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German History in Documents and Images
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The Morning after the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht] in Berlin: Shattered Shop Windows (November 10, 1938)
At the beginning of November 1938, there were still 9,000 Jewish shops remaining in the German Reich; more than 7,000 of them were destroyed on November 9 and 10. The sight of countless piles of glass shards supposedly led Berliners to name the November pogrom Kristallnacht. Germany's Jewish population experienced not only enormous material losses, but also physical violence and humiliation. According to official Nazi statistics, 91 people were killed and 300 committed suicide. The actual number of victims was probably much higher. By November 16, some 30,000 Jewish men had been arrested and sent to the Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, where they were subjected to crude abuse. After the arrival of Jewish prisoners, the number of camp deaths rose dramatically. Whereas ten inmates had died in the Dachau camp in October 1938, 115 died in November and 173 in December of that same year. Photo by Abraham Pisarek.