KristallnachtSarah2

Kristallnacht is also known as the "Night of Broken Glass."

On November 7, 1938, a young Jewish refugee named Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a German diplomat in Paris. Grynszpan's father and 10,000 other Jews had been deported from Germany to Poland, and the boy was seeking revenge for this and for the persecution of Jews in general.

In retaliation, Hitler ordered his minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, to stage attacks against Jews that would seem like spontaneous popular reaction to news of the murder. On November 9, this plan played out in a spree of destruction.

By the next morning, more than 90 Jews were dead, hundreds severely injured, and thousands more greatly terrorized. Nazis had forbidden police to interfere while they destroyed 7,500 Jewish businesses and wrecked more than 180 synogogues.

Following the night of Kristallnacht, the Gestapo, the government's secret police, arrested at least 20,000 wealthy Jews and released them only if they agreed to leave and give up all their possesions.