The people that are most affected are the survivors. Kristallnacht was a Nazi street riot where streets were littered with broken glass. It was presented by the Nazi regime as a spontaneous public outburst provoked by the assassination of a minor German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan. The pogrom's name comes from the German word for beveled plate glass (Kristallglas) and refers to the broken shop windows of the Jewish stores, hence Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass. Mass destruction broke out across Germany: synagogues were destroyed and burned, shop windows were broken and stores looted, Jewish homes were invaded and household furnishing stolen or destroyed, and Jewish people were physically assaulted, sometimes even raped and murdered, and arrested.
The Holocaust started with Kristallnacht, which is “the Night of Broken Glass.” This occurred on November 7th, 1938. Over 7,000 Jewish shops were vandalized, synagogues were destroyed, and at least 91 people died. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps, but were released eventually. From 1933 to 1945, Jews were sent to concentration camps, these were used as a way to exterminate the Jewish population. In the beginning of the Holocaust, many people were sent to labor camps but died of infections or from working so much.
Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. [3] Over 1,000 synagogues were burned (95 in Vienna alone), and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Martin Gilbert writes that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from the foreign journalists working in Germany sent shock waves around the world. The Times wrote at the time: "No foreign propagandist bent upon blackening Germany before the world could outdo the tale of burnings and beatings, of blackguardly assaults on defenseless and innocent people, which disgraced that country yesterday." The pretext for the attacks was the
On 7 November 1938, Grynszpan a Jew who had escaped to France shot Von Rath a secretary of the German Embassy in France for denying help to Grynszpan's parents who were deported to Poland. Von Rath died on November 9th because of the injuries. What happened on Kristallnatch?. The murder of von Rath by a Jewish served as the pretext for the Nazis to begin what would end up in the Holocaust, on the night from 9th to November 10th 1938, the nazis people destroyed almost all synagogues in Germany and Austria, all businesses Jews were attacked and Jewish cemeteries were dishonored, 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, 91 jews were killed and the rest of them tormented. The consequences of Kristallnatch, the event in Germany was rejected by various and praised by others, many governments cut off relations with Germany in protest.
In Nazi Germany many members of the party that were simply civilians were unaware of the terrible fate that had awaited their Jewish neighbors and friends. Even members of the army, some as high up as generals, were unaware of the terrible crimes being committed--if they are to be believed. The question that faced prosecutors and juries at many war crime trials was this: is ignorance an excuse for participating in the Nazi party and army when their government was killing millions of people? Answers vary according to different situations but for the majority of people, especially those high in the chain of command, the answer should be no. Ignorance is not an excuse for participation when information was available.
The reality is there was no one individual cause for Hitler’s rise to power; it was combination of all of these situations which fit together like pieces in a puzzle to create a unique situation for Hitler’s emergence to dictatorship. While Hitler’s chance to take power in Germany did not occur until the 1930’s, factors that made this possible were already occurring in the early 1920’s when Adolf was still a mere street painted in Vienna. When the Germans heard about the Treaty of Versailles which ended War War One, they felt ‘pain and anger,’ and felt it was too harsh and unfair. The Weimar government it brought about was despised by many Germans, as it caused large government coalitions where decisions could not be made. Hitler’s While there was a brief “Golden Age” of economic upturn, the death of Gustav Stresemann and especially the Wall Street Crash put a quick end of this.
The Holocaust was one of the worst events to ever happen to mankind. It was started by the Fuhrer of Germany, Adolf Hitler, who thought that the Aryan race was superior to every other race. He had a massive hatred for the Jewish race and decided to try and exterminate every living Jewish person. He killed around two-thirds of all the European Jews (Byers 10). World War II was going on at the same time as the Holocaust.
Also more persecution happened the next day as Jewish communities were asked to pay $1 million marks in reparations to what took place on that night . In 1940 the Warsaw Ghetto came into use which could hold 400,000 Jews and was the death to 500,000, this was used as a holding point for the Treblinka death camp, This was violent persecution as death occurred and Human rights were removed this is shown in the way that many Jews starved to death and were dehydrated they were offered less than 200 calories a day. Violent persecution can also be seen in the way the Nazis treated the Jews when they were in the Ghetto, The Jews were often beaten by the Nazis as it gave them a sense of satisfaction In 1942 the Wannsee conference took place where the final solution was devised and the construction of the death camps increased. This was extermination of the Jews as the sole purpose was to eradicate them, This is shown as the death toll increased since the Wannsee conference as well as the construction. This is seen in the August of 1942 where 6000 Jews died in Auschwitz to a previous 100 Jews in
Then when WW II came around the Jewish people were targeted by the Nazis. They were stripped of all their rights and basically became slaves to the Nazis party. The Nazis tried to rid Europe of the Jewish people and if they had their way eventually the whole world would be free of this religious group. The character that people show through times of adversity can define them individually and as an entire group. In “Night” Eli Wiesel faces life and death everyday in the Nazis concentration camp.
Most were murdered. In these death camps and elsewhere -- where Hitler's followers carried out his terrible plan -- six million Jews were killed. One-and-a-half million Jewish children were among them. vi In 1945, the war ended and the entire world learned the horrors of what had gone on in the concentration camps. Since then, people have been trying to understand more about what is today known as the "Holocaust," the worst example of genocide -- the mass murder of people because of their race, religion, or ethnicity -- in human history.