Kristallnacht
The name Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass, comes from the shards of broken glass that littered streets following the organized violent pogroms across Germany and Austria on November 9-10, 1938. Under orders from Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Party paramilitary units of SS and Hitler Youth, accompanied by German civilians, rampaged through lewish neighborhoods, smashing windows, and destroying more than 1400 synagogues, and about 7500 Jewish homes, schools, and businesses along with killing 100- Jewish citizens. Thirty thousand Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald. This was the beginning of Hitler's "Final Solution" to eliminate the Jews of Europe and beyond.
Inspiration for the piece came from poetry and literature of a class Gail Ostrow taught at the Fairfield Senior Center on the Holocaust. This piece is meant to capture the foreboding, fear, and despair suffered by the victims of Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht - Art glass shards on acrylic