Harms of crystal

The Nuit of crystal (in German Reichskristallnacht ) is the name given to acts of violence which took place during the night of the November 9th 1938 in Germany, then under the Third Reich. It is about Pogrom S, of destruction of Synagog S, stores, places of dwellings and aggressions against identified people as Juif S who were held in Germany.

Antecedents

It is following the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, third adviser of the embassy of Germany in Paris, by the young Jew Herschel Grynszpan the November 7th 1938, that the Nazis organize the night of crystal .

Setting in scene

It is the occasion which the Nazi S waited to carry out an operation of great scale against the Jews. At the request of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels pushes the leaders of NSDAP and SA to attack the Jews, but also of other minorities to scramble the tracks. Reinhard Heydrich organizes violences.

The orders prescribed that SA were to be equipped as a civilian to make accept a spontaneous movement of the furious population against the " profiteurs". In fact, the reactions of the population were unfavorable, the Germans not appreciating that one is caught some with the property of others. The fires shocked also part of the population but not so much the fact that the Jews were attacked physically.

Cynically, the high ranking authority Nazi will tax the Jews with a fine of a billion Reichsmark S for the disorders and the damage of which they were the victims (approximately one the third of the total).

It is because of the fragments of glass (windows of the stores, stained glasses of the synagogs, etc) that the Nazis gave this name of Kristallnacht to this episode of racist violence.

Consequences

The indication of the number of victims and the property damages began again a long time, without subjecting them to a critical analysis, the data established by the Nazis themselves. Thus, the weekly magazine Die Zeit quoted on November 3rd, 1978 the died figures of 91 and 267 more destroyed synagogs that Heydrich had mentioned in a letter with Göring on November 11th, 1938. Some now think, on the basis of source many, that the number of victims and the importance of the property damages were much more important.

One speaks about at least 400 dead in the only night of the pogrom, including the Suicide S and the people mortally wounded. Thus for example in the only town of Nuremberg 9 murders, 10 suicides and 7 deaths by sudden death (i.e. forces) were described for the night of November 9th. For that it is necessary to add an unknown number of Viol S of Jewish women.

More than 30.000 men are sent in the camps of Dachau (10 911 including approximately 4.600 coming from Vienna (Austria)), Buchenwald (9 845 people) and Sachsenhausen (at least 6.000, probably nearly 10.000).

Moreover, on their arrival in the camps of tens of Jews were shot, out of the hundreds were killed at the time of alleged attempts at escape or mortally exhausted by the forced labor.

Thousands of survivors were seriously wounded; thus in the only Jewish hospital of Berlin 600 people have being amputated.

Reactions abroad

The echo of these events abroad was devastator. After November 10th more than 100 notes of protest emanating of foreign representations were addressed to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Berlin.

Foreign Jews had been victims of the pogrom, in spite of contrary natures. The protests were transmitted without comment to the chancellery of Reich and disappeared there in the files.

The the United States reacted very vigorously and pointed out their ambassador on November 14th. Protest demonstrations took place with New York. However the American authorities granted only 27.000 visas out of the 140.000 required by the Jews in Germany this year there. December 3rd the US government protested against the decree which évinçait the Jews of the German economy and which, in spite of the insurances given by Joachim von Ribbentrop also applied to the American citizens.

After that closings of artisanal companies and retail business Jewish, which were envisaged before December 31st, were suspended in the foreign companies; foreign Jewish representations as of on December 1st were released of the " expiatory service (" Sühneleistung") decided on November 12th, not to threaten the contract of friendship still in force with the United States.

In Great Britain, the pogroms caused a reversal of the political opinion among the population, while the government reacted in a way selected. The policy of appeasing of Chamberlain was null and void and the provision with the increasing war against Hitler. The germanophiles mediums which had defended up to now measurements of the government of Hitler are also concealed.

Many foreign companies in France, in Great Britain, in Yugoslavia, with the Canada, the Netherlands and the United States denounced their commercial treaties with Germany. The German companies lost a quarter of their Exportation S; the manufacturers of toys, leather and textiles were touched hard. These are the branches which then strongly benefitted from the " Aryanisation".

Prohibition

Among the prohibitions imposed to the Jews that of the trains of walk in forest appears, responsibility for Hermann Göring. He will joke at the time of the Procès of Nuremberg by saying that they would be limited to the zones where the dashes because of their noses walk…

Internal bonds

New synagog of Berlin