https://jewishlink.news/features/46882-a-historical-perspective-on-kristallnacht
Between the late evening hours of November 9 and the early morning of November 10, 1938, gangs of German brownshirts and the SS publicly destroyed and firebombed 267 synagogues throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. Historian Richard Evans noted that Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office, the SS and police agency most responsible for implementing the Final Solution, instructed the police and the SS not to stop the destruction of Jewish property or restrain those committing violent acts against German Jews. At the same time, looting was prohibited, foreign nationals were to be unharmed even if they were Jewish, and German properties had to be shielded from being damaged, which meant no fires were to be started next to Jewish stores or synagogues.
In addition to burning down synagogues, Evans said stormtroopers shattered shop windows of an estimated 7,500 Jewish-owned commercial businesses and their wares looted or left strewn on the pavements outside, coated with broken glass. Before Heydrich directed the security police to thwart looting, there were many robberies; ledgers recording mortgages and unsettled debts owed to Jews were destroyed, wrote historian David Cesarani. Extortion burgeoned under the pretext of implementing Aryanization and creating areas free of Jews. In Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Jews signed a “declaration of their intent to leave the district immediately and never to return…”
Evans adds that Jewish homes and apartments were ransacked, and the contents, including jewelry, radios, cameras, electrical equipment and other consumer products were stolen. Furniture was smashed, books and valuables were tossed everywhere, and the residents were terrorized and beaten. In many towns, gravestones in Jewish cemeteries were trashed.
The ‘Degradation Ritual’
Systematic public humiliation became a harrowing part of this uncontrolled, disorganized and anarchic pogrom, according to Cesarani. In dozens of cities and towns, the “degradation ritual” took different forms: as their synagogues burned, Jews were forced to watch while it went up in flames; others were compelled to dance around it or kneel in front of it. Torah scrolls and prayer books were vandalized, frequently by German youth. In Vienna, many rabbis had their beards cut.