Nazi propaganda played a major role in promoting the Nazi ideology of antisemitism and discrimination. Jewish religious symbols were repeatedly associated with things many people hated and feared, like communism, disease and vermin.
Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht)
Antisemitism in Nazi Germany reached a new peak in November 1938, in what is now known as Kristallnacht or the “Night of Broken Glass.” Following the shooting of Ernst vom Rath, a German diplomat in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, who learned that the Nazis had exiled his parents to Poland, Nazi paramilitaries including “SA” (Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth smashed the windows of Jewish shops, vandalized homes and burned down synagogues across Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. The German police turned a blind eye to the violence and were soon enforcing the anti-Jewish measures taken by the regime.
As a result of Kristallnacht, some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. For many Jews who remained in Germany, Kristallnacht marked the end of any hope of a Jewish life in Nazi Germany.