Kristallnacht: Night of Broken Glass
Created by Owen D., Owen M., Benjamin S. & J.D. S.
A violent attack on Jewish people and their businesses across Germany, marks a turning point toward even worse persecution
Documentary Embed
The Match
Artist Statement
Our artifact “The Match” is a memorial to the events that occurred on November 9-10, 1938, also known by the name of Kristallnacht, or the “night of broken glass”. More than 14,000 Synagogues were burned, houses were broken into, businesses were destroyed, all in the span of two days. Nazis, and common German citizens harassed, humiliated, injured, and even killed Jewish people. About 20-30 thousand Jews were imprisoned by the German government. Kristallnacht was staged as a sudden riot or outburst from the people of Germany, but behind the scenes, it was a state sponsored plan. It was a major turning point in how the Germans attacked the Jewish community, no longer acknowledging them as citizens. We hope that all people viewing our artifact are able to become aware of the overwhelming power of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
The core message of our design is how Kristallnacht was a critical moment that shifted how the Jewish people were treated; how they went from being racially discriminated, to systematically singled out and completely stripped of their humanity . We agreed that our main message is how people can be easily manipulated and controlled to do horrible things when they are facing challenges and hardships. For example, before Kristallnacht, Germany was going through an economic crisis. This economic crisis caused challenges for the people of Germany. Hitler, took advantage of them and manipulated the German people into thinking that all of the issues were caused by the Jewish people. This eventually sparked Kristallnacht, and then the Holocaust, which led to the death of 6 million Jews.The main emotion we were trying to convey was the terror that occurred during this event.
Our first symbol is the arm of a Nazi soldier which shows the overwhelming power and terror Nazis had. By using it as the main symbol, we tried to send the message of how everything was controlled, planned, and mostly done by the Nazi party during Kristallnacht. Our second symbol is the match being held by the hand. We used this for many reasons, particularly to show how Kristallnacht was one of the biggest turning points during the Holocaust, when the Jewish people were fully stripped of their humanity, and no longer treated like citizens. Before the event Holocaust, the word meant destruction by fire, so we thought that using a match would be the perfect symbolism.
Some of the materials we used were Styrofoam for the arm, the 3d printer to make the people and synagogues, the laser cutter to make the title and fire, and actual broken glass. One of the difficult decisions our group had to make was the detail in our original design, because we had incorporated too much detail for the time slot to complete it. We collectively decided to remove the least impactful pieces of the original artifact design. By choosing proportion and emphasis for our two principles of design, we were able to show which pieces of the artifact were the most important. Because our artifact is “the night of broken glass”, we decided to incorporate real broken glass, the texture in our piece, which is one of our two elements of art. The second element of art we used was form, and in our artifact, we used form for the arm, and for the synagogues.
We hope viewers will be able to become aware of the importance of Kristallnacht, and we hope that our artifact will leave you with knowledge and awareness of what happened on the two consecutive nights, and how they affected what happened during the Holocaust.
