An unexpected event gave the Nazis the opportunity to deal a spectacular blow to the Jews; a seventeen year-old fellow had shot a diplomat of the Paris German Embassy, in order to avenge the deportation of his parents from Germany.

Upon receiving this news on November 9, 1938, the Nazi government put a general country-wide so-called "spontaneous" pogrom into motion. In the course of this event, which became known as The Night of Broken Glass, several hundred synagogues were burned to the ground, Jewish businesses were vandalized and over 30,000 Jewish men were incarcerated in the three concentration camps of Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Dachau, until they had been "softened up" and had agreed to relinquish their assets. In the process, close to a hundred were killed outright by the Nazi party thugs and several hundred more died in the camps from mistreatment, or "suicide."

In this same year of 1938, thirty-three nations met in Evian (France) to discuss the plight of refugees and the dearth of entry visas.

Only the tiny Dominican Republic offered to receive substantial numbers of Jews, with the USA maintaining a strict exclusionary quota.

Verboten
Germania, November 1938. After days at the Kirn jail,
father was transferred to Dachau, in a suburb of Munich.