The point is that German Jews were already facing an extreme level of harassment and persecution by Nazi authorities before the events of 9 November 1938.

But this harassment usually didn't amount to violence, or at least, state-coordinated violence.

Kristallnacht changed that.

Following the Night of the Broken Glass, the Third Reich began implementing policies of mass deportation (that it labelled "voluntary emigration"), which eventually culminated into the Endlösung der Judenfrage or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question (the Nazi code phrase for the Holocaust).

A Tragic Turning Point in History 

The Nazi Party used Kristallnacht to propagate that it was actually the Jews who had declared war on Germany.

What had begun as a socio-economic boycott of German Jews was to be transformed into full-blown unrestrained violence, and the speeding up of deportation programs and mass-murder using gas chambers.

Nazi institutions and leaders had not cared to hide their appetite for further destruction after Kristallnacht.

The official newspaper of the Schutzstaffel called for the "destruction by swords and flames" of the German Jewish community.

Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop when asked about the assassination during vom Rath's funeral said, "we understand the challenge, and we accept it", as quoted in a book by historian Richard Cohen.

The complete lack of protests and public anger among German civilians in response to the pogrom motivated the Third Reich to intensify anti-Jewish violence and policies.

Once the Second World War began, and the German army plundered its way through France and the rest of Europe (except Britain), the European Jewry began to be systematically exterminated.

Many historians like Max Rein therefore argue that Kristallnacht was a sign of what was to come – the murder of six million Jews.

Perhaps that is the most important takeaway from the tragedy that occurred on the night of 9-10 November 1938.

The signs of socio-economic oppression of a community should not be ignored before they eventually lead to annihilation because by then, as Nazi Germany shows, it becomes too late to turn the tide.

(With inputs from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.)