Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (Making History)

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The Tobacconist tells a deeply moving story of ordinary lives profoundly affected by the Third Reich. Seventeen-year-old Franz accepts an apprenticeship with elderly tobacconist Otto Trsnyek and is soon supplying the great and good of Vienna with their newspapers and cigarettes. The Nazi regime expanded and radicalized measures aimed at removing Jews entirely from German economic and social life in the forthcoming years. The regime moved eventually toward policies of forced emigration, and finally toward the realization of a Germany “free of Jews” ( judenrein) by deportation of the Jewish population “to the East.” Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence. Assassination of Ernst vom Rath It’s easy enough to think that the Holocaust is simply a relic of the past; that it belongs only in history textbooks or in museum displays. Yet, the devastation and destruction it caused lives on today, which is why remembering it is so important. Explore the range of reactions to the violence of Kristallnacht among the German people. What pressures and motivations may have influenced their choice to participate, to help the victims, or to turn away?

The events of Kristallnacht represented one of the most important turning points in National Socialist antisemitic policy. Historians have noted that after the pogrom, anti-Jewish policy was concentrated more and more concretely into the hands of the SS. Moreover, the passivity with which most German civilians responded to the violence signaled to the Nazi regime that the German public was prepared for more radical measures. In its aftermath, German officials announced that Kristallnacht had erupted as a spontaneous outburst of public sentiment in response to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath. Vom Rath was a German embassy official stationed in Paris. Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, had shot the diplomat on November 7, 1938. A few days earlier, German authorities had expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany from the Reich; Grynszpan had received news that his parents, residents in Germany since 1911, were among them.Labor Secretary Frances Perkins, whose department oversaw the Immigration and Naturalization Service, persuaded President Roosevelt to allow approximately 12,000 Germans, most of whom were Jews and already in the United States on visitor visas, to remain in the country indefinitely. Although he knew extending the visas could raise congressional objection, the president made his position clear. “I cannot,” he said, “in any decent humanity, throw them out.” Indeed, no Jews were forced to leave the United States to return to Nazi-occupied Europe for the duration of the war. In the immediate aftermath of the pogrom, many German leaders, like Hermann Göring, criticized the extensive material losses produced by the antisemitic riots, pointing out that if nothing were done to intervene, German insurance companies—not Jewish-owned businesses—would have to bear the costs of the damages. Nevertheless, Göring and other top party leaders decided to use the opportunity to introduce measures to eliminate Jews and perceived Jewish influence from the German economic sphere. In the weeks that followed, the German government promulgated dozens of laws and decrees designed to deprive Jews of their property and of their means of livelihood. Many of these laws enforced “Aryanization” policy—the transfer of Jewish-owned enterprises and property to “Aryan” ownership, usually for a fraction of their true value. Ensuing legislation barred Jews, already ineligible for employment in the public sector, from practicing most professions in the private sector. The legislation made further strides in removing Jews from public life. German education officials expelled Jewish children still attending German schools. German Jews lost their right to hold a driver's license or own an automobile. Legislation restricted access to public transport. Jews could no longer gain admittance to “German” theaters, movie cinemas, or concert halls. American Press Reports on Kristallnacht

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. As the pogrom spread, units of the SS and Gestapo (Secret State Police), following Heydrich's instructions, arrested up to 30,000 Jewish males, and transferred most of them from local prisons to Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen, and other concentration camps. How did the events of Kristallnacht compare to previous anti-Jewish actions and violence in Germany under the Nazis?

Anti-Jewish Legislation

The president also announced that he had recalled the US ambassador to Germany, Hugh Wilson. The United States was the only nation to recall its ambassador and would not replace him until after the end of the war in 1945.

The violence was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA ( Sturmabteilung : commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth. INGE DEUTSCHKRON: "That was the turning point. That was when the Jews in Germany understood they could no longer live in peace as German Jews. That became clear after this night of violence." GEORG STEFAN TROLLER: "Things previously frowned upon by the state were suddenly permitted. Anything was allowed. We had become fair game, they could do to us whatever they wanted."

Arrests of Jewish Men

NARRATOR: Hitler's Reich in the 1930s - the propaganda of the Nazi regime appeals to the German ethnic community, and decides who belongs where, from childhood onwards. Those who don't fit the picture, such as the Jews, are disdained, disenfranchised, persecuted. It begins with the boycotting of Jewish businesses, and leads ever more frequently to violence. Article media libraries that feature this video: Germany, history of Germany, Holocaust, Kristallnacht, Nazi Party Nazi officials disguised the organized nature of the pogroms. They described the actions as justifiable and spontaneous responses of the German population to the assassination of a German diplomatic official, Ernst vom Rath, in Paris. This unprecedented violence against the Reich’s Jews generated international outrage. Told with a fairytale-like lyricism, this is a fable of family and redemption set against the horrors of the Holocaust. A poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a forest. Despite their poverty and the war raging around them, the wife prays that they will be blessed with a child.