KRISTALLNACHT
Kristallnacht. Meaning night of broken glass or night of crystals in German. These nights were only a small part of the Holocaust but are so meaningful and awful. This story deals with a man, a gun, Jewish families, and their homes. And a lot of glass. It all started with November 7th, 1938 in Paris. Ernst Vom Rath was a German diplomat stationed in Paris. He was arresting and sending Polish Jews to concentration camps. A jewish teenager was outraged because Vom Rath had taken his parents. He went to Vom Rath and shot him, immediately killing him with five bullets. The Jewish teen was arrested and then started the Night of Broken Glass. Ernst Vom Rath’s funeral was huge and was a devastation to all Nazis. While Germans mourned over a Nazi, another Nazi was outraged. Adolf Hitler boiled over the fact an enemy had killed a friend.Especially, that the enemy was only a young jewish man.
There the Night of Broken Glass was born. Hitler had used the assassination as only an excuse to destroy Jewish synagogues( Jewish Churches), homes, cemeteries, schools, and stores all throughout Europe. Joseph Goebbels made the announcement. They were going to crush every Jewish-owned place there was.
On November 9th, only 2 days after Ernst Vom Rath’s assassination, Kristallnacht began. German soldiers and Hitler Youth came to destroy Jewish buildings. They burnt them to the ground. They took the rabbi, their pastor or leader, grabbed him by the beard and cut it off. The Hitler Youth took the torah, what Jewish people look at as their bible, and ripped it in front of the rabbi. They made him watch it burn. Children would run to their parents room because they heard crashing downstairs. They hid in attics during the winter only in their night clothes. Soldiers would grab Jewish mothers and their children, throw them on the street and beat them. Jewish men were ripped from their families and whipped on the street.
But just like the name says, they shattered the windows of every Jewish building,homes,and shops. Glass scattered everywhere. As people were being beat, the glass on the ground cut into their skin, making their injuries much more serious. In one town in Germany, the soldiers brought all Jews, boys, girls, moms, dads, grandmas, and grandpas out to the theater where plays were put on. They made the men come up to stage where they could be whipped in front of their friends and family. And if the man up on stage was your father and you tried to stop it. You were whipped too.
Alexander Gordon, a 16 year old Jewish orphan, was sleeping while the soldiers came. He heard bullets below him and he and the other orphans ran to a field and hid. He said, quote, “Twenty of us sat there all night in the cold, we didn’t know what to do. When one of us called the police, they just laughed. At dawn we went back to the house. The windows were smashed and everything was messed up. One of the attackers had waited for us. He said ‘Make sure you’re all gone by this afternoon. Out! If not, can you see that tree. We’ll hang you all on it.’” Un-quote.
The night of the broken glass caused, 250 synagogues burnt, 7,000 Jewish stores destroyed, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested for the “crime” of being Jewish, and 90 plus jews were murdered. They even charged the families whose houses were destroyed a huge fine to “fix” all the damage. When they paid it, it didn’t even go to the destruction.
On the flip side, German families were happy the enemy was gone. After Jewish families cleaned the mess, they took their homes and belongings and tried to leave. As Jewish families walked with their hands in the air to a train station, they might have seen a new family in their home. They couldn’t even do anything.