History of Sorts

On the morning of 7 November, a young Jewish man, Herschel Grynszpan, wrote a farewell postcard to his parents and put it in his pocket. Grynszpan went to a gun shop in the Rue du Faubourg St Martin, where he bought a 6.35mm revolver and a box of 25 bullets for 235 francs. They went to the German Embassy in Paris 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.

Why he did this is your homework for today.

This was the event that triggered Kristallnacht. Many will have you believe that the violence at Kristallnacht was disrupted spontaneously after and because of the killing of Vom Rath. However, I believe that Kristallnacht was planned weeks beforehand—it stands to reason it did. Many think that the violence only erupted in Germany, but there were attacks in Austria as well. In an era with no social media, where you could arrange something like this within a matter of hours, it must have been planned long prior to the date. It was well orchestrated.

The following is the impression of the British journalist Hugh Greenel of that fateful night—85 years ago, on 9 November 1938. He witnessed the events and wrote:
“Mob law ruled in Berlin throughout the afternoon and evening and hordes of hooligans indulged in an orgy of destruction. I have seen several anti-Jewish outbreaks in Germany during the last five years, but never anything as nauseating as this. Racial hatred and hysteria seemed to have taken complete hold of otherwise decent people. I saw fashionably dressed women clapping their hands and screaming with glee, while respectable middle-class mothers held up their babies to see the ‘fun’.”

Sources

https://beeldbankwo2.nl/nl/beelden/?mode=gallery&view=horizontal&q=Kristallnacht&rows=1&page=1

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kristallnacht