| During
the evening of November 9, 1938, the "night of broken glass"
many Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes were destroyed by mobs
of people fired by propaganda and fueled by their own prejudice
and ignorance. It was a massive coordinated attack throughout the
German Reich.
The
attack came after Herschel Grynszpan, a 17 year old Jew living in
Paris, shot and killed a member of the German Embassy staff there
in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family
suffered at the hands of the Nazis. His family, along with thousands
of other Jews, had been transported in boxcars and dumped at the
Polish border.
red
dots indicate synagogues burned on the night of Kristallnacht (map
Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust)
The
German propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, incited Germans to
"rise in bloody vengeance against the Jews. Mob violence broke
out as the German police stood by and watched. Storm troopers
and members of the SS beat and murdered Jews along with the mobs.
Nearly 1000 synagogues were burned and thousands of Jews rounded
up.
Part
of Holocaust Night: a HistoryWiz exhibit
The Holocaust
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