WSU’s Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration

As soon as the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 they established the first concentration camp in Dachau and began to persecute Jews and others that they deemed as opposing their fascist regime. On November 9^th and 10^th, 1938, in a nationwide program called Kristallnacht ("Night of Broken Glass"), the Nazis and their collaborators burned synagogues, looted Jewish homes and businesses, and killed at least 91 Jews. The Gestapo, supported by local uniformed police, arrested approximately 30,000 Jewish men and imprisoned them in the Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Mauthausen