David Di Segni

9-10 November 1938 | The November Pogrom – a pogrom against the Jews throughout Nazi Germany. Hundreds were killed (or died by suicide), 30,000 men arrested and incarcerated in concentration camps, over 1,000 synagogues burnt, over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. In an article on the evening of 11 November, Joseph Goebbels ascribed the events to the "healthy instincts" of the German people: "The German people are anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race." The pogrom changed the nature of the Nazi persecution of Jews from economic, political & social to physical with beatings, incarceration & murder. In this view, it is not only as a large-scale pogrom but also a critical stage within a process which led to genocidal stage. Reichspogromnacht is also known as the Kristallnacht ("Crystal Night"). This name comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. Only three years after the November Pogrom the physical extermination of Jews began in Germany & German-occupied European territory - first the murder was perpetrated in the East by shooting of the Einsatzgruppen & later in gas chambers of extermination camps, such as Auschwitz. Exactly 4 years after the November Pogrom - on 9 November 1942 - a transport of 1000 Jews deported by the Germans from District of Białystok arrived at Auschwitz. 190 men & 104 women were registered. The remaining 706 people were murdered in gas chambers.