Online Exhibition Commemorates Kristallnacht

November 9^th 1938 saw the start of the awful events of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. Jews were attacked throughout Nazi Germany and the authorities did not intervene. The name Kristallnacht comes from the broken glass that littered streets after windows were smashed when Jewish homes, hospitals, schools, synagogues and businesses were attacked.

Photo: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1970-083-42 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

267 synagogues were destroyed across Germany, Austria and part of what is now the Czech Republic. As many as 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps, sending shockwaves around the world as international journalists reported on the violence.

On this 82^nd anniversary of these awful events, a new online exhibition entitled “It Came from Within” has been published by the Yad Vashem, featuring personal stories, archives and testimonies.

It seems that it came as a shock to many Jews, who then realised that what they considered to be their home country didn’t want them; the people living in the land didn’t want them.

A key part of the exhibition is a collection of video interviews with survivors. They give moving testimonies of their awful experiences of those events.

Screenshot of two of the exhibition video interviews