Between the late evening hours of November 9, and the early morning of the 10th, gangs of German brownshirts and the SS publicly destroyed and firebombed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.
In addition to burning down synagogues, stormtroopers shattered shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial businesses and their wares looted or left strewn on the pavements outside, coated with broken glass.
Jewish homes and apartments were ransacked, and the contents, including jewelry, radios, cameras, electrical equipment and other consumer products were stolen. Furniture was smashed, books and valuables were tossed everywhere, and the residents were terrorized and beaten. In many towns, gravestones in Jewish cemeteries were trashed.
Kristallnacht marked the beginning of the plan, to rob the Jews of their possessions for the benefit of the Reich and then to sweep them forever from the German scene. Furthermore, thereafter, Jews had no place in the German economy, and no independent Jewish life was possible, with the dismissal of cultural and communal bodes and the banning of the Jewish press.
During the week after Kristallnacht, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s Berlin reporter called that night “The worst outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in modern German History.”. Several hundred Jews were killed and 30,000 were arrested and sent to the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Dachau, where thousands more died.
In dozens of cities and towns, the ‘degradation ritual’ took different forms: as their synagogues burned, Jews were forced to watch it while it went up in flames; others were compelled to dance around it or kneel in front of it. Torah scrolls and prayer books were vandalized, frequently by German youth. In Vienna, many rabbis had their beards cut.
Jews were paraded through their city in their pajamas. Old age homes and orphanages were ransacked. In the Jewish hospital in Nuremberg, patients were removed from the premises with such viciousness, several died.
Once one could ask, how could the entire world stand by and allow such a disaster to occur? After witnewsing much of the world's antisemitic and anti-Zionist reaction to the barbaric violence of October 7, 2023 and Israel's existential war that followed, the question is irrelevant.
Then, the fascist or authoritative regimes in Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Poland were governments who approved of this pogrom and wanted to use the pogrom as a case to make their own anti-Semitic policies stronger in their individual countries.
The three Great Western powers - Great Britain, France and the United States - said the appropriate things but did nothing to save the Jews.
Hitler, in the late 1930’s told the world to take the Jews but there was just no one willing to take them in. Even in the USA, President Roosevelt and his administration kept on expressing their shock over the terrible events which were occurring in Germany and Austria, but when it came time to act and help save the refugees by bringing them to the United States, the United States government refused and replied by saying that they have no intention to allow more immigrants to enter the United States.
What does this teach? That we must rely on no one else, that we must remain vigilant and fight even the smallest seed of antisemitism that tries to take root.
Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg is Associate Editor of the New Jersay State Holocaust Curriculum. He appears frequently on radio and TV and has published hundreds of articles regarding the Holocaust. Rabbi Rosenberg published The Rosenberg Holocaust Siddur, in memory of his parents Jacob and Rachel Rosenberg.