This tightly written, soundly researched, popular narrative by two British historians supplies an excellent overview of the events which signaled the termination of the Nazi's grudging toleration of the Jews in Germany. The precipitating factor was the assassination of the German embassy third secretary in Paris on November 7, 1938 by a young Polish-Jewish refugee. On the night of November 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht, the ``Night of Broken Glass,'' the Germans took their revenge in an orgy of organized burning of synagogues and Jewish businesses, along with beatings of Jews. Behind the scenes the German legal community prepared legislation that would force the Jews to the wall; many fled Germany, leaving their property and money in the hands of an almost bankrupt national government. Read and Fisher place Kristallnacht in global perspective, chronicling the collective ignoring of the German Jew's plight by a world tinged not a little with anti-Semitism in significant circles. For general and academic libraries.-- Norman Lederer, UAW, Woodbridge, N.J. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

A comprehensive study of the infamous Nazi rampage against Jews that shocked much of the free world in November 1938 and whose 50th anniversary was recently observed. For the most part, British historians Fisher and Read (Deadly Embrace: Hitler, Stalin and the Nazi-Soviet Pact, 1939-1941, 1988; etc.) handle their volatile material effectively, if without great liveliness or tension. The authors frame their shocking narrative with the story of 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan, whose murder of Nazi functionary Ernst vom Rath in Paris provided the excuse for the pogrom that came to be called ""Kristallnacht."" In the early morning hours of November 9-10, Jews throughout the Third Reich were murdered, terrorized, their homes and businesses ransacked, their synagogues put to the torch, in what Nazi officialdom insisted was a ""spontaneous demonstration"" of outrage at vom Rath's murder. Grynszpan acted out of a need to revenge the persecution of his family, and the story of his crime, capture, trial, incarceration, and possible eventual fate is an intriguing one. Also investigated here are the probable economic factors involved in the Kristallnacht debacle, and the international reaction (and lack of reaction) to the event, including various attempts to repatriate German Jews, such as a heartless scheme to set up a kind of penal colony for them in Madagascar. Fisher and Read have been indefatigable in their research, interviewing survivors, unearthing previously unpublished documents. The result is a heartbreaking and often infuriating look at events of a half-century ago. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

On November 7, 1938, a Jewish youth named Herschel Grynszpan shot and killed a Nazi diplomat inside the German embassy in Paris. In the wake of Grynszpan's murderous deed, Germany was convulsed by a carefully orchestrated spasm of anti-Jewish violence that has since become known as Kristallnacht, or "night of broken glass"--a term that refers to all the shattered windows of Jewish-owned shops that were ransacked by Nazi mobs. Drawing on eyewitness testimony as well as archival sources, the authors have produced a readable, meticulously reconstructed account of this sordid chapter in European history. Though uniformly excellent throughout, the book is at its informative best when dealing with the spineless response of the international community to Kristallnacht. As the authors point out, Hitler was thereby emboldened to further impel his nation on a course that would ultimately lead to world war and the virtual annihilation of European Jewry. Notes, bibliography; to be indexed. --Steve Weingartner