Kristallnacht: The Night Of Broken Glass

Kristallnacht Jacob Wiener once stated, “It was called the "Night of Broken Glass," but it was more than that. You can clean up glass, but you cannot do that with people” (“The Night Hope Shattered”). Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, affected the majority of the world because it sparked the beginning of the Holocaust and created many lasting effects. Before Kristallnacht, the tension between Jews and Nazis had been steadily increasing and the strain became too much for the Germans to manage silently. Prior to the tragedy of Kristallnacht, Nazi Germany was inclined to keeping murders in private, but the violence quickly spread publicly due to the death of a German Embassy staff. In Paris on November 7, 1938, a teenage Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, shot a member of the German Embassy. In turn, Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich resorted to more brutal and violent protests against Jews (“The Night of Broken Glass”). These attacks on Jews escalated and led to Nazis planning their “Final Solution.” The “Final Solution” began by the carefully planning each attack on every Jew in Europe (“Kristallnacht” History.com). Along with the prior

The Holocaust was a period of time where Jews were violently persecuted throughout Europe, at one point, all Jews were either in hiding or concentration camps. The attacks of Kristallnacht showed the public the Nazi’s “inherent extremism”, and their definite attitude towards those who opposed them. After the attacks, everyone understood that “it would not get better at all, and Jews knew only a dark future” (“Night Hope Shattered”). Although Kristallnacht slightly after the start of the Holocaust, it gave rise to another level of the persecution of Jews. After Kristallnacht, Jews, Germans, and other Europeans were reminded of the Nazi’s continued reign over a large portion of