Kristallnacht Essay Research Paper Kristallnacht or Crystal

Kristallnacht Essay, Research Paper

Kristallnacht or Crystal Night was the turning point and beginning of the Jewish Holocaust. On November 8 of 1938, a national action to terrorize the Jewish community was planned by Nazi propaganda chief Josef Goebbels. On the night of November 9 through November 10 bands of Nazis and their sympathizers destroyed synagogues and shops belonging to Jews across Germany. The term Kristallnacht was coined by Walter Funk at the November 12 Nazi meeting following the pogrom of November 8th through the 10th. This term, coined by Funk, was a measure of poetic license, and reffered to the fact that pieces of glass from th broken windows, glittered like crystal in the streets (”Kristallnacht”). The term was originally made to mock the Jews on that black November night in 1938.

Before Kristallnacht that Jewish Community did not live as equals. As the period of Kristallnacht approached, the Jewish community was getting more of their rights taken away; while the Nazi party and it’s sympathizers were being allowed to break the law with little or no penalty. In the first half of 1938, numerous laws were passed restricting Jewish economic activity and occupational opportunities (”Kristallnacht”). In July of 1938, a law was passed requiring all Jews to carry identification cards. On October 28, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship were arrested and relocated acroos the Polish border (”Kristallnacht”). Before Kristallnacht, Jews were subject to many discriminary actions. For example, If an Aryan was arrested for J-walking, it was a one mark fine. If a Jew was arressted for the same crime, they were held for a day and fined fifty to five hundred marks. Jews were also given license plate neumbers above 350,000 so the police could easily identify them (Thalmann and Feinermann 16). On August 17th of 1938 a law called the Globke decree, required all Jewish men to change their first names to Israel and all Jewish women to Sara (Thalmann and Feinermann 24). From July to October of 1938, with increasing momentum, decree after decree further limited Jews’ chances of survival in the Reich. Jewish lawyers and doctors were barred from practice and reduced to acting as legal consultants or nurses to other Jews. The professional credentials of salesmen were revoked. Shopkeepers and artisans were to be barred from any commercial activity after January 1st 1939. Jewish tenants were kicked out, and those who owned property were forced to sell (Thalmann and Feinermann 24). Jews were forced out of their homes onto the streets, and arrested for no reason. The discriminary acts place on Jews led to many cases of Jews committing suicide because they were unable to fight back.

On the night of October 27, 1938, Zindel Grynszpan and his family were forced out of their home by German police. His store and family’s possessions were confiscated and they were forced to move over the Polish border. On the morning of November 7, 1938, Zindel’s seventeen year old son, Herschel, went to the German embassy in Paris in an atempt to kill the German Ambassador to France. Upon discovering that the Ambassador was not in the embassy, he settled for a lesser official, Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath. Rath, was critically wounded and died two days after the shooting (Kristallnacht). “Grynszpan made no effort to run away. He wanted to protest among them, who were marrooned at that moment in a village of the German-Polish border, expelled from Germany, no longer acceptable in their homeland” (The Economist Jan. 6, 1990). After the assasination of Ernst vom Rath, Anti-Jewish demonstrations began to break out across Germany. In response to these break outs of Anti-Jewish demonstrations, Goebbels, Hitler’s Chief of Propaganda, said; “it has decided that such demonstrations are not to be prepared or organized by the party, but so far as they originate spontaneously, they are not to be discouraged either” (Kristallnacht Perspective). The assassination provided Goebbels with the excuse he needed to launch a pogrom against German Jews (Kristallnacht). “To Hitler, the assassination was not the act of a desperate Jewish youth, but a conspiracy by the ‘International Jews’” (Kristallnacht Perspective). To a Nazi, the assassination was the perfect reason to start a pogrom against the Jewish population, and this is why many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust feel that the assassination was a setup. Magnus Davidsohn, reader of the principal synagogue in Berlin, paid a visit with his wife to Counsellor vom Rath’s parents. When he expressed his condolences and the sympathy distraught with grief, responded, “my dear Reverend, neither you nor any other Jew is responsible for this. I think my son was assassinated on orders. He spoke toomuch and a hired assassin killed him” (Thalmann and Feinermann 57). Whether it was a setup or not, the assassination of Ernst vom Rath led to the massacre of many inocent lives. The assassination took place just two days before the annual party ceremony commemorating the November 1923 putsch in Munch, which may have added to the Nazis reasoning to start such a massacre (Kristallnacht Perspective). For the average Nazi this was an opportunity to rise up in society, and to gain power and control over a large portion of society. The event of the Holocaust was inevitable. The assassination of Ernst vom Rath only triggered off an event that was bound to take place.

On November 8