On the night of November 9-10, 1938, thousands of Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues were looted, hundreds of Jews were murdered and 30,000 were arrested and taken to concentration camps in an anti-Semitic pogrom known as the Night of Crystal, or the Night of Broken Glass.
The pogrom was led by senior Nazi Party officials and members of Nazi Party organizations, including the SA, the SS and the Hitler Youth. Unaffiliated German citizens also joined the pogrom, stealing items from vandalized Jewish homes and businesses and humiliating their Jewish neighbors. The German police were ordered not to intervene in crimes against Jews.
More than 1,400 synagogues were burned. Torah scrolls and other Jewish sacred items were desecrated, burned and thrown into rivers. People smashed the windows and destroyed and stole contents from Jewish homes and businesses. Jewish orphanages, nursing homes and hospitals were also attacked.
Jews were tortured and humiliated: they were beaten, shot, sexually assaulted, stabbed, forced to crawl and bark like dogs, sing Nazi songs and read aloud from Mein Kampf. Crowds of Germans spat and threw mud at their Jewish neighbors.
Some of this sounds eerily similar to the stories of the atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre. Hamas shares the same hatred for Jews as the Nazi Party, and the massacre on October 7 was an attempt to fulfill the Nazis' goal of eradicating the Jewish people.