Darker Than A Thousand Pogroms: Kristallnacht and its Long Shadow

Robert Leonard Berkowitz
Nov 6 · 17 min read

By Robert Leonard Berkowitz

Torched Synagogue during Kristallnacht — U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Courtesy of Landauin der Pfalz, Archiv und Museum

The word pogrom in Russian and Yiddish means “devastation.”

It derives from a Russian word that means to destroy, to wreak havoc, to demolish violently.

Historically, it is associated with violent outbursts against Jews that began in the 1880s and continued…

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Robert Leonard Berkowitz

Written by

Robert was raised in Newark and nearby West Orange, New Jersey. He now lives in Guilford, Connecticut.

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