Kristallnacht

Known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a wave of organised violence against Jews across Nazi Germany, annexed Austria and the Sudetenland. The regime used the shooting of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris by a young Jewish refugee, Herschel Grynszpan, as a pretext. Stormtroopers and others burned synagogues, smashed and looted thousands of Jewish shops and attacked homes, while police stood aside. Around 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and dozens of people were killed. Afterwards the Jewish community was collectively fined and pushed out of economic life, a decisive step on the road to the Holocaust.

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