Erfurt/Weimar/Sömmerda (dpa/th) - The victims of the National Socialist pogrom night on November 9, 1938 are being commemorated in Thuringia today with a number of commemorative events. In Erfurt, for example, the regional Jewish community, together with Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow and the head of the Thuringian State Chancellery, Benjamin-Immanuel Hoff (both leftists), commemorate the victims of the wave of violence against Jews known as Pogrom Night at the Jewish cemetery. In Weimar there is an event at the Buchenwald Memorial. Wreaths are also laid in Bad Salzungen, Jena, Sömma, Gera and Eisenach and the victims are commemorated.
The wave of violence known as the Pogrom Night is considered the prelude to the systematic annihilation of the Jewish population. In the night from November 9th to 10th, 1938, the National Socialists devastated around 7,500 Jewish businesses and institutions in Germany. Historians assume that more than 1,300 people died as a result of the pogrom. More than 30,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps.
