How many people died kristallnacht

Recounting it like this, in the passive voice, highlights the violence that was perpetrated against Jews. And at this anniversary of such a tragic event, it is right that we remember the victims. But who was responsible? And what lessons can we learn today, in the wake of the fatal attack on Jews in the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue?

The November terror was instigated from above, sanctioned by Hitler and unleashed by Goebbels. The major perpetrators were the obvious Nazis — the black-booted SS, the brown-shirted SA, the idealistic Hitler Youth, the members of affiliated organizations proudly flaunting swastikas and party badges.

This is what most people have in their minds as the image of the Third Reich. Yet the responses of the wider population also made it possible — and this is what must still give us cause for thought today. Large numbers of ordinary people, including women, were involved in looting and plundering, picking up goods thrown out onto the street and benefiting from the expropriation of Jewish property.

Both young and old turned out to humiliate Jews, with whole classes of schoolchildren brought by their teachers to see sites of smoldering synagogues and join the jeering crowds. Such comments are reported in many contemporary sources and eye-witness accounts from across the Reich.

First, there is the obvious point about state-ordained terror and fear. If violence is initiated from above, in a state where active political opposition has been crushed, it is extremely difficult to engage in effective resistance. Selma Zwienicki's death certificate hides the true cause of death; it states only that she was found dead. On November 9, , the Nazis unleashed a wave of violent riots against Jews in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland.

In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues, Jewish businesses, and homes were damaged or destroyed. The pretext for this violence was the November 7 assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager whose parents, along with 17, other Polish Jews, had been recently expelled from Germany.

Though portrayed as spontaneous outbursts of popular outrage, these riots were calculated acts carried out by the SA, SS, and local Nazi party organizations. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Chelmno and other SS-run camps employed industrial-style killing, using a pesticide designed to kill rats.

The old, the very young, and the physically weak—those unable to work—were killed first. When the strong grew weak and unable to work they were exterminated. But by mid, almost all Jews who arrived at a death camp were put to death immediately.

Charlotte Weiss recalled that when she arrived at Auschwitz in with her sisters, they saw mountains of eyeglasses, shoes, and clothing belonging to the victims. An aerial photograph of part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex, taken August 25, There were valorous efforts to resist the Holocaust.

A number of armed uprisings in the ghettos and camps surprised the Nazis, but all were put down with fanatical brutality. Some Jews escaped ghettos and joined partisan movements fighting against the Nazis from forest enclaves.

Within the ghettos and the killing camps, acts of defiance, small or large, were suppressed and the brave dissidents savagely punished. When the Allies began to close in on Germany in late and early , the Nazis forced the surviving prisoners on long marches to camps believed to be out of the way of the advancing enemy armies.

It only references the physical damage, specifically broken windows and crystal chandeliers. Internationally, particularly in English, Kristallnacht is an established term. From a Jewish perspective and in the memories of eyewitnesses to these events, this word is often still used to describe the events of 9 and 10 November Meanwhile, propaganda terms such as Judenaktion Jewish Action clearly belong to the language of the perpetrators.

The acts of violence on 9—10 November must be seen in the context of the radicalization of antisemitism in the Nazi Germany of One of them was the Grynszpan family from Hanover.

Their seventeen-year-old son Herschel then attempted an assassination at the German Embassy in Paris. On 7 November , he shot the diplomat Ernst vom Rath, who died of his injuries two days later. The assassination provided a welcome pretext to strike out against the Jewish population with unprecedented brutality.

Indeed, in some regions, there were some early violent anti-Jewish riots in the late afternoon of 7 November and attacks on synagogues, homes, and businesses.

On the night of 9—10 November, the regional acts of terror became a nationwide wildfire, a shift that underscores the organized nature of this state-sponsored pogrom. On 9 November , the Nazi Party leadership had gathered in Munich, like every year, to commemorate the failed putsch of Next, telegrams were sent to branch offices, agencies, and local Nazi groups throughout the country. The riots began before midnight.

This deportation order was issued by the President of the Berlin Police and calls upon Meilech Wolkenfeld — to leave the territory of the German Reich within 24 hours. You can find more information on this document in our online collections in German. A mob of SA and SS members destroyed almost all synagogues and Jewish houses of worship in the Reich, mostly by arson. The fire departments and police simply looked on, and only intervened if a fire was in danger of spreading to neighboring buildings.

The ways in which the non-Jewish majority responded to the public terror remain disputed.