What happened during Kristallnacht in November 1938?

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Antisemitism demonstration in Paris — antisemitism Demonstrators protesting antisemitism during a silent march in Paris. The march commemorated Mireille Knoll, a Jewish woman who had survived the Holocaust and was murdered in her home on March 23, 2018, in what authorities called a hate crime.

Kristallnacht, or the "Night of Broken Glass," refers to the state-sponsored pogroms against Jewish people and property across Germany and Austria on November 9–10, 1938. Orchestrated by Nazi leadership, including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, the violence was presented as a "spontaneous" reaction to the death of a German diplomat in Paris.1

During these attacks, which represent a horrific escalation of antisemitism, the following atrocities occurred:

Destruction: Over 1,000 synagogues were burned or damaged, and approximately 7,500 Jewish businesses were looted and ransacked.1
Violence and Arrests: At least 91 Jews were murdered, and roughly 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps such as Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen.1
Persecution: The Nazi regime forced the Jewish community to pay a collective fine of one billion Reichsmarks and confiscated insurance payouts for the damages.1

This event marked a definitive turning point, signaling the impossibility of Jewish survival in Nazi Germany and leading to further systemic exclusion from public life.1