This wave of violence took place throughout Germany, annexed Austria , and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.
Amid intensifying anti-Jewish measures and the Kristallnacht "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom, Johanna's family decided to leave Germany. They obtained visas for Albania, crossed into Italy , and sailed in They remained in Albania under the Italian occupation and, after Italy surrendered in , under German occupation. The family was liberated after a battle between the Germans and Albanian partisans in December Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogromβbroken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence.
In its aftermath, German officials announced that Kristallnacht had erupted as a spontaneous outburst of public sentiment in response to the assassination of Ernst vom Rath. Vom Rath was a German embassy official stationed in Paris.
Herschel Grynszpan , a year-old Polish Jew, had shot the diplomat on November 7, A few days earlier, German authorities had expelled thousands of Jews of Polish citizenship living in Germany from the Reich; Grynszpan had received news that his parents, residents in Germany since , were among them.
Grynszpan's parents and the other expelled Polish Jews were initially denied entry into their native Poland. They found themselves stranded in a refugee camp near the town of Zbaszyn in the border region between Poland and Germany. Already living illegally in Paris himself, a desperate Grynszpan apparently sought revenge for his family's precarious circumstances by appearing at the German embassy and shooting the diplomatic official assigned to assist him.
