Pogrom Night – The Night of Broken Glass

The court records of the proceedings of the District Court of Bamberg from 1949 provide us with a comprehensive description of the events of the so called Pogrom Night on 9^th November 1938. In the trail the ringleaders were held accountable for their actions. The murder of the Secretary to the Embassy in Paris von Rath, by the young Polish Jew Herszel Grynszpan, was a welcome excuse for the violence through-out Germany. Forchheim also experienced serious rioting. The Nazis fetched the Jews from their houses, mishandled them, dragged them to the police station where they were incarcerated. Businesses were looted, homes were devastated, valuable religious objects were stolen from the synagogue. Before the eyes of the onlooking mob, the Jewish citizens were forced to load the debris of the synagogue onto carts with their bare hands. The majority of the Jewish men then spent several weeks in “protective custody” in the concentration camp at Dachau.