FDR

by Jean Edward Smith

resident Polish Jews, without notice and without legal recourse. He had intended to assassinate the German ambassador to France and shot Rath by mistake. In response to Rath’s death, the Nazi leadership ordered a night of vengeance. Storm troopers burned synagogues, smashed Jewish businesses, and vandalized private homes. The New York Times correspondent in Berlin called it “A wave of destruction, looting, and incendiarism unparalleled in Germany since the Thirty Years’ War.”47 Nearly 200 synagogues were burned, 7,500 shops broken into and looted, countless houses destroyed. Twenty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. By government decree German insurance companies were absolved of liability; the nation’s Jewish community was fined $400 million to atone for Rath’s death; and all Jewish retail establishments were shuttered and closed.