Total Devastation: The Forgotten Mass Destruction of Jewish Homes During Kristallnacht 1938

The November pogrom is known by Holocaust scholars as one of the most analyzed events in Nazi Germany. Descriptions of Kristallnacht usually emphasize the attacks on synagogues and Jewish shops, sometimes schools and other Jewish institutions, yet rarely the destructions of private homes. Based on contemporary administrative reports and letters as well as postwar survivor testimonies, my research suggests that during that night Goebbels presumably ordered systematic and nationwide violent attacks aimed at Jewish homes. The resulting mass destruction of Jewish homes and apartments has never been studied, neither in its scale, intensity nor its gravity. For some cities, between 75 and 90 per cent of the Jewish homes were reported as vandalized. After the attacks, thousands of homes were inhabitable, their windows broken and china, furniture, lamps and paintings smashed to pieces. Humiliations, beatings, murder and sexual violence accompanied the systematic vandalism. More than burned synagogues or vandalized shops, the systematic devastation of the last refuge of the German Jews, their homes, might explain, why so many German and Austrian Jews decided to flee or to commit suicide.