Kristallnacht (German for “night of broken glass”): In retaliation for the assassination of Ernst von Rath, German Ambassador to the Republic of France, by a Polish Jew, the SA storm troopers (the paramilitary wing of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party) go on a nation-wide rampage smashing windows and destroying Jewish-owned stores, synagogues, homes, hospitals and schools.  

       Postscripts:

• As a consequence of the rioting, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps.  And Germany’s Jews were fined 1,000,000,000 Reich marks, which were collected through confiscation of 20% of all Jewish owned property in the nation.
• Upon reunification of the East and West Germany on October 3, 1990.  November 9th had been selected as the new national holiday as it was the anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of Germany in 1918, the failure of Hitler’s attempted Bavarian coup in 1923, and the Fall of the Berlin Wall, in 1989.  But it was also the anniversary of Kristallnacht, and thus deliberately not chosen for fear of lending legitimacy to the nation’s neo-Nazis.

       [restored 7/22/2022]