Editing Kristallnacht (section)

==Background==
{{further|History of the Jews in Austria|History of the Jews in Germany|Anti-Jewish legislation in pre-war Nazi Germany|Nuremberg Laws}}

===Early Nazi persecutions===
{{Antisemitism}}
In the 1920s, most German Jews were fully integrated into the country's society as citizens. They served in the army and navy and contributed to every field of German business, science and culture.<ref>Goldstein, Joseph (1995). ''Jewish History in Modern Times''. [[Sussex Academic Press]]. pp. 43–44. {{ISBN|978-1-898723-06-6}}.</ref> Conditions for German Jews began to worsen after the appointment of [[Adolf Hitler]] (the Austrian-born leader of the [[Nazi Party|National Socialist German Workers' Party]]) as [[Chancellor of Germany]] on 30 January 1933, and the [[Enabling Act of 1933|Enabling Act]] (implemented 23 March 1933) which enabled the assumption of power by Hitler after the [[Reichstag fire]] of 27 February 1933.<ref>{{cite web|title= Nazi Germany – dictatorship|url= http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_Germany_dictatorship.htm|author= Trueman, Chris|access-date= 12 March 2008|archive-date= 6 March 2008|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080306183157/http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/Nazi_Germany_dictatorship.htm|url-status= live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title= Hitler's Enabling Act|url= http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm|access-date= 2008-03-12|archive-date= 9 May 2008|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080509145956/http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm|url-status= live}}</ref> From its inception, Hitler's regime moved quickly to introduce [[Racial policy of Nazi Germany|anti-Jewish policies]]. [[Nazi propaganda]] alienated the 500,000 Jews living in Germany, who accounted for only 0.86% of the overall population, and framed them as an enemy responsible for Germany's defeat in the [[World War I|First World War]] and for its subsequent economic disasters, such as the [[Inflation in the Weimar Republic|1920s hyperinflation]] and the subsequent [[Great Depression]].<ref name=Gilbert23>{{harvnb|Gilbert|2006|p=23}}</ref> Beginning in 1933, the German government enacted a series of [[Anti-Jewish legislation in prewar Nazi Germany|anti-Jewish laws]] restricting the rights of German Jews to earn a living, to enjoy full citizenship and to gain education, including the ''[[Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service]]'' of 7 April 1933, which forbade Jews to work in the civil service.<ref>{{cite book |publisher=Moorland Publishing |title=Refugee Scholars: Conversations with Tess Simpson |last=Cooper |first=R.M. |location=Leeds |year=1992 |page=31}}</ref> The subsequent 1935 [[Nuremberg Laws]] stripped German Jews of their citizenship and prohibited Jews from marrying non-Jewish Germans.

These laws resulted in the exclusion and alienation of Jews from German social and political life.<ref>{{cite web |title=Introduction to the Holocaust |url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust |access-date=12 March 2008|archive-date= 1 February 2013|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20130201184325/http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005143|url-status= live}}</ref> Many sought asylum abroad; hundreds of thousands emigrated, but as [[Chaim Weizmann]] wrote in 1936, "The world seemed to be divided into two parts—those places where the Jews could not live and those where they could not enter."<ref>''Manchester Guardian'', 23 May 1936, cited in A.J. Sherman, ''Island Refuge, Britain and the Refugees from the Third Reich, 1933–1939'', (London, Elek Books Ltd, 1973), p. 112, also in [http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/evian/evian.html ''The Evian Conference — Hitler's Green Light for Genocide''] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130827082632/http://christianactionforisrael.org/antiholo/evian/evian.html |date=27 August 2013 }}, by Annette Shaw<!-- ISBN# needed --></ref> The international [[Évian Conference]] on 6 July 1938 addressed the issue of Jewish and [[Romani people|Romani]] immigration to other countries. By the time the conference took place, more than 250,000 Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been [[Anschluss|annexed by Germany]] in March 1938; more than 300,000 German and Austrian Jews continued to seek refuge and asylum from oppression. As the number of Jews and Romani wanting to leave increased, the restrictions against them grew, with many countries tightening their rules for admission. By 1938, Germany "had entered a new radical phase in [[anti-Semitic]] activity".<ref>Johnson, Eric. ''The Nazi Terror: Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans''. United States: Basic Books, 1999, p. 117.</ref> Some historians believe that the Nazi government had been contemplating a planned outbreak of violence against the Jews and were waiting for an appropriate provocation; there is evidence of this planning dating back to 1937.<ref>{{cite book |last=Friedländer |first=Saul |author-link=Saul Friedländer |title=Nazi Germany and The Jews |volume=The Years of Persecution 1933–1939 |location=London |publisher=Phoenix |year=1997 |page=270 }}</ref> In a 1997 interview, the German historian [[Hans Mommsen]] claimed that a major motive for the pogrom was the desire of the ''[[Gauleiter]]s'' of the NSDAP to seize Jewish property and [[business]]es.<ref name="yadvashem1997">{{cite web|last= Mommsen|first= Hans|title= Interview with Hans Mommsen|publisher= Yad Vashem|date= 12 December 1997|url= http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203850.pdf|access-date= 6 February 2010|archive-date= 16 July 2012|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20120716185846/http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%203850.pdf|url-status= live}}</ref> Mommsen stated:

<blockquote>The need for money by the party organization stemmed from the fact that [[Franz Xaver Schwarz]], the party treasurer, kept the local and regional organizations of the party short of money. In the fall of 1938, the increased pressure on Jewish property nourished the party's ambition, especially since Hjalmar Schacht had been ousted as ''Reich'' minister for economics. This, however, was only one aspect of the origin of the November 1938 pogrom. The Polish government threatened to extradite all Jews who were Polish citizens but would stay in Germany, thus creating a burden of responsibility on the German side. The immediate reaction by the Gestapo was to push the Polish Jews—16,000 persons—over the borderline, but this measure failed due to the stubbornness of the Polish customs officers. The loss of prestige as a result of this abortive operation called for some sort of compensation. Thus, the overreaction to Herschel Grynszpan's attempt against the diplomat Ernst vom Rath came into being and led to the November pogrom. The background of the pogrom was signified by a sharp cleavage of interests between the different agencies of party and state. While the Nazi party was interested in improving its financial strength on the regional and local level by taking over Jewish property, [[Hermann Göring]], in charge of the Four-Year Plan, hoped to acquire access to foreign currency in order to pay for the import of {{Sic|hide=y|urgently|-}}needed raw material. Heydrich and Himmler were interested in fostering Jewish emigration.<ref name="yadvashem1997"/> </blockquote>

The [[Zionist]] leadership in the [[Mandate Palestine|British Mandate of Palestine]] wrote in February 1938 that according to "a very reliable private source—one which can be traced back to the highest echelons of the SS leadership", there was "an intention to carry out a genuine and dramatic pogrom in Germany on a large scale in the near future".<ref>
Georg Landauer to Martin Rosenbluth, 8 February 1938, cited in Friedländer, loc. cit.
</ref>

===Expulsion of Polish Jews in Germany===
{{main|Polenaktion}}
[[File: Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1982-174-27, Nürnberg, Ausweisung polnischer Juden.jpg|thumb|left|upright=1.3|Polish Jews expelled from Germany in late October 1938]]
In August 1938, German authorities announced that residence permits for foreigners were being canceled and would have to be renewed.{{cn|date=November 2018}} This included German-born Jews of foreign citizenship. [[Second Polish Republic|Poland]] stated that it would renounce citizenship rights of [[History of the Jews in Poland|Polish Jews]] living abroad for at least five years after the end of October, effectively making them stateless.<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/polenaktion-und-pogrome-1938-prolog-zum-holocaust-a-1234650.html|title='Polenaktion' und Pogrome 1938 – "Jetzt rast der Volkszorn. Laufen lassen"|magazine=[[Der Spiegel]]|date=29 October 2018|language=de|access-date=9 November 2018|archive-date=30 March 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190330023035/http://www.spiegel.de/einestages/polenaktion-und-pogrome-1938-prolog-zum-holocaust-a-1234650.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In the so-called "''[[Polenaktion]]''", more than 12,000 Polish Jews, among them the philosopher and theologian Rabbi [[Abraham Joshua Heschel]] and future literary critic [[Marcel Reich-Ranicki]], were expelled from Germany on 28 October 1938, on Hitler's orders. They were ordered to leave their homes in a single night and were allowed only one suitcase per person to carry their belongings. As the Jews were taken away, their remaining possessions were seized as loot both by Nazi authorities and by neighbors.{{Cn|date=November 2022}}

The deportees were taken from their homes to railway stations and were put on trains to the Polish border, where Polish border guards sent them back into Germany. This stalemate continued for days in the pouring rain, with the Jews marching without food or shelter between the borders.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Corb|first=Noam|date=2020|title="From Tears Come Rivers, from Rivers Come Oceans, from Oceans -a Flood": The Polenaktion, 1938-1939|url=https://www.academia.edu/45675677|journal=Yad Vashem Studies|volume=48|pages=21–69}}</ref> Four thousand were granted entry into Poland, but the remaining 8,000 were forced to stay at the border. They waited there in harsh conditions to be allowed to enter Poland. A British newspaper told its readers that hundreds "are reported to be lying about, penniless and deserted, in little villages along the frontier near where they had been driven out by the Gestapo and left."<ref>{{cite news|title=Expelled Jews' Dark Outlook|url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3531693.ece|work=Newspaper article|publisher=The Times|date=1 November 1938|access-date=12 March 2008|location=London|archive-date=23 May 2010|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100523104122/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3531693.ece|url-status=dead}}</ref> Conditions in the [[refugee camps]] "were so bad that some actually tried to escape back into Germany and were shot", recalled a British woman who was sent to help those who had been expelled.<ref>"Recollections of Rosalind Herzfeld," ''Jewish Chronicle,'' 28 September 1979, p. 80; cited in Gilbert, ''The Holocaust—The Jewish Tragedy'', London: William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1986.</ref>

===Shooting of vom Rath===
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1988-078-07, Herschel Feibel Grynszpan.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Herschel Grynszpan]], 7 November 1938]]
[[File:Ernst-vom-Rath.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Ernst vom Rath]] ]]
Among those expelled was the family of Sendel and Riva Grynszpan, Polish Jews who had emigrated to Germany in 1911 and settled in [[Hanover]], Germany. At the trial of [[Adolf Eichmann]] in 1961, Sendel Grynszpan recounted the events of their deportation from Hanover on the night of 27 October 1938: "Then they took us in police trucks, in prisoners' lorries, about 20 men in each truck, and they took us to the railway station. The streets were full of people shouting: ''{{'}}Juden Raus! Auf Nach Palästina!{{'}}''" ("Jews get out! Go to Palestine!").<ref>Hannah Arendt, ''Eichmann in Jerusalem'', p. 228.</ref> Their seventeen-year-old son [[Herschel Grynszpan|Herschel]] was living in Paris with an uncle.<ref name="Hutchinson 1998"/> Herschel received a postcard from his family from the Polish border, describing the family's expulsion: "No one told us what was up, but we realized this was going to be the end{{nbsp}}.... We don't have a penny. Could you send us something?"<ref name="GSA">German State Archives, [[Potsdam]], quoted in Rita Thalmann and Emmanuel Feinermann, ''Crystal night, 9–10 November 1938'', pp. 33, 42.</ref> He received the postcard on 3 November 1938.

On the morning of Monday, 7 November 1938, he purchased a revolver and a box of bullets, then went to the German embassy and asked to see an embassy official. After he was taken to the office of Nazi diplomat [[Ernst vom Rath]], Grynszpan fired five bullets at Vom Rath, two of which hit him in the abdomen. Vom Rath was a professional diplomat with the Foreign Office who expressed anti-Nazi sympathies, largely based on the Nazis' treatment of the Jews and was under Gestapo investigation for being politically unreliable.<ref>William L. Shirer, ''The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich'', p. 430.</ref> However, he also argued that the anti-Semitic laws were "necessary" to allow the ''[[Volksgemeinschaft]]'' to flourish.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Schwab |first=Gerald |title=The Day the Holocaust Began |publisher=Praeger |year=1990 |location=New York |pages=15}}</ref>

Grynszpan made no attempt to escape the French police and freely confessed to the shooting. In his pocket, he carried a postcard to his parents with the message, "May God forgive me{{nbsp}}... I must protest so that the whole world hears my protest, and that I will do." It is widely assumed that the assassination was politically motivated, but historian [[Hans-Jürgen Döscher]] says the shooting may have been the result of a love affair gone wrong, and that Grynszpan and vom Rath had become intimate after they met in [[Le Boeuf sur le Toit (cabaret)|Le Boeuf sur le Toit]], which was a popular meeting place for gay and bisexual men at the time.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/humanities.research |title=Did gay affair provide a catalyst for Kristallnacht? |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130825201655/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/humanities.research |archive-date=25 August 2013 |first=Kate |last=Connolly |work=The Guardian |date=30 October 2001 |quote=On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jew, walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat. Nazi propagandists condemned the shooting as a terrorist attack to further the cause of the Jewish 'world revolution' and launched the series of attacks known as ''Kristallnacht''. Vom Rath and Grynszpan met in Le Boeuf sur le Toit bar, a popular haunt for gay men in the autumn of 1938 and became intimate. }}</ref>

The next day, the German government retaliated, barring Jewish children from German state elementary schools, indefinitely suspending Jewish cultural activities, and putting a halt to the publication of Jewish newspapers and magazines, including the three national German Jewish newspapers. A newspaper in Britain described the last move, which cut off the Jewish populace from their leaders, as "intended to disrupt the Jewish community and rob it of the last frail ties which hold it together."<ref name=Gilbert23/> Their rights as citizens had been stripped.<ref>"Nazis Planning Revenge on Jews", ''News Chronicle'', 9 November 1938</ref> One of the first legal measures issued was an order by Heinrich Himmler, commander of all German police, forbidding Jews to possess any weapons whatsoever and imposing a penalty of twenty years' confinement in a concentration camp upon every Jew found in possession of a weapon hereafter.<ref name="NYT1938">"Nazis Smash, Loot and Burn Jewish Shops and Temples Until Goebbels Calls Halt", ''New York Times'', 11 November 1938</ref>