Kristallnacht, << KRIHS tahl nahkt, >> is a name given to the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, when Nazis attacked Jews and destroyed Jewish businesses and synagogues throughout Germany and Austria. Kristallnacht is a German word meaning Crystal Night. In English, the event is called the Night of Broken Glass because the Nazis shattered the windows of many Jewish-owned stores.
Kristallnacht followed years of discrimination against the Jews. Adolf Hitler had made anti-Semitism (prejudice against Jews) a government policy when he came to power in Germany in 1933. A few years after Kristallnacht, the Nazis began systematically murdering Jews in a campaign called the Holocaust (see Holocaust).
On Nov. 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew whose parents recently had been deported from Germany shot a German diplomat in Paris. The official died of his wounds on November 9. That evening, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels made an anti-Semitic speech. The violence of Kristallnacht began after the speech and lasted for about 24 hours, destroying thousands of businesses and many synagogues in Germany and Austria. Nazi Party members attacked Jews on the streets and in their homes and killed dozens. The Nazis also arrested about 30,000 Jews.
