Named for the broken glass that lined the streets, Kristallnacht, or “Night of Crystal,” was a violent Nazi attack against Jews across all of Germany and Austria. Joseph Goebbels used the shooting of a German diplomat by an angry Polish Jew as a pretext for ordering this pogrom. On the evening of November 9, 1938, and through the next morning, 91 Jews were killed, hundreds more were seriously injured, and 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. Mobs of Nazi supporters and soldiers attacked Jews and Jewish property, destroying approximately 7500 Jewish businesses, and burning or damaging more than a thousand synagogues. On Kristallnacht, Bert's school in Bad Nauheim was attacked and closed, his father was hospitalized, and his mother and aunts were beaten. Following Kristallnacht, the persecution of the Jews in German territory escalated significantly.
