Created by Nkosi Dube, Finn Whitman, Ryan Brown & Sam Dabora
The Night of Broken Glass
Introduction
This is the Kristallnacht Preserving Memory project. The job is to make a symbolic physical artifact and a documentary about Kristallnacht. We made two buildings and an 8 ½ minute long documentary.
The Night of Broken Glass
It all started in 1932, when Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP, or Nazis, as they are usually known, won the majority of the seats in the Reichstag, which is the German parliament. After Weimar Republic president Paul von Hindenburg made Hitler chancellor, Hitler quickly assumed power and became a dictator. In 1935, he passed the Nuremberg race laws, which were decrees that targeted minorities such as gay people, people with disabilities, and especially Jews. He riled up the public, and soon the German empire was segregated. In the late 1930s Hitler stepped up the intensity towards Jews, leading to Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” was a huge anti-Jewish pogrom that took place throughout Germany on the night of November 9th, 1938. It was a major turning point in the rise of anti-Semitism and Jewish hate.
A Jewish Polish teenager, named Herschel Grynzpan, assassinated a German government official named Ernst vom Rath. It was this murder that sparked the historical event Kristallnacht.
In addition, Paul Joseph Goebbels (Go-bels), the propaganda minister for the Nazis, claimed that ‘World Jewry’ had sparked the assassination of vom Rath. He also announced that, “the Führer has decided that … demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” These words were really saying that anyone could go ahead and start violence against the Jews and no one would stop them, and that is exactly what people did.
The Stormtroopers and Hitler Youth led violence and burned 267 synagogues, killing 91 Jews, and destroying and looting 7,500 Jewish businesses and stores, as well as demolishing Jewish schools, homes, and hospitals. Johanna Gerechter Neumann describes Kristallnacht in Hamburg and what she saw happen to her synagogue. And another eye witness of Kristallnacht, Kaethe Wells, describes what she saw on the streets of Frankfurt(insert clip of Johanna Geretcher Neumann)(Insert: video of kaethe wells).
In addition to the destruction, mobs beat Jews. Ruth Rack, a witness of Kristallnacht, gives some thoughts on how a mob treated her and how she felt betrayed by a family friend of hers. (insert Ruth Rack clips)
During the horrors of Kristallnacht, many houses were broken into by the rioters. They did this out of hatred for the Jews. They destroyed everything in their line of sight. Kaethe Wells, describes how Nazis broke into her house (insert Kaethe Wells clip).
A different point of the November Pogrom, but equally important, was that 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps like Buchenwald (boo-can-vald), Dachau (da-cow), and Sachsenhausen(sa-kuhn-ho-sen). This was the first time that the Nazi regime imprisoned Jews on a huge scale because of their race and ethnicity.
Another important piece of information is that, early in the morning on November 10, Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Security Police, laid down rules in a telegram on the rioting and said that non-Jewish properties had to be left untouched by the rioters and that they had to remove all Jewish archives before vandalizing a synagogue. Something he said in his telegram was, “Only such actions may be carried out which do not threaten German lives or property.” Unfortunately, the vandalizers did not heed these orders. Finally, members of many of the groups participating in the rioting wore civilian clothes to fool the general public that the attacks were expressions of ‘outraged public reaction.’
The aftermath of Kristallnacht was hard on the Jewish people. On December 12, 1938, German Jews were charged one million marks for the damage done to their property during Kristallnacht. This unjust decree was just the start of more things to come. The Nazis created dozens of laws and decrees that were supposed to hurt Jews lifestyles and businesses.
Many of the laws were about ‘Aryanization.’ This was a policy that forced Jewish business owners to sell their businesses for extremely low prices to Aryan businessmen. Aryan is the pure German race that Adolf Hitler claimed was racially superior. For someone to be classified as Aryan, they needed to be white, non-Jewish, and have blonde hair and blue eyes.
After three months in the concentration camps, most of the men arrested during Kristallnacht were released on the condition that they had to get papers to try and leave Germany. Although some Jews had already started to emigrate from Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht greatly spurred them on.
Kristallnacht was a turning point in the Holocaust. Kristallnacht was the point when anti-Semitism was rising to its highest, and when Hitler and the Nazis began their most brutal phase. This event was really an act of terror within Germany towards Jews. This happened because the Nazis, with their systematic ways, legalized terrorism towards Jews and stripped them of all their rights. So this is why we should memorialize this event. When most people think of the Holocaust, they think about concentration camps, ghettos, and Hitler, but not Kristallnacht.
Since Kristallnacht is not well known, it is especially important to make people aware of what happened on November 9th and 10th, 1938. Although we have many memorials and museums about the Holocaust, the US does not have one focusing on Kristallnacht.
Bibliography & Resources
- 9 November 1938/“Kristallnacht.” (n.d.). Jewish Museum Berlin. https://www.jmberlin.de/en/topic-9-november-1938
- About the museum – United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (n.d.). https://www.ushmm.org/information/about-the-museum
- Anti-Jewish Riots convulse German Reich (Kristallnacht). (n.d.). History Unfolded: US Newspapers and the Holocaust. https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/anti-jewish-riots-convulse-german-reich-kristallnacht
- “Aryanization.” (n.d.). https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/aryanization
- AShamaluevMusic – Background Music. (2018, March 26). Sad Cinematic background music for videos and films – Sadness by AShamaluevMusic [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO68HoTiLp0
- BBC News. (2020, January 23). Auschwitz: How death camp became centre of Nazi Holocaust. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-50743973.amp
- Berenbaum, M. (2024a, January 7). Nurnberg Laws | Definition, Date, & Facts. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nurnberg-Laws
- Berenbaum, M. (2024b, January 24). Kristallnacht | Definition, Date, Facts, & Significance. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Kristallnacht
- Berenbaum, M. (2024c, February 20). Auschwitz | Definition, Concentration Camp, facts, location, & History. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/place/Auschwitz
- Berlin. (n.d.). https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/berlin
- Bleecker Street. (n.d.). https://bleeckerstreetmedia.com/editorial/reinhard-heydrich-anatomy-of-a-monster
- Chase, J. (2016, November 7). Photo raises Nazi history questions. dw.com. https://amp.dw.com/en/photo-could-rewrite-history-of-nazi-broken-glass-pogrom/a-36283943
- CNN Europe Kristallnacht Gallery HTML. (2013, November 7). CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/europe/gallery/kristallnacht/index.html
- Connolly, K. (2017, November 28). Photo mystery of Jewish assassin used by Nazis to justify Kristallnacht. Kristallnacht | the Guardian. https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/18/herschel-grynszpan-photo-mystery-jewish-assassin-kristallnacht-pogrom
- Dorpalen, A. (2024, February 16). Paul von Hindenburg | WWI Hero, German President & Military Leader. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-von-Hindenburg
- “Gelbe Bänke für Juden” Park in Berlin 1937 2 – Foto – Historiathek. (2021, December 2). https://historiathek.com. https://www.historiathek.de/foto-de/1930-1939/1937/gelbe-baenke-fuer-juden/
- Georgiou, A. (2018, August 10). It wasn’t Hitler’s speeches that won elections for nazis, study finds. Newsweek. https://www.newsweek.com/it-wasnt-hitlers-speeches-won-elections-nazis-study-finds-1060802
HCPO: The perpetrators and their methods – Aryanization. (n.d.). Department of Financial Services. https://www.dfs.ny.gov/consumers/holocaust_claims/perpetrators_methods/aryanization
Artifact Statement
The Night of Broken Glass
“On our way in, we saw broken shop windows and shards of glass lying in the streets. And then we saw a shop where someone had painted the word ‘Jew’, and smeared on a star of David.”
– Ruth Winkelmann
Our Holocaust-preserving memory artifact is a memorial to the Jewish people who were forced to experience the horrors of Kristallnacht. German Stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and anti-Semitists attacked Jewish houses, synagogues, and shops. They shattered windows, leaving glass on the streets, and lit most buildings on fire. Dozens of innocent Jews died, and the rest were sent to concentration camps.
For materials, we mainly used cardboard for the houses and synagogues, wood plates for house floors, streets, and sidewalks, and wood for the shattered Star of Davids. In addition, for the broken glass, we broke it outside and specifically had green and white glass to fit with the glass in the synagogue and store windows. From the beginning, we believed that we would make a broken-down house, shop, and synagogue, along with a street littered with broken glass. After consulting with our teachers, we realized this shouldn’t be an image of Kristallnacht but a symbol of it. We changed our ideas and added objects such as broken Stars of David surrounding the buildings, a Star of David inside the store, and red lights and a lamp covered in red film to signify the fire inside the synagogue and house. Littered throughout the street are broken stars, symbolizing that the Germans had tried to break Jewish families and communities, but the golden star of David standing above the burning synagogue represents that the Jews cannot be broken that easily and will remain resilient. Another piece of our artifact is the word “Jude” painted on the buildings. Marking Jewish shops was a common occurrence in Nazi Germany, so no one went into their shops and they got no business. One hard decision we were forced to make was deciding how we could symbolize flames in the synagogue. We were between making flames with a small fan blowing tissue paper or just having a red light cast a fiery glow. Finally, after testing, we decided to use the lamp since the fan was loud and barely worked.
Our memorial is supposed to represent the thousands of Jewish stores, houses, and synagogues, as well as the families that were ripped apart from Kristallnacht. This event was really an act of terror within Germany towards Jews. This happened because the Nazis, with their systematic ways, legalized terrorism against Jews and stripped them of all their rights. We would like everyone looking at our artifact or our documentary to remember how terrible of a night this was for the Jews.
Explore our Gallery of Images
Personal Reflections
Preserving Kristallnacht Memory
Ryan Brown, The Fenn School, Class of 2025
“On our way in, we saw broken shop windows and shards of glass lying in the streets. And then we saw a shop where someone had painted the word ‘Jew’, and smeared on a star of David.”
– Ruth Winkelmann
My name is Ryan Brown and my main role was to work on the documentary, although I also helped a lot on the artifact. This project taught me many lessons and things that I can grow upon in the future. The main theme of this project for me was accomplishment. This topic of this project was very somber and sad, so it felt very important to memorialize it.
For the first week and a half, I sped through all of the documentary steps, and was finished long before everyone else. The reason I worked very hard was because I wanted to be able to be a major part of the artifact building process, which I accomplished. The first day of building I wasn’t helping much, but over the next few days I became one with the group and added my creativity and leadership skills to the artifact. For example, when we were trying to find something that was symbolism, I thought of the broken stars of David to put on the ground next to the broken glass. Another time I added an idea was to add a light covered in orange and red paper shining in/on the synagogue to show that it was burning. Although we got into several arguments, we worked as a team to accomplish the project.
The Holocaust Preserving Memory project has really opened my eyes about the horrors of the Holocaust and taught me many lessons. This experience helped me grow as a group worker, a leader, and as a problem solver. It was hard to work as a group at times because we had several different opinions about different parts of the project like adding fire to the synagogue. Many times Nkosi started arguing about who did what and who was working the most, so my temper rose. I learned that it is not necessary to get angry over small things and I could have directed that energy towards making our project better. This project also made me grow as a researcher. When we were in the researching stage, I made sure to paraphrase and the graphic organizers really helped to organize my notes. When I was writing a 900 word script, I pulled information from each person’s source notes. The Holocaust project made me feel very accomplished because I always found it hard to complete something and have it look good.
I’m proud of my project. And I like it.
Recreating Kristallnacht
Finn Whitman, The Fenn School, Class of 2025
Creating a Museum-Worthy Memorial
It Always Seems Impossible Until it is Done.
I am Finn Whitman and I worked on both the documentary and the artifact. Throughout this project, one theme really resonated through me. That theme is somberness. All of the facts, images, and statistics we found were sad, depressing, and sombering. Although this was a somber experience, it was also paired with a theme of eye opening-ness and a sense of real accomplishment. This turned out to be a truly amazing project for me and my group.
The first day I worked on this project, I really didn’t want to. I had just gotten into a Hotel in Big Sky, Montana, from a long day of skiing, and all I wanted to do was lie down in bed and rest. Unfortunately for me, I had already planned a FaceTime with Ryan Brown to work on the script for our documentary. And we did. We worked for a few hours, finishing all of our notes. By the time I was back in school a few days later, Ryan and I had completed the whole script, and were ready to begin filming. We finished those first steps incredibly fast, faster than any other group, and we helped Sam and Nkosi in the iLab. Eventually, Ryan and I finished the documentary. We helped Sam and Nkosi, and we came together as a group. I remember spending many hours working on the store and synagogue, spray painting, finding an error, spray painting again, and then repeating with a different part of the artifact. One of my highlights was bringing in glass bottles and smashing them to pieces with Ryan, Nkosi, and Vinny. The moment I remember most was Museum Day, when finally, after all of our hard work on the documentary, the Artifact, the Artist Statement, and transforming the iLab into a museum, we were able to show it off to family and community members. Everybody was dressed up nice, the museum looked amazing, and it was an awesome experience explaining the documentary and the artifact and its symbolism to so many guests, including my mom, dad, and little brother.
During this project, I learned a lot about researching, writing, video editing, and creating. Communication, and working well together, was probably the hardest part because I disliked some of my partners. I had to adjust and figure out how to work together. I learned how to better communicate, compromise, and work well with my partners and my teachers. The work was honestly pretty easy. I did not struggle with the documentary or with creating the artifact. This project has made me a better partner, learner, and student on the whole.
Memorializing Kristallnacht
Sam Dabora, The Fenn School, Class of 2025
I’m Sam Dabora and I worked on the artifact. One theme that stood out to me was sympathy. This is because I could never imagine having your house broken into at night and being kicked out of your house, and also having your windows broken and worst of all being sent to a concentration camp forcefully. This gave me such a wider perspective of life and it taught me to be grateful because nothing like it has ever happened to me in my life. Compared to what happened on November 9th and 10th of 1938 hopefully will never happen again or anything like it. Overall i can not describe how bad i feel for everyone that suffered on Kristallnacht and hope that nobody has to go through it again.
When I first came into the Ilab with Nkosi I was very excited to start working however we had to first brainstorm on what materials we should use and what our artifact should even look like. Even though we had already started thinking about it we didn’t want to start working and then realize that it wasn’t a good idea after all. So after we thought of an idea we got a cardboard box before anyone else got them and started spray painting. This was my highlight since I wasn’t able to break any glass. But i would rather spray paint since it brought back memories of me spray painting with my friends in Switzerland. I also had a great time showing Nkosi the correct way to spray paint (such as how far to hold the can back and different techniques to add more visually deep effects). We had to redo it over and over again but eventually we finished it and it came out perfect. Then skipping ahead to the presenting day i was very excited to share with everyone about my project and what happened on the night of broken glass, including my parents, uncle, and aunt. Even my own peers who were interested in our artifact.
The preserving memories holocaust memorial has made me realize just how bad the holocaust was. Of course before even starting this unit I knew a lot about the holocaust but I didn’t realize how bad it was since I was younger and I would have been scared to death. Now that I am more mature I am able to go into depth about the holocaust und fully understand what Nazi Germany and surrounding countries were like at the time. It also made me unimaginably more grateful since the holocaust is just indescribably horrendous.
It really made me a better person and I was so glad to learn about the holocaust so I am able to help preserve the memories of the holocaust which is what our whole project is about.The parts that were hard were of course just comprehending what Jews suffered in the 1940s and how the Nazi‘s came closer and closer to the unimaginable goal of completely wiping out the Jewish race.
In all, this project has made me a better teammate, worker, researcher, and has also taught me about the most important event in history
A Kristallnacht Reflection
Nkosi Dube, The Fenn School, Class of 2025
My name is Nkosi Dube and the role I excelled was the artifact. The main theme of this project was teamwork and collaboration. Through this me and my partners excelled in combining our ideas into one big and great idea.
For the first week I researched about the horrible topic Kristallnacht and gained information for me and my group to start the project. During this time I brainstormed many ideas for our artifact looking at old Jewish building’s that had stores on the bottom and houses on the top and to the left of it synagogues from that time. The buildings would both be burnt/on fire and the windows cracked left with glass shards inside and outside the building.
Once I had locked in this idea I went straight to the building process. Me and my fellow partner Sam gained materials such as cardboard, spray paint, wooden symbols, glass, lamps, and even lights to include in our artifact. Then we went outside and spray painted the cardboard to the point it looked heavily burnt, but not too heavily. Then we went back inside to cut holes for windows and doors.
A day later Mr.Krai printed a star of david perfect to fit inside our house/store, along with that we obtained a see-through red paper that we put on the roof of the house/store to cover the star of David to show symbolism of Jews being burned by the hate of the cruel Nazi’s and their followers, along with this the red paper made dazzling red lights coming out of the windows like an awful fire from hell itself. I also cut out roads and spray painted them similar to roads in Jewish towns of germany.
The next day we attached the roads and started working on our synagogue; this was also burnt even worse than the house/stores. The synagogue has stained glass that you would see in an average church. On monday the next week we gathered glass soda bottles, and broke it inside a plastic bag outside so all the glass pieces would be collected without intensley searching on the ground for them. Then we glued them onto the street and inside the building.
On the synagogue side of the street there would be green stained glass of a sprite bottle matching the windows and on the house/store side of the street there would be a majority of clear fanta glass. Me and my fellow partner Ryan thought of the idea to get a lamp and put a mix of red, orange, and yellow see-through paper and taped it on the circular lamp. I cut open a round hole in the top of the synagogue hidden behind the triangular top of the synagogue. There I placed the light and it created a fire inside the synagogue. After I had finished the artifact, I wrote my artist statement, basically explaining my artifact and the process like I am now.
This project showed me the fun and creativity of school I was looking for, and showed me just how much I can accomplish with some help. This helped me grow as a person as I learned to stay focused, communicate with partners, and to think critically. Honestly this project felt easy and I didnt find trouble thinking of ideas as long as I was in the zone.
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