Kristallnacht Essay

(SLIDE 1) Kristallnacht was an attack on the German Jews done by the Nazis. Occurring on the 9th of November, 1938, roughly 200 synagogues got destroyed, over 8,000 Jewish shops were looted and tens of thousands of Jewish people were put into concentration camps.
(SLIDE 2) When Hitler came into power in 1933, he had a plan to expand Germany’s rule and to completely take out al of the Jews. Leading up to and even after Kristallnacht there were many new laws and government policies that controlled Jewish life and mistreated the Jews in Germany buy entirely taking their freedom.
(SLIDE 3) The Jews had been subjected to exploitive policies since the Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on 30th on January 1933, but before Kristallnacht, the Nazi policies had been mainly nonviolent and threatening towards the German Jews.
(SLIDE 4) After
Kristallnacht, conditions got increasingly worse for the Jews and the Nazis implemented their “Final Solution” which was carried out by murdering approximately 6 million Jews, known as the Holocaust.
(SLIDE 5) Hitler’s Nazi party advocated extreme German anti-Semitism and nationalism, demanded that all Jewish businesses were boycotted and that Jews be taken out from civil-service posts.
In May 1933, writings of non-Germans and Jewish authors were burned in a communal ceremony.
(SLIDE 6) Within two years of Kristallnacht, German businesses were publicly announcing that Jews would no longer be serviced. Nuremburg Laws were acknowledged in September 1935, it stated that only Aryans could be full full German citizens, resulting in that Aryans could not legally marry or have intercourse with Jews.
(SLIDE 7) In the aftermath of Kristallnacht the streets had shattered glass everywhere from damaged buildings which the name the “Night of Broken Glass” came from. The Nazis blamed the Jewish community for the damage and imposed a collective fine of $400 million.
(SLIDE 8) On the 15th of November, the American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, responded to the actions of Kristallnacht by reading a statement to the media where he harshly denounced the rising level of Anti-Semitism and violence in
Germany.
(SLIDE 9) Despite Roosevelt’s condemnation of the Nazi violence and Anti-Semitism, the U.S did not ease up on their immigration restrictions it had at that time, which would prevent large masses of German Jews from seeking safety in the U.S. The U.S. were anxious that the Nazi infiltrators would be encouraged t legally settle in the U.S.
(SLIDE 10) The violence of Kristallnacht was so severe that it made the German Jews realize that the Nazi Anti-Semitism and violence was not going to come to an end any time soon but be an on going problem and would get worse over time. Many Jews replied to this by planning escapes from their native land.
(SLIDE 11) Kristallnacht became more and more violent and repressive towards the Jews by the Nazis. By the end of 1938, German Jews were prohibited most public places in German, including schools. Conditions only got worse from here.
(SLIDE 12) In addition to the discriminatory laws, the Nazis also didn’t let Jewish people have normal privileges such as to vote or to own rural property, they also had to hand in their passports. German Jews were also forced to pay twice as much taxes as other citizens as they were considered ‘aliens’.
(SLIDE 13) The polish government realized what was going on in Germany and started to fear that Germany would banish Jews that are living in Germany that were Polish citizens and force them to move back to Poland. The polish government made a decree saying the citizenship of Poles living elsewhere would be unable to return to Poland without a special stamp.
(SLIDE 14) The German government figured out that the Poland government were not allowing their Jews to return to Poland, so Hitler announced that 12,000 Polish-born Jews would be expelled from Germany. They were given one night to leave Germany and were dumped on the Polish border, with no permission to enter either country with nothing but a suitcase to carry all of their belongings
(SLIDE 15) A man named Stephan Lewy was born in Berlin he escaped to France in 1940. After time of trying, he finally made his way to the United States to become one of the “Ritchie Boys” who were an ex-pat German Army of Intelligence. Stephan had survived and escaped Kristallnacht and provides support for Kristallnacht commemorations