"KRISTALLNACHT" LAUNCHED NAZI PERSECUTION OF JEWS

BERLIN, NOVEMBER 9 /SRNA/ – On November 9, 1938, German Nazis launched the persecution of Jews on Kristallnacht. They killed an unknown number of children, women and men and burned hundreds of synagogues and more than 7,000 Jewish shops and homes.

That same evening, the leaders of the Third Reich decided to exterminate all Jews in Germany.

The crime became known as Kristallnacht because ordinary people, aware of its scale, coined the euphemism in conversation for fear of reprisals from the Nazi state if they called it by its real name.

About 1,574 synagogues, almost all of those in Germany, were damaged and in many cases destroyed in the pogrom, along with many Jewish cemeteries, more than 7,000 Jewish shops and 29 department stores.

More than 20,000 Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps. Some were beaten to death while others were forced to watch.

The scale of the violence is shown by the fact that some Germans were also killed just because someone thought they looked Jewish.