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The synagogue in the Fasanenstraße, Charlottenburg, photographed by Waldemar Titzenthaler, who died in 1937. It was set on fire in the night to 10 November 1938.Waldemar Titzenthaler (1869–1937). Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The November pogrom · Berlin · 1938

The pogrom was called spontaneous. Its orders went out by telex, timed to the minute.

Goebbels gave the signal in a Munich speech on the evening of 9 November 1938. Before dawn, two telexes had told every state police post in Germany what might burn, what was not to be looted, and how many Jewish men to arrest. By morning Berlin’s synagogues were burning and its Jewish shops were wrecked.

23:55
the Gestapo’s telex from Berlin: the actions against the Jews “are not to be interfered with”
01:20
Heydrich’s teletype from Munich: what may burn, who is to be arrested
more than6,300
Jewish men, most of them from Berlin, taken to Sachsenhausen
at least64
of them died in the camp

01Paris · Munich · Berlin

The “spontaneous” night ran to a timetable

The regime called the pogrom the people’s spontaneous answer to a murder in Paris. Its own records say otherwise. Goebbels told the party leaders in Munich that the party was not to be seen preparing or organising “demonstrations”, but was not to stop them either. They understood, the party’s own supreme court recorded in February 1939, that the party should “in reality organise and carry them out”.

They telephoned their regions that night. Then the police were brought in, by telex. Each message below is timed as it was stamped.

The night of 9–10 November 1938

A timeline of the night of 9 to 10 November 1938, with one lane each for Paris, Munich and Berlin. It marks vom Rath's death, Goebbels's speech in Munich, the Gestapo telex from Berlin and Heydrich's teletype from Munich, the two circulars that followed, and the morning in Berlin, with a log of each message below.

7 November, morning · Paris

The pale stone front of a Parisian mansion with a columned porch, a German flag above the entrance.
The German embassy, 78 rue de Lille, Paris.Jospe, 2011. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

A shot in Paris

Herschel Grynszpan, 17, shoots the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath at the embassy in Paris.

9 November, afternoon · Paris

Vom Rath dies

He dies of his wounds. The Nazi leaders, gathered in Munich for the anniversary of the 1923 putsch, hear the news that evening.

9 November, about 21:30–22:00 · Munich

A Gothic town hall with a stepped gable and a tall tower, seen from the west.
The Altes Rathaus, Munich.Thomas Wolf (Der Wolf im Wald), 2012. Wikimedia Commons. CC0.

Goebbels speaks in Munich

In the Altes Rathaus Goebbels tells the party leaders that the party must not be seen to organise ‘demonstrations’, nor stop them.

9 November, 23:55 · Berlin

A long gravel-covered site with a walkway and the excavated cellar walls of demolished buildings, office blocks behind.
The site of the Gestapo headquarters, Berlin.Arild Vågen, 2013. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

“Not to be interfered with”

The Gestapo telexes every state police post: actions against the Jews are not to be interfered with. Prepare to arrest 20,000 to 30,000 Jews.

10 November, 01:20 · Munich

The rules of the night

Heydrich’s teletype sets the rules: synagogues may burn where the fire cannot spread; Jewish shops and homes may be destroyed, not looted; arrest as many Jews as the cells will hold.

10 November, 01:40 · Munich

The speech, in writing

Goebbels’s party propaganda office sends the regional party leaders a written summary of the speech.

10 November, 02:56 · Munich

No fires in shops

The Deputy Führer’s staff forbids setting fire to Jewish shops.

10 November, by day · Berlin

Wrecked wooden pews and rubble strewn across the floor of a synagogue.
A wrecked Berlin synagogue, 1938.Bundesarchiv, Bild 147-1118 / Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Morning in Berlin

The Fasanenstraße synagogue has burned. On the Kurfürstendamm, Erich Kästner sees men in SS breeches and civilian jackets smash shop windows.

02Charlottenburg · Mitte

By morning, at least 3,000 Jewish shops in Berlin were wrecked

The synagogue in the Fasanenstraße, in Charlottenburg, was set on fire in the night to 10 November. Its ruin was pulled down after the war, and the Jewish community centre stands on the site. Across the city the historians Christoph Kreutzmüller and Bjoern Weigel count at least 3,000 Jewish shops destroyed.

Wrecked wooden pews and rubble strewn across the floor of a synagogue.
Inside a devastated Berlin synagogue after the pogrom, 1938. The archive caption reads “Berlin, Verwüstete Synagoge Berlin, Fasanenstraße (?)”.Bundesarchiv, Bild 147-1118 / Unknown / CC BY-SA 3.0 de
A low modern building with a flat roof; at its centre stands an ornate carved stone portal with a small dome, snow on the steps.
The Jewish community centre on the Fasanenstraße, built in 1958–60 on the site of the burned synagogue.Roger W from Sarasota, Florida, U.S.A. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 2.0.

The men who did it were not a crowd. On the Kurfürstendamm and the Tauentzienstraße the writer Erich Kästner watched men in SS breeches and high boots, but in civilian jackets and hats, smashing the shop windows with iron bars on both sides of the street.

The uniform trousers stayed on. Only the jackets were civilian.

A busy pavement café on a wide city street, people in coats at round tables, cars behind.
The Kurfürstendamm at Café Kranzler in March 1934, four years before the pogrom: the street where Kästner saw the shop windows smashed.Willy Pragher, 1934. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

A Berliner’s painting

Charlotte Salomon was twenty-one and living in Berlin in November 1938. Her father was among the Jewish men taken to Sachsenhausen. Within months she had left for the south of France, where she painted her life in hundreds of gouaches. In this one the crowd fills the street under the flags, and the slogans it shouted are written into the sky.

A gouache of a street crowd in front of apartment blocks hung with swastika flags; scrawled at the top, the slogans the crowd shouted.
A sheet from “Leben? oder Theater?”, the painted life story of Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943), a Berliner who fled to the south of France in 1939 and painted the cycle there within two years. She was murdered in Auschwitz. Jewish Museum Amsterdam, JHM 4762.Charlotte Salomon (1917–1943), JHM 4762. Jewish Museum Amsterdam. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

At the Neue Synagoge, the local police called the fire brigade

At the Neue Synagoge on the Oranienburger Straße, officers of the 16th police precinct stood up to the SA, pointing out that the building was a protected monument, and called the fire brigade. Their chief, Wilhelm Krützfeld, is honoured by a plaque on the building as the man who saved it. How much of the credit is his alone is contested: the memorial museum that tells the story names the officers of the precinct.

An old sepia photograph of a synagogue façade with a large ribbed dome and two smaller towers.
The Neue Synagoge on the Oranienburger Straße, Mitte, about 1866, the year it opened.Unknown author, 1866. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
A grey metal plaque: “Der Berliner Polizeibeamte Wilhelm Krützfeld (1880–1953) bewahrte in der Pogromnacht vom 9./10. November 1938 durch mutiges und entschlossenes Eingreifen diese Synagoge vor Zerstörung. Der Polizeipräsident in Berlin”.
The plaque on the Neue Synagoge, Oranienburger Straße 28, put up by Berlin’s police president: it says Krützfeld saved “this synagogue” in the pogrom night of 9/10 November 1938.OTFW, Berlin, 2009. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.
The front of the Neue Synagoge with its gilded ribbed dome against a blue sky.
The Neue Synagoge today, its front rebuilt, in 2005.Andreas Praefcke, 2005. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.

0311 November 1938 – 13 February 1939

The regime’s own count of the damage rose ninefold in a day

On 11 November Heydrich reported 815 shops destroyed across the Reich, and called the figures incomplete. The next day, at Göring’s meeting, he gave 7,500. Berlin alone accounts for at least 3,000. The count of the dead rose in the same way, and no one count is final: the figures are shown here with the names of those who gave them.

Two counts that kept growing

the regime’s own counthistorians’ and memorials’ count

Each group has its own scale. Heydrich’s figures are for the whole Reich; the Berlin figure is the historians’ count for the city. The death toll is contested: the regime counted 36, then 91; the Topographie des Terrors gives about 400 murdered or driven to suicide. Deaths in the camps afterwards are counted separately.

04Sachsenhausen · November 1938 – spring 1939

More than 6,300 men were taken to Sachsenhausen, most of them from Berlin

The telex at 23:55 had told the police to prepare the arrest of 20,000 to 30,000 Jews across the Reich. By 11 November Heydrich reported about 20,000 arrested. From Berlin, the men were sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, north of the city.

At least 64 of them died there. Most were released by the spring of 1939, on condition that they leave Germany at once.

A tall concrete obelisk with a row of red triangles near its top, against a deep blue sky.
The obelisk on the former roll-call ground of the Sachsenhausen camp, north of Berlin, 2010.Alex Walker, 2010. Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 3.0.

6,300 men: one dot each

Each dot is one of the more than 6,300 Jewish men the Sachsenhausen memorial counts. The 64 lit dots at the end are the men known to have died in the camp, a minimum.

05Reich Aviation Ministry · 12 November 1938

Then the victims were made to pay for it

On 12 November, Göring chaired a meeting at the Reich Aviation Ministry from 11:00 to 14:40. The insurers would have to pay out for the damage, but the payments would be confiscated by the state. And Germany’s Jews were to pay a collective “atonement” fine.

A black-and-white photograph of a long, severe stone ministry building.
The Reich Aviation Ministry on the Leipziger Straße, 1936, where Göring held the meeting of 12 November 1938.Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1979-074-35A / Bittner / CC BY-SA 3.0 de
1 billion
Reichsmarks, the fine imposed on Germany’s Jews
1.7 million
marks claimed by Margraf, the jewellers on Unter den Linden in Berlin — the largest single claim, from a shop “completely stripped”
about 6 million
marks of broken plate glass, the insurers estimated

From the stenographic record of the meeting (Nuremberg document 1816-PS), as edited by the bpb and translated by the German Historical Institute.

No order that night said “pogrom”. The orders said how: which fires might burn, which windows might break, how many men the cells would hold.

The regime called it spontaneous. The telexes are stamped 23:55 and 01:20.

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Berlinfographics (2026). “The November pogrom in Berlin, 1938”. Berlin Experiences. https://berlinfographics.com/berlin-kristallnacht-pogrom/

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{{cite web |title=The November pogrom in Berlin, 1938 |url=https://berlinfographics.com/berlin-kristallnacht-pogrom/ |website=Berlinfographics |publisher=Berlin Experiences |date=2026-11-09 |access-date=2026-11-09}}