The German authorities looked on without intervening. The pretext for the attacks was the assassination, on 9 November , of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath [ 5 ] by Herschel Grynszpan , a year-old German-born Polish Jew living in Paris. Jewish homes, hospitals and schools were ransacked as attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers.
Estimates of fatalities caused by the attacks have varied. Early reports estimated that 91 Jews had been murdered. Evans estimating deaths by suicide, [ 12 ] [ 13 ] with a total between one and two thousand. In the s, most German Jews were fully integrated into the country's society as citizens. They served in the army and navy and contributed to every field of German business, science and culture.
Nazi propaganda alienated the , Jews living in Germany, who accounted for only 0. These laws resulted in the exclusion and alienation of Jews from German social and political life. By the time the conference took place, more than , Jews had fled Germany and Austria, which had been annexed by Germany in March ; more than , German and Austrian Jews continued to seek refuge and asylum from oppression. As the number of Jews and Romani wanting to leave increased, the restrictions against them grew, with many countries tightening their rules for admission.
By , Germany "had entered a new radical phase in anti-Semitic activity". The need for money by the party organization stemmed from the fact that Franz Xaver Schwarz , the party treasurer, kept the local and regional organizations of the party short of money. In the fall of , the increased pressure on Jewish property nourished the party's ambition, especially since Hjalmar Schacht had been ousted as Reich minister for economics.
This, however, was only one aspect of the origin of the November pogrom. The Polish government threatened to extradite all Jews who were Polish citizens but would stay in Germany, thus creating a burden of responsibility on the German side. The immediate reaction by the Gestapo was to push the Polish Jewsโ16, personsโover the borderline, but this measure failed due to the stubbornness of the Polish customs officers.
