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Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht
, literally "Crystal Night,” is usually translated from German as the “Night of Broken Glass." It refers
to the violent anti-Jewish riot, also called a pogrom, which
occurred November 9-10, 1938.
Kristallnacht
owes its name
to the shards of shattered glass on the streets from the
windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned
businesses. Hundreds of synagogues all over Germany were
attacked, vandalized, burgled, and then destroyed. Firemen
were instructed to let the synagogues burn, but to prevent the
flames from spreading to nearby buildings. The shop
windows of thousands of Jewish-owned stores were smashed
and the products within were stolen. Jewish cemeteries were
desecrated, and many Jews were attacked by mobs. At least
91 Jews died in the pogrom, and the rioters destroyed 267
synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the
Czechoslovakia. Police records document a high number of
rapes and of suicides in the aftermath of the violence.
Kristallnacht
is significant because it marks the first instance
in which the Nazi regime arrested Jews on a massive scale
simply on the basis of their ethnicity. The events of
Kristallnacht
represented one of the most important turning
points in National Socialist antisemitic policy. Moreover, the passivity and inaction with which most German
civilians responded to the violence signaled to the Nazi regime that the German public was prepared for more
radical actions.
Liberation
As Allied troops moved across Europe, they encountered tens of thousands of concentration camp prisoners
suffering from starvation and disease. Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, Majdanek in
Eastern Poland, in July 1944. Surprised by their rapid advance, the Germans attempted to hide the evidence of mass
murder by demolishing the camp. That summer, the Soviets invaded the
and Treblinka killing
centers. They liberated
in January 1945. The Nazis had forced the majority of Auschwitz prisoners to
march westward in "death marches" to keep them from the Soviets and had destroyed most of the camp’s
warehouses, but the Soviets found many personal belongings of the victims. They discovered, for example, men’s
suits, women's outfits, and more than 14,000 pounds of human hair that had been shaved off of the prisoners’
heads. In the following months, the Soviets liberated camps in the Baltic States and Poland and three other camps in
Germany shortly before Germany's surrender. US forces liberated th
concentration camp in April
1945. On the day of liberation, a prisoner resistance organization seized control of the camp to prevent any more
atrocities by the retreating camp guards. American forces liberated more than 20,000 prisoners at Buchenwald, as
well as prisoners in four other camps. Additionally, British forces liberated concentration camps in northern
Germany. Some 60,000 prisoners, most in critical condition because of a typhus epidemic, were found alive. Sadly,
more than 10,000 of them died from the effects of malnutrition or disease within a few weeks after liberation.
Liberators confronted unspeakable conditions in the Nazi camps, where piles of corpses lay unburied and the full
scope of Nazi horrors was finally exposed to the world. The small percentage of inmates who survived resembled
skeletons because of the forced labor, lack of food, and months or years of maltreatment. Many were so weak that
they could hardly move. Disease remained a danger, and many of the camps had to be burned down to prevent the
spread of epidemics.
National Socialist Party
The National Socialist German Workers' Party (
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei
) was a political
party in Germany between 1920 and 1945. It is commonly known as the Nazi Party. The Nazi Party, founded by
A crowd watching a synagogue burn in Frankfurt, Germany
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
