NOVEMBER 9th

On this date in:
1918	Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II announced that he would abdicate.
1935	United Mine Workers president John L. Lewis and other labor leaders formed the Committee for Industrial Organization.
1938	Nazis looted and burned synagogues and Jewish-owned stores and houses in Germany and Austria on Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass."
1953	The Supreme Court upheld a 1922 ruling that major league baseball did not come within the scope of federal antitrust laws.
1953	Author-poet Dylan Thomas died at age 39.
1970	Former French president Charles De Gaulle died at age 79.
1976	The United Nations General Assembly approved 10 resolutions condemning apartheid in South Africa, including one characterizing the white-ruled government as "illegitimate."
1989	Communist East Germany threw open its borders, allowing citizens to travel freely to the West. Joyous Germans danced atop the Berlin Wall.
2001	The northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the northern alliance in the first major territorial advance for the rebels against the ruling Taliban.
2003	Comic actor Art Carney died at age 85.
2004	Houston Astros pitcher Roger Clemens won his record seventh Cy Young award.
2005	Three suicide bombers carried out nearly simultaneous attacks on three U.S.-based hotels in Amman, Jordan, killing 60 victims and wounding hundreds.
2006	CBS newsman Ed Bradley died in New York at age 65.
2007	President Gen. Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan placed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest for a day, and rounded up thousands of her supporters to block a mass rally against his emergency rule.

Article of the day

Nazis launch Kristallnacht

On this day in 1938, in an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launch a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed "Kristallnacht," or "Night of Broken Glass," after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.

The Nazis used the murder of a low-level German diplomat in Paris by a 17-year-old Polish Jew as an excuse to carry out the Kristallnacht attacks. On November 7, 1938, Ernst vom Rath was shot outside the German embassy by Herschel Grynszpan, who wanted revenge for his parents' sudden deportation from Germany to Poland, along with tens of thousands of other Polish Jews. Following vom Rath's death, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered German storm troopers to carry out violent riots disguised as "spontaneous demonstrations" against Jewish citizens. Local police and fire departments were told not to interfere. In the face of all the devastation, some Jews, including entire families, committed suicide.

In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, the Nazis blamed the Jews and fined them 1 billion marks (or $400 million in 1938 dollars) for vom Rath's death. As repayment, the government seized Jewish property and kept insurance money owed to Jewish people. In its quest to create a master Aryan race, the Nazi government enacted further discriminatory policies that essentially excluded Jews from all aspects of public life.

Over 100,000 Jews fled Germany for other countries after Kristallnacht. The international community was outraged by the violent events of November 9 and 10. Some countries broke off diplomatic relations in protest, but the Nazis suffered no serious consequences, leading them to believe they could get away with the mass murder that was the Holocaust, in which an estimated 6 million European Jews died.

Today birthdays

Nikki Blonsky turns 20 years old today.

AP Photo/Peter Kramer Actress Nikki Blonsky ("Hairspray") turns 20 years old today.

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