Homes for Indian nannies
Sherlock Holmes
Christabel Pankhurst
Suffragette Sophia Duleep Singh
Captain Scott's Diary
Suffragettes protest
Indians on the Western Front
World War I
Russian Revolution
Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
The General Strike
The Great Depression
Gandhi in Britain
British Union of Fascists
Appeasement
Kristallnacht
Wanted poster for Hitler
World War II ultimatum letter
The Keys
Dunkirk evacuation
Dig for Victory
Make Do and Mend
Auschwitz survivor
The Atom Bomb
Independence and Partition
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
NHS established
Immigration from India
Windrush: post-war immigration
Chinese restaurants
Middle Eastern food
Wolfenden Report
Paul Robeson's Othello
Man lands on the moon
Cuban Missile Crisis
Assassination of Kennedy
Beatles arrive in the USA
Mods and Rockers
England win the World Cup
Robert Kennedy Assassinated
Dr. Martin Luther King
Student protests, Paris
Women's liberation
Punk fanzine
The Oz trial
The Black Panther
President Nixon resigns
The Sex Pistols
Charles and Diana marry
Tiananmen Square massacre
Fall of the Berlin Wall
Release of Nelson Mandela
Peace declared: Northern Ireland
The Belfast Agreement
This front page of the Daily Express from 1938, reports a violent pogrom in Nazi Germany, known as 'Kristallnacht' (night of broken glass). In a single night, at least 91 Jews were killed, approximately 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps, and thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were attacked.
The article gives an accurate account of the events, but it misleadingly suggests that the violence was carried out by uncoordinated ‘gangs drunk with destruction’, and that the Nazis tried to maintain order. In reality, the violence and destruction was planned from the top of the Nazi regime. The assassination of Nazi diplomat Ernst vom Rath, a few days earlier, was used as an excuse for the actions, and detailed instructions were given to the secret police on how to carry out the pogroms.
As Kristallnacht is one of the first examples of orchestrated mass violence against the Jews, some historians consider it to be the start of the Holocaust. Others disagree and believe that the ‘Final Solution’, the plan to exterminate all Jewish people in Europe, was conceived later. Either way, after Kristallnacht there was an acceleration in the rate of anti-Semitic decrees. Just a matter of days after the violence, it was demanded that the Jews themselves pay one billion Reichsmarks for the damage caused on Kristallnacht.
Shelfmark: British Library Newspaper Archive