Kristallnacht

A few days earlier the German diplomat Ernst Rath had been assassinated by the seventeen year-old Jewish youth Herschel Grynszpan. The incident led propaganda minister Goebbels to speak of an international Jewish conspiracy against the German Reich. The accusations instigated a supposedly spontaneous popular outcry. In Germany, Austria and Sudetenland over 7,000 Jewish shops were destroyed and looted in a single night (the night was named after the pieces of glass from the many broken windows). Between one and two thousand synagogues were destroyed, 96 Jews were killed on the street, and many thousands (an estimated 30,000) were deported to concentration camps. Following Kristallnacht, the anti-Jewish measures became still harsher in Germany. A great many Jews tried to flee the country.