Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
News

Kristallnacht Trending on Twitter — and Not Just for a History Lesson

People on Twitter are using the hashtag #Kristallnacht to comment on Donald Trump’s election — and not everyone is OK with that.

The November pogroms – more commonly known as Kristallacht or Crystal Night – were a serious of attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany on 9–10 November 1938. Paramilitary forces and German civilians burnt synagogues and destroyed Jewish businesses. About 30,000 Jews were attested and sent to concentration camps.

Wednesday morning, #Kristallacht started trending on Twitter.

And while a good number of these tweets are meant to memorialize and mourn what happened almost eighty years ago, even more Twitter users are using it to express their shock and disdain about today’s election results.

Take a look at same of the examples

But not everybody was happy about the comparison to present day politics.

Lilly Maier is a news intern at the Forward. Reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter at @lillymmaier

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.