Night of Broken Glass

7500 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed 91 Jewish people were murdered 680 Jewish people committed suicide in Austria alone 267 synagogues were destroyed throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and brought to Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen The German Jewish community was then fined 1 billion Reichsmark ($400,000,000 at 1938 rates). The Reich government confiscated all insurance payouts to Jewish people whose homes and businesses were looted or destroyed leaving the Jewish owners responsible for the cost of all repairs

Kristallnact was the turning point in the Nazi’s war against the Jews: Anti-Jewish policies are put into the hands of the SS The passivity with which most Germans responded to the violence and complicity of others during this two day reign of terror signaled to the Nazis that the German public was prepared and accepting of even more radical measures against the Jewish people The Nazis then set in motion measures to exclude the Jewish people from all economic and social life Policies of forced emigration of Jews from Germany were instituted

The deportation of Jews “to the East” was meant to make Germany (judenrein) “free of Jews” Nazi Germany’s persecution of the Jews would then culminate in their attempt to annihilate the Jewish people