Kristallnacht's The Night Of Broken Glass

Good Afternoon, The Night Of Broken Glass, also referred to as Kristallnacht, meaning “Crystal Night”, occured in Nazi Germany on November 9th to November 10th, 1938, it was the consequence of the assassination of the third secretary of the German Embassy staff Ernst Vom Rath executed by the Polish-Jew teenager Herschel Grynszpan as pictured in source 2, this is a portrait taken after his arrest. This assassination was a contributing and foreshadowing factor to the Holocaust and it sparked further anger by the Nazis towards the Jewish population resulting in 30,000 Jewish men being arrested and many of whom being sent to concentration camps. During the Night of Broken Glass, as shown in source 3, broken glass covered the streets which was the result of German Nazis burning down synagogues, vandalising Jewish schools, homes, businesses and killing close to or more than 100 Jewish people. …show more content…
The 17 year old, German born Polish-Jew Herschel Grynszpan was a refugee living in Paris. He was motivated to kill based on the poor treatment that him and his family were exposed to when they were in refugee camps and he also wanted to punish the system that deported his parents' from Germany to Poland, alongside tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. His choice was to assassinate a high member of German Embassy staff to get back at them for treating him and his family so poorly. This assassination had such a large unforeseen impact on german society at the time and in the days following, the first global coverage of this assassination as stated in source 4 says “German Embassy Secretary Shot In Paris In Retaliation For Expulsions by the Nazis” This statement helped to spark riots and make the Nazi’s thirsty for