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Plaque at Berlin’s New Synagogue on Oranienburger Straße.
‘Kristallnacht’, the state-sanctioned attack on Jewish property and on Jews themselves, was one of a number of ‘wake-up’ calls the world failed to heed.
During the course of one night, over 1,000 synagogues were burned throughout the expanded German Reich; some 7,500 Jewish businesses were damaged or at worst, destroyed; more than 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps; and records show that many more than the 91 people initially thought murdered, actually lost their lives.
This particular synagogue, now Berlin’s largest, was saved through the intervention of a sole policeman who bravely stood as a human barrier on the street, armed with his revolver, thereby preventing the mob from inflicting their worst.
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