On the night of 9–10 November 1938, a wave of organised anti-Jewish violence swept across Germany and the territories it had annexed. Known as Kristallnacht or the November Pogrom, it saw hundreds of synagogues burned or destroyed, thousands of Jewish-owned shops and businesses looted, and tens of thousands of Jews deported to concentration camps. The pogrom marked a decisive transition from discrimination to open violence and the systematic persecution of the Jewish population.
Several months later, on the night of 17–18 March 1939, shortly after the Nazi occupation of Brno, the city’s Great Synagogue on what is now Přízova Street was also set ablaze. Its destruction was not a random act of vandalism, but part of the continuing effort to erase the Jewish presence from public space.
Historian Michal Doležel’s lecture will commemorate the anniversary of the November Pogrom and place the destruction of Brno’s Great Synagogue within the broader context of the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
