Kristallnacht

In November 1938, Kristallnacht, or the ‘Night of Broken Glass’, marked a major escalation. Nazi-organised attacks destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses. About 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps.

Kristallnacht, the ‘Night of Broken Glass’, took place on 9–10 November 1938. The immediate pretext was the shooting of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager whose family had been deported from Germany to Poland. Grynszpan shot him on 7 November; vom Rath died on 9 November.

The immediate excuse for Kristallnacht was the shooting of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, a seventeen-year-old Jew. Grynszpan’s family had recently been expelled from Germany in the deportation of Jews with Polish citizenship. He shot vom Rath on 7 November; the diplomat died on 9 November.