Over the 9 and 10 November 1938 Nazi forces, Hitler Youth organisations and German citizens carried out sustained attacks on Jewish homes, hospitals and schools. They were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers, also known as the ‘Night of Broken Glass’.

Rioters destroyed over 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms throughout Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland. Over 7,000 Jewish businesses were damaged or destroyed, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps.

British historian Martin Gilbert wrote that no event in the history of German Jews between 1933 and 1945 was so widely reported as it was happening, and the accounts from foreign journalists working in Germany drew worldwide attention.

Historians view Kristallnacht as a prelude to the Final Solution and the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust.