Kristallnacht — Night of Broken Glass

Nazi authorities and party members carried out a coordinated pogrom against Jews throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland over the nights of November 9–10, 1938. Named for the shattered glass of Jewish shop windows that blanketed streets, the pogrom destroyed 267 synagogues, ransacked 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, killed at least 91 Jews directly (with hundreds more dying of injuries), and arrested approximately 30,000 Jewish men who were sent to concentration camps. Kristallnacht marked the open brutalization of German Jews and signaled the acceleration from economic persecution toward physical violence. International condemnation intensified emigration pressure on German Jews.