Kristallnacht
On the night of November ninth and into the morning of the tenth, approximately 1,000 synagogues were destroyed along with 7,500 Jewish homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses. The following night, more than 30,000 Jewish men, some as young as 14 years old, were arrested and taken to the first of the concentration camps. The start of this commotion on the ninth, was in response to a German diplomat’s assassination, Ernst vom Rath, which took place on November 7, 1938 in Paris. He was shot by a Polish Jew named Herschel Grynszpan; vom Rath died later that night in a local hospital. “Just before midnight on November 9, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller sent a telegram to all police units informing them that ‘in shortest order, actions against Jews and especially their synagogues will take place in all of Germany. These are not to be interfered with.’ Rather, the police were to arrest the victims. Fire companies stood by synagogues in flames with explicit instructions to let the buildings burn. They were to intervene only if a fire threatened adjacent “Aryan” properties” (Berenbaum 1). This quote explains how a telegram was sent from a German police officer informing that if any violence erupts against Jews, to ignore it, and after arrest the victims. Earlier in the decade, Hitler was elected as Germany’s chancellor and almost immediately started taking actions, such as planning to create a genocide in the Jewish population. “Almost immediately upon assuming the Chancellorship of Germany, Hitler began promulgating legal actions against Germany's Jews” (Levine 1). The word of the whole plot was sent out by Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief, Joseph Goebbels, who gave a speech urging people of Germany to act out against Jews. “The assassination provided Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's Chief of Propaganda, with the excuse he needed to launch a pogrom against German Jews. Grynszpan's attack was interpreted by Goebbels as a conspiratorial attack by "International Jewry" against the Reich and, symbolically, against the Fuehrer himself. This pogrom has come to be called Kristallnacht, ‘the Night of Broken Glass’” (Levine 1). Hitler and Goebbels convinced the public of Germany to attack Jews and their homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses, along with their synagogues. After the deadly two days, Jews were informed that they were not allowed to take insurance from any of the damaged property. The collective estimated fine of all the damage was 400 million dollars, all of which was not available for insurance. Following the two days of the devastating attacks, November 15, 1938 marked the first day when Jews were banned from schools, and later in November, Jews were issued a curfew. The nazis were starting to make Germany an unlivable place for Jews. “After Kristallnacht, conditions for German Jews grew increasingly worse” (“Kristallnacht” 1).