Ordered terror in the Reich pogrom night

83 years ago, on November 9, 1938, the National Socialists called for Jewish shops and synagogues to be destroyed. The persecution of the Jews reached a new dimension with the Night of Broken Glass - also in northern Germany.

by Vivienne Schumacher

On November 9, 1938, when Adolf Hitler and part of the Nazi leadership celebrated the anniversary of the failed Munich Putsch of 1923, it became known that Ernst vom Rath, Nazi diplomat at the German embassy in Paris, had shot the Polish Jew Herschel Grynszpan has succumbed. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels delivers an anti-Semitic diatribe. Shortly thereafter, the first instructions were issued to party and SA offices calling for the destruction of Jewish synagogues and shops. What follows is considered the official signal for the greatest genocide in Europe.

The fire brigade is not allowed to intervene for a long time

Several hundred people are arrested in Hanover and taken to concentration camps. 94 Jewish shops and 27 houses and apartments are demolished and devastated. SS Obergruppenfuhrer Friedrich Jeckeln was in command of what was then the province of Hanover. He takes orders from Munich and Berlin and sends about 500 SS men to Jewish businesses and homes. He has a prepared address list. Among other things, the synagogue in Bergstrasse, which was known as the "pearl of Hanoverian architecture", was destroyed. It's on fire for hours. SS men cordon off the entire area around the church. The fire brigade is only allowed to start extinguishing the fire when the fire threatens to spread to neighboring houses.

"They're breaking the apartment down there"

In a 1978 interview with NDR radio, a witness to the pogrom night in what is now Lower Saxony recalls November 10, 1938 in Hanover:"We heard a commotion outside our apartment and had no idea what was happening. My boy was running Of course, he went down straight away to see what was going on. He came back and said:'They are breaking down the apartment down there, the SA.' We looked out of the window and saw that they were actually wrecking the ground floor apartment with heavy objects, smashing windows. We saw how they also smashed the kitchen cupboard. We didn't know that a Jewish family lived there, but then we found out."

The Lower Saxony Memorials Foundation, in cooperation with history students from the Leibniz University in Hanover, has developed a website that documents the Night of Broken Glass in Lower Saxony. It provides information on the events in more than 50 locations using photos and documents.

Destruction and persecution in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania

Synagogues are also on fire in several cities in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania, Jewish cemeteries are desecrated, shops are damaged and looted. Eyewitnesses report how Nazis dressed in civilian clothes stormed the synagogue in Alt-Strelitz and destroyed the Torah scrolls and the entire facility, poured petrol over them and set them on fire. In the case of a fire in the Neubrandenburg synagogue, the fire brigade was only tasked with protecting an adjacent residential building.

The same in Rostock:in the early morning of November 10, the synagogue on Augustenstrasse burns down completely, while the fire brigade only protects the neighboring buildings. In a conversation with NDR radio in 1978, a businesswoman from Rostock said:"There were a whole row of people and the fire brigade stood there, gun at heel, so to speak, and actually only had the task of protecting the neighboring houses. But the synagogue was already three quarters burned down. They let it burn all night." In the morning the Nazis move on through the Hanseatic city and demolish around 50 apartments and shops. 64 Jewish men are arrested.

The "delayed" pogrom in Hamburg

In Hamburg, the few files that were not destroyed or "cleaned up" after the war show that there were problems alerting the Allgemeine SS on the night of November 9th to 10th. The SS men could not be reached by telephone at night, but the SA could be informed:eyewitnesses report that in the early morning hours of November 10, SA men in uniform and in civilian clothes had gathered on the town hall square. They marched off in small groups in different directions and started smashing windows.

Fire in the Jewish cemetery

Most of the brutal attacks on the Jewish population in the Hanseatic city took place in the afternoon and evening of November 10th. National Socialists destroy the New Dammtor Synagogue. Around 7 p.m. a fire was set in the mortuary at the Jewish cemetery in Harburg. Onlookers gather and hinder the fire brigade's extinguishing work:the hall burns down to its foundation.

The destroyers also set fire to the main synagogue on Bornplatz. Later, the Jewish community had to remove the rubble at their own expense. In 1988, a contemporary witness told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper:"I saw the flames erupting from the Grindelhof synagogue. In front of it, a pile of Jewish prayer books and Torah scrolls were burning. What I found most repellent were the faces of the SA men, who were illuminated by the burning synagogue I had the impression that the men were convinced that they were doing something particularly good."

In the shopping streets of the Hanseatic city, Jewish shops are demolished and set on fire. The Gestapo arrested at least 879 Jews. A Jewish citizen jumps from the third floor in fear and despair of being pursued.

Devastation and murder squads in Schleswig-Holstein

In Kiel, SA Oberfuhrer Carsten Volquardsen takes a call late in the evening of November 9:The Kiel police chief and SA leader, Joachim Meyer-Quade, who is in Munich for the commemoration of the Hitler putsch, gives the order, by force to take action against Jewish shops and places of worship. SA and SS men as well as party members of the NSDAP gather early in the morning on the town hall square in Kiel.

Here, too, the "action" is to be carried out in civilian clothes. They march through the city in shock troops and to the synagogue on Goethestrasse. The men set fire to the building and set an explosive device. At the same time, murder squads are on the move in the city:the Jews Lask and Leven, well-known businessmen in Kiel, are to be killed. Both are badly injured by gunshots, but survive. Numerous Jews are arrested during the night and in the following days. The National Socialists take the 58 men to the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps.

From discrimination to systematic persecution

In total, more than 1,300 people die in Germany as a result of the November 1938 pogrom, and around 30,000 Jews are arrested or deported to concentration camps. 1,406 places of worship and parishes are destroyed, several thousand shops are devastated. With the November pogrom, which is presented as a reaction to the murder of the German embassy secretary Ernst vom Rath in Paris, the Nazi regime switched from discrimination against the Jewish population to systematic persecution. It later culminates in the Holocaust.

Definition of terms:Reich pogrom night, pogrom night, November pogrom

The terms Reichspogromnacht, Pogrom Night or November pogrom have only recently spread and prevailed in general usage to replace the incriminated word "Reichskristallnacht".

The trivializing term " Reichskristallnacht" , whose origin has not been definitively clarified, formed for the Reich-wide pogrom (violent action against people who belong to a minority) against the Jews in the German Reich, which took place on 9/10. November 1938.

'Kristallnacht'' refers to the shards of glass scattered everywhere in front of the destroyed apartments, shops and offices, synagogues and public Jewish institutions.

Source:Landeszentrale für politische Bildung BW