Words have meaning. They shape how people feel about an issue, remember events and respond to developments that affect their lives.

For decades, people in Germany have referred to the anti-Jewish violence that cascaded across the country on November 9, 1938, as the "Kristallnacht" or "Reichskristallnacht." The translation "Night of Broken Glass" is widely used in English.

In Germany, that has begun to change. Historians debate the origins of the term "Kristallnacht," but it has nevertheless entered the lexicon of German history as such, "owing its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets," according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, DC.

The problem is that broken glass is hardly the worst consequence of a night of terror that many historians mark as the beginning of the Holocaust and the systematic murder of millions of Jews and people from other groups.

Calling it like it is

"The term obscures the atrocities that were committed against Jewish citizens," Meier Schwarz, a German-born Holocaust survivor and Israeli academic who died in 2022, once wrote for schoah.org, an online Holocaust archive.

Hundreds of people were killed, according to USHMM, and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and deported to concentration camps.

Rioters that night set fire to hundreds of synagogues and Jewish institutions throughout Austria and Germany. They desecrated Jewish cemeteries and looted thousands of Jewish-owned businesses. Then, Nazi authorities ordered Jews to pay for the damages.

Given the scope and gravity of the events, "broken glass" does not capture the extent of the brutality and suffering. By using more direct and explicit terminology, Germany aims to ensure that the historical record reflects the nature of the atrocities committed.

Schwarz and others have said a more appropriate term would be "pogrom," a Russian word deriving from a verb meaning "to wreak havoc, to demolish violently." As such, "Pogromnacht" — night of pogroms — has become more common in recent Holocaust discourse in Germany.

"Kristallnacht," or its English equivalent, remains in common use outside Germany, including by English-language media and Jewish organizations. The USHMM uses it but further defines what happened as an "organized act of nationwide violence" and a "wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms."

'Pogrom' also problematic

Not all historians are pleased with that choice. They say "pogrom" is a generic term that can apply to an array of violence and persecution confronting Jews throughout their history in Europe, especially in the Russian empire. Still, while these events were also traumatic and deadly, they did not rise to the level of systematic and state-sponsored terror of Nazi Germany.

The coordination and planning was "so special under national socialism]" and without comparison, Raphael Gross, the president of the German Historical Museum, told the public broadcaster DLF.

His fellow historian, Friedemann Bedürftig, told DLF that the term is a "Verschlimmbesserung" — a German word that means making something worse while trying to improve it.

Finding words for the unspeakable

How people and societies view and grapple with history changes over time, as does the vocabulary used to talk about it. That is especially true in Germany, whose present is constantly confronted by its past. Given the extremism of the Nazi era and the crimes against humanity that resulted, it may be impossible for historians, linguists and writers to ever settle on the right words to describe that scale of horror and destruction.

But the process of trying to do just that is itself another way in which Germany maintains public awareness of its history. In this regard, terms matter less than content.

"The most important thing," Gross said, "is to know what you are talking about."

Edited by: Jon Shelton

This article was originally published on November 9, 2023, and republished on November 9, 2024.