November 1938 Pogroms

After the annexation of Austria, the Austrian Nazis mounted massive riots against the Jewish minority, which also had a radicalizing effect on the party members in the territory of the Third Reich. Thus, in June 1938, Joseph Goebbels sought to initiate a pogrom through systematically prepared acts of violence by party activists and by simultaneously harsh interventions by the police, in order to make the capital ‘free of Jews’. Similar anti-Jewish riots became more frequent throughout the Reich.

In parallel to this, the ‘Aryanization’ of the still remaining Jewish assets was started through preparatory legislative measures. From the perspective of the Nazi regime, the financial crisis of the Third Reich in the fall of 1938, made the seizure of Jewish assets appear a necessary precondition for a further increase in armaments. The Nazi regime also saw the international refugee conference held in Evian in July 1938 on the initiative of President Roosevelt and the setting up of the Intergovernmental Committee on Political Refugees, as an opportunity to force the Western states to increase their immigration quotas by increasing pressure on German Jews to be expelled.

After the anti-Jewish riots at the height of the Sudeten Crisis were stopped by the regime, a further wave of antisemitic brutality started in October 1938 immediately after the conclusion of the Munich Agreement. In internal reports, the Security Service (SD) spoke of a pogrom atmosphere. The violent deportation of about 18,000 Polish Jews living in Germany across the German-Polish border at the end of October 1938, demonstrated that the regime was preparing a further escalation in its policy against the Jewish population.

The occasion for the triggering of the pogrom was provided on November 7, 1938 by the assassination of the Legation Secretary at the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, by the17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan – his parents were among the Jews deported to Poland. Already in the night of November, 7 into November, 8 and on day after, party activists mounted massive riots against Jewish businesses and synagogues in the Kassel area. On November 8, the German press was dominated by threats against Jewish fellow human beings, who would have to expect "the most serious consequences" (The Attack). Late in the afternoon of November, 9 Adolf Hitler received the news of the death of Ernst von Rath in his apartment on Prinzregentenplatz. During the usual meeting of the leading party members in the evening of November 9, the anniversary of the failed 1923 putsch, Hitler discussed the situation with Goebbels in the Munich Old Town Hall. Then, at about 10.30 p.m. – by then Hitler had left the hall – the Minister of Propaganda gave an incendiary speech to the assembled party members. The message that the Jews “should for once feel the wrath of the people as they did in Kassel” was immediately understood by the high-ranking party functionaries as a direct call to action: They triggered the pogrom by telephone calls to their local party offices throughout the Reich.

Party activists who had gathered across the country to celebrate 9 November, now started, once they had changed their uniforms for civilian clothes, to destroy and set fire to synagogues, smashed the windows of Jewish businesses and looted them, forcibly entered homes, wrecked furniture and household items, committed acts of theft, abused and took away the Jewish occupants. The next day, the Gestapo arrested 30,000 Jewish men on an order from the center, more than 25,000 of them were sent to concentration camps, where the most of them remained interned for weeks and months under torture, to force them to agree to immediate emigration. The exact number of people killed in the pogrom is still unknown. In addition to the officially named 91 victims, there are also a large number of suicides and hundreds of Jews who died while imprisoned in concentration camps or as a result its consequences.

In the afternoon of November 10, the operation was terminated by a proclamation from Goebbels authorized by Hitler. The German Jews had to pay a sum of a billion Reichsmarks as an ‘atonement tax’ for the death of Ernst vom Rath. In addition, they were now finally excluded from economic life by legislative measures. Their insurance claims for the damage caused were forfeited to the state and they were forced to immediately clear up the damage caused by the riots. In the following weeks, a great number of further antisemitic regulations and legislation were passed, which as a result amounted to the ‘social death’ of the remaining Jews still living in Germany. As the regime had intended, the pogrom triggered a wave of refugees and placed potential countries of immigration to accept a larger number of Jewish refugees.