Crystal Night when Nazi Germany attacked the Jews and looted their homes

After the Nazis took power in 1933, physical attacks and psychological intimidation became daily practices against Jews. On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis carried out attacks against Jewish interests and homes in Germany and Austria.

Physical attacks and psychological intimidation became daily practices against Jews in Germany and Austria, after the Nazis took power in 1933, and many Jews lost their jobs, and laws were issued to restrict their movements in public places and prevent them from entering them.

On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis carried out operations against Jewish interests and homes in Germany and Austria, and German police and security forces incited the Nazis to carry out actions against Jews wherever they were found.

Systematic persecution

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, German Jews became subject to constant practices and restrictions, with which the Nazis sought to get rid of the Jewish presence in their country through various means.

In August 1938, the German authorities announced that they would revoke residence permits for foreigners, saying that they would have to renew them, which included Jews born in Germany who had foreign citizenship, while Poland stated that it would give up citizenship rights for Polish Jews who lived abroad for more than five years, After the end of October of the same year, making them virtually stateless.

The Nazi authorities began to issue laws to rob Jews of property and remove them from government and educational jobs. The same authorities also deepened the processes of persecuting and harassing Jews until they began collecting Jews in concentration camps and then transferring them to extermination camps.

The "Crystal Night" attacks were triggered by the assassination in Paris on 7 November of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by a German-born Polish-Jewish teenager named Herschel Greenspan.

Following the incident, the German government responded by preventing Jewish children from entering German government primary schools, stopping Jewish cultural activities indefinitely, and stopping the publication of Jewish newspapers and magazines.

A British newspaper described the latest move, which led to the isolation of the Jewish population from its leaders, as "aimed at destabilizing the Jewish community and robbing it of the last of the weak ties that bind it together."

"Performance of the Holocaust"

On November 9, 1938, German police and Nazi party paramilitary forces, along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany and Austria, carried out acts of violence against Jews, looting their homes, hospitals and schools, and demolishing their buildings with heavy hammers, while the German authorities watched position without interference.

This night was called "Kristallnacht" or "Kristallnacht" because of the many shards of broken glass that were scattered in the streets after the windows of synagogues and Jewish-owned shops and buildings were smashed.

Estimates of deaths resulting from the attacks differed, and initial reports estimated the killing of 91 Jews, while German sources issued a much higher number later, after including deaths caused by ill-treatment after arrest, and subsequent suicides, which raises the number of dead to hundreds.

In the aftermath of the attacks, more than 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Homes, hospitals, schools and other facilities belonging to Jews were vandalized and demolished, and more than a thousand synagogues were burned.

The Nazis destroyed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and Sudetenland in western Sweden, while more than 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged and most of them were completely destroyed.

The attack was not limited to the Jews and their property in Berlin only, but also included other German cities such as Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg, as well as a number of small villages.

Raphael Gross, a historian who heads the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt, says that for "a number of reasons, the Germans participated in the attacks, either physically or silently," and considered that what happened that night "occurred under the watchful eye of the world press, ambassadors, and all citizens."

Many historians considered the "Crystal Night" operations as a prelude to what was known as the "Last Solution" massacre (the Holocaust).

According to Gross, "It is important to understand that night as a turning point in history. After 1938, a period began that can be considered as the end of the German Jewish era, during which German society transformed into another society."