Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom—broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence. Assassination of Ernst vom Rath Krefeld, Stadt (1988). Ehemalige Krefelder Juden berichten uber ihre Erlebnisse in der sogenannten Reichskristallnacht. Krefelder Juden in Amerika. Vol.3. Cited in Johnson, Eric. Krefeld Stadt Archiv: Basic Books. p.117. Arntz, Hans-Dieter (2008) "Reichskristallnacht". Der Novemberpogrom 1938 auf dem Lande – Gerichtsakten und Zeugenaussagen am Beispiel der Eifel und Voreifel. (in German) Aachen: Helios-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938208-69-4 Gordon, Sarah Ann (1984). Hitler, Germans, and the Jewish Question. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-10162-0. German Mobs' Vengeance on Jews", The Daily Telegraph, 11 November 1938, cited in Gilbert, Martin (2006). Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction. New York: HarperCollins. p.42. ISBN 978-0060570835.

Gerhardt, Uta and Thomas Karloff, eds. The night of broken glass: eyewitness accounts of Kristallnacht (2012) online After the end of World War II, there were hundreds of trials over Kristallnacht. The trials were conducted exclusively by German and Austrian courts; the Allied occupation authorities did not have jurisdiction since none of the victims were Allied nationals. [79] Kristallnacht as a turning point [ edit ] Miskin, Maayana (8 February 2010). "Yad Vashem to Honor Aborigine". Israel National News. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012 . Retrieved 20 April 2012. a b Multiple (1998). "Kristallnacht". The Hutchinson Encyclopedia. Hutchinson Encyclopedias (18thed.). London: Helicon. p.1,199. ISBN 1-85833-951-0.

November 9–10

Daily Telegraph, 12 November 1938. Cited in Gilbert, Martin. Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction. HarperCollins, 2006, p. 142. Our German Cousins: Anglo-German Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1974) by John Mander, p. 219 After the Kristallnacht, Salvador Allende, Gabriel González Videla, Marmaduke Grove, Florencio Durán and other members of the Congress of Chile sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler denouncing the persecution of Jews. [77]

Raul Hilberg. The Destruction of the European Jews, Third Edition, (Yale Univ. Press, 2003, c1961), Ch.3. The former German Kaiser Wilhelm II commented "For the first time, I am ashamed to be German." [47] Göring, who was in favor of expropriating the property of the Jews rather than destroying it as had happened in the pogrom, directly complained to Sicherheitspolizei Chief Heydrich immediately after the events: "I'd rather you had done in two-hundred Jews than destroy so many valuable assets!" ( "Mir wäre lieber gewesen, ihr hättet 200 Juden erschlagen und hättet nicht solche Werte vernichtet!"). [48] Göring met with other members of the Nazi leadership on 12 November to plan the next steps after the riot, setting the stage for formal government action. In the transcript of the meeting, Göring said,Corb, Noam (2020). " "From Tears Come Rivers, from Rivers Come Oceans, from Oceans -a Flood": The Polenaktion, 1938-1939". Yad Vashem Studies. 48: 21–69. McCullough, Colin, and Nathan Wilson, eds. Violence, Memory, and History: Western Perceptions of Kristallnacht (2014) online Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Susan Warsinger from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a b Taylor, Alan (19 June 2011). "World War II: Before the War". The Atlantic. Archived from the original on 7 January 2015.

A more personal response, in 1939, was the oratorio A Child of Our Time by the English composer Michael Tippett. [78] Post-war trials [ edit ] The rioters destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. [6] Over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms, [41] many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops, and 29 department stores were damaged, and in many cases destroyed. More than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps; primarily Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. [42] Lauber, Heinz (1981). Judenpogrom: "Reichskristallnacht" November 1938 in Grossdeutschland: Daten, Fakten, Dokumente, Quellentexte, Thesen und Bewertungen (Aktuelles Taschenbuch) (in German). Bleicher. ISBN 3-88350-005-4. The British historian Martin Gilbert believes that "many non-Jews resented the round-up", [56] his opinion being supported by German witness Dr. Arthur Flehinger who recalls seeing "people crying while watching from behind their curtains". [57] Rolf Dessauers recalls how a neighbor came forward and restored a portrait of Paul Ehrlich that had been "slashed to ribbons" by the Sturmabteilung. "He wanted it to be known that not all Germans supported Kristallnacht." [58] Some lawmakers who hoped to change the country’s restrictive immigration quota laws saw an opportunity in the wave of sympathy among Americans for refugees after Kristallnacht. On February 9, 1939, Senator Robert F. Wagner (D-NY) and Representative Edith Nourse Rogers (R-MA) introduced identical bills into Congress to offer refuge to 20,000 children under 14 from the Greater German Reich. Despite widespread support, the Wagner-Rogers Bill died in Congress. The quota system remained unchanged throughout the war and into the 1960s. A Turning PointWilliams, Rob (26 January 2014). "Tom Perkins: Billionaire venture capitalist ridiculed after writing letter comparing the treatment of rich Americans to the Holocaust". The Independent. Archived from the original on 25 September 2015 . Retrieved 27 January 2014. The violence was instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA ( Sturmabteilung : commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth. In 1989, Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee and later Vice President of the United States, wrote of an "ecological Kristallnacht" in The New York Times. He opined that events which were then taking place, such as deforestation and ozone depletion, prefigured a greater environmental catastrophe in the same way that Kristallnacht prefigured the Holocaust. [84] Martin Sasse, Nazi Party member and bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Thuringia, leading member of the Nazi German Christians, one of the schismatic factions of German Protestantism, published a compendium of Martin Luther's writings shortly after the Kristallnacht; Sasse "applauded the burning of the synagogues" and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, "On 10 November 1938, on Luther's birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany." The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words "of the greatest anti-Semite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews." [73] Diarmaid MacCulloch argued that Luther's 1543 pamphlet, On the Jews and Their Lies was a "blueprint" for the Kristallnacht. [74] Internationally [ edit ] British Jews protest against immigration restrictions to Palestine after Kristallnacht, November 1938 In its aftermath, German officials announced that Kristallnacht had erupted as a spontaneous outburst of public sentiment in response to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath. Vom Rath was a German embassy official stationed in Paris. Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew, had shot the diplomat on November 7, 1938. A few days earlier, German authorities had expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany from the Reich; Grynszpan had received news that his parents, residents in Germany since 1911, were among them.