Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's Sturmabteilung (SA) paramilitary forces along with civilians throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. The German authorities looked on without intervening. The name Kristallnacht comes from the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after the windows of Jewish-owned stores, buildings and synagogues were smashed. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris.
Hohenems is a town in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg in the Dornbirn district. It lies in the middle of the Austrian part of the Rhine valley. With a population of 15,200, it is the fifth largest municipality in Vorarlberg. Hohenems' attractions include a Renaissance palace dating back to the 16th century, a Jewish history museum, and the old town center.
Aaron Tänzer was a rabbi in Austria and Germany, chaplain and author.
The history of the Jews in Austria probably begins with the exodus of Jews from Judea under Roman occupation. Over the course of many centuries, the political status of the community rose and fell many times: during certain periods, the Jewish community prospered and enjoyed political equality, and during other periods it suffered pogroms, deportations to concentration camps and mass murder, and antisemitism. The Holocaust drastically reduced the Jewish community in Austria and only 8,140 Jews remained in Austria according to the 2001 census, though other estimates place the current figure at 9,000, 15,000, or 20,000 people, if accounting for those of mixed descent.
The history of the Jews in Salzburg, Austria goes back several millennia. Despite being a non-secular province with a Catholic Archbishop as the head of the state, Salzburg has a long record of Jewish history.
The Fasanenstrasse Synagogue was a liberal Jewish synagogue in Berlin, Germany opened on 26 August 1912. It was located in an affluent neighbourhood of Charlottenburg on Fasanenstrasse off Kurfürstendamm at numbers 79–80, close to the Berlin Stadtbahn and Zoo Station.
The history of the Jews in Prague is one of Central Europe's oldest and most well-known. Prague boasts one of Europe's oldest recorded Jewish communities, first mentioned by an Mizrahi-Jewish traveller Ibrahim ibn Yaqub in 965. Since then, the community never ceased to exist, despite a number of pogroms and expulsions - and the holocaust and subsequent antisemitic persecution by the Communist regime in the 20th Century. Nowadays, the Jewish community of Prague numbers approximately 2,000 members, although the number of Jews in the city is probably as high as 10,000 but for various reasons they remain officially unregistered as such. There are a number of synagogues of all Jewish denominations, a Chabad centre, an old age home, a kindergarten, Lauder Schools, Judaic Studies department at the Charles University, kosher restaurants and even a kosher hotel. Famous Jews from Prague include the Maharal, Franz Kafka, Miloš Forman and Madeleine Albright.
The history of the Jews in Trieste, Italy goes back over 800 years.
The history of the Jews in Luxembourg dates back to the 1200s. There are roughly 1,200 Jews in Luxembourg, and Jews form one of the largest and most important religious and ethnic minority communities in Luxembourg historically.
The history of the Jews in Slovenia and areas connected with it goes back to the times of Ancient Rome. The present-day small Jewish community of Slovenia is estimated at 400 to 600 members, with the Jewish community of Slovenia suggesting 500 to 1000 members. Around 130 are officially registered, most of whom live in the capital, Ljubljana.
The history of the Jews in Vienna, Austria, goes back over eight hundred years. There is evidence of a Jewish presence in Vienna from the 12th century onwards.
The Jewish Community of Gdańsk dates back to at least the 15th century though for many centuries it was separated from the rest of the city. Under Polish rule, Jews acquired limited rights in the city in the 16th and 17th centuries and after the city's 1793 incorporation into Prussia the community largely assimilated to German culture. In the 1920s, during the period of the Free City of Danzig, the number of Jews increased significantly and the city acted as a transit point for Jews leaving Eastern Europe for the United States and Canada. Antisemitism existed among German nationalists and the persecution of Jews in the Free City intensified after the Nazis came to power in 1933. During World War II and the Holocaust the majority of the community either emigrated or were murdered. Since the fall of communism Jewish property has been returned to the community, and an annual festival, the Baltic Days of Jewish Culture, has taken place since 1999.
Jews lived in the northern Hungarian town of Verpelét and the surrounding Heves county from the 15th century or earlier up to the late 17th century, after which they were excluded from the area. During the 19th century the Jewish population increased in the area, with 174 living in the town itself in 1880. Hungary's only wooden synagogue was in Verpelét. Jewish students also travelled in to study at the yeshiva established there in the early 20th century, which was closed down by the government in 1942. In 1944 under the German occupation the Jews of the area were sent for forced labour or killed at Auschwitz; only eleven returned to the town, and the synagogue has been converted for other use.
The history of the Jews in Łuków, Poland spans from the 15th to 20th century. The community flourished from the 18th-early 20th century, following the confirmation of certain privileges granted to Polish Jews in 1659. The community had its own Synagogues, Yeshivas, beit midrash, mikveh, schools, and community center. By the 19th century, the majority of the general population of Łuków was Jewish, with many people working in a shoe factory. Members of the community followed various movements, including Hasidic Judaism, socialism, labor movements, and Zionism. The majority of the Jewish community of Łuków was murdered in the Holocaust. There were only about 150 survivors in total, most of whom had left for the Soviet Union.
The history of the Jews in Kyiv stretches from the 10th century CE to the 21st century, and forms part of the history of the Jews in Ukraine.
The Jewish community of Oldenburg in northwest Germany was established as early as the 14th century. It existed consecutively ever since, except for occasion deportations by the local rulers of the Duchy of Oldenburg and the Holocaust, which annihilated the majority of Jews left in the city in the 1930s. Nevertheless, after the Holocaust, Jewish survivors have returned and resettled in the Oldenburg Jewish community, which nowadays operates actively within the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the fastest growing Jewish community in the world.
The first record of the Jewish community in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, dates from 1251. Until the end of World War I, Bratislava was a multicultural city with a Hungarian and German majority and a Slovak and Jewish minority. In 1806 when the city was part of the Kingdom of Hungary, Rabbi Moses Sofer established the Pressburg Yeshiva and the city emerged as the center of Central European Jewry and a leading power in the opposition to the Reform movement in Judaism in Europe. Pressburg Yeshiva produced hundreds of future leaders of Austro-Hungarian Jewry who made major influence on the general traditional orthodox and future Charedi Judaism.
The Jewish Museum Hohenems is a regional museum in Hohenems in the Austrian state of Vorarlberg. The museum deals with the Jewish presence in Hohenems as well as surrounding regions. It also covers the Diaspora and Israel and puts the future of the European immigration society into focus.
The history of the Jews in Alexandria, Egypt, dates back to the founding of the city by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. Jews in Alexandria played a crucial role in the political, economic, and religious life of Hellenistic and Roman Alexandria, with Jews comprising about 35% of the city's population during the Roman Era. Alexandrian Jewry were the founders of Hellenistic Judaism and the first to translate the Torah from Hebrew to Koine Greek, a document known as the Septuagint. Many important Jewish writers and figures came from or studied in Alexandria, such as Philo, Ben Sira, Tiberius Julius Alexander and Josephus. The position of Alexandria's Jewry began deteriorating during the Roman era, as deep antisemitic sentiment began developing amongst the city's Greek and Egyptian populations. This led to the subsequent Alexandrian pogrom in 38 CE and the Alexandria riot in 66 CE, which was in parallel with the outbreak of the First Jewish–Roman War. Alexandria's Jewry began to diminish, leading to a mass emigration of Alexandrian Jews to Rome, as well as other Mediterranean and North African cities. By the beginning of the Byzantine era, the Jewish population had again increased, but suffered from the persecutions of the Christian Church, and during the subsequent Muslim conquest of Egypt, the number of Jews in Alexandria increased greatly, with some estimates numbering around 400,000. Following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, and the ensuing Six-Day War, almost all of Alexandria's Jewish population were expelled from the country and emigrated to Israel.
The Pogrom Monument is located on Eduard-Wallnöfer-Platz, in the centre of Innsbruck, and commemorates the November pogroms of 1938, during which the Innsbruck citizens Josef Adler, Wilhelm Bauer, Richard Berger and Richard Graubart were murdered. The memorial was erected in 1997.
