Jews throughout Germany marked today the 16th anniversary of the night of November 9-10, 1938, when Nazi gangs throughout Germany destroyed hundreds of synagogues and Jewish communal institutions, smashed thousands of Jewish-owned shops and homes and beat and imprisoned count-less Jews. The pogroms were set off by the Nazi regime on the pretext furnished by the assassination in Paris of Ernst vom Rath, a Nazi diplomat.
The German people, who witnessed all the cruelty of “Crystal Night”– so named for the shards of glass scattered on the streets of German cities after the smashing of store and home windows–paid virtually no attention to the anniversary today.
In a few of the larger cities of Germany, there was token observance of this first mass pogrom against the Jews of Germany by the Nazis. In Berlin, Prof. H. Tibertius, member of the Municipal Council, told a meeting called by the local Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation that the date marked Germany’s “deepest humiliation.” In Munich, the Christian-Jewish group called a meeting for an “hour of recollection.”
In this city, special open-air religious services were held by the Jews and memorial lights were kindled on the site of the Hirsch Synagogue, which was destroyed during “Crystal Night. ” Jews in Dusseldorf, and a number of other cities, held special services in front of monuments raised in memory of the Jews murdered by the Nazis.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
