"The Night of Broken Glass"

What was the start of the Holocaust? On the night of November 9, 1938, it was final that Hitler declared war on the Jews. This night was called Kristallnacht or “The Night of Broken Glass”. Kristallnacht was mainly instigated by Nazi Party officials and the members of the SA and the Hitler Youth. The name, Kristallnacht literally is German for “Night of Crystal” or more commonly referred to as “The Night of Broken Glass”. This night was named Kristallnacht because of the remains of shattered glass from the windows of Jewish synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses that remained in the streets of Germany. By the end of the day, the SA or “Storm Troopers” killed more than 91 Jews and injured many others, 177 synagogues and 7,500 businesses were completely burned down to the ground.

The cause for the violent outburst was the assassination of a German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, two days earlier, on November 7, 1938. Vom Rath was killed by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager whose parents had been recently deported out of Germany, along with 17,000 other Polish Jews. After his parents lived in Germany for 27 years, they got relocated to Poland. Revenge was the real reason why Grynszpan killed Vom Rath, revenge. The Nazi’s had treated his family and millions of other Jewish families with no respect and treated them like they were animals. They were beaten and then thrown into concentration camps as if they mean nothing to the world and nothing to no one. 25,000 men were gathered up later that day, and were sent to concentration camps where they were brutalized by SS guards and sometimes even beaten to death. If these were my family members that were getting brutally beaten then I definitely would have revenge on the people that are hurting my family. Grynszpan had every right to do what he did and personally I think the Nazi’s deserved it.

Many children were transported out of Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia by “Kindertransports” and were bound for England. For the next 11 months, these “Kindertransports” carried 10,000 Jewish children safely to England. “But on the other hand, their parents remained, trapped by their misguided belief that things couldn’t get much worse. Only one child in 10 would ever see his or her parents again (Amicor Preserve Blog)”. Most parents boarded a train headed in the opposite direction: east to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in Czechoslovakia.

What would have happened if Herschel Grynszpan never killed Ernst vom Rath? Would Kristallnacht have ever existed? The name Kristallnacht would probably not have been used but the violent outburst would have happened eventually if Grynszpan didn’t assassinate vom Rath. Kristallnacht could have been used as the name for another battle that would have shattered glass everywhere on Germany’s streets. But Adolf Hitler and the Nazi’s would have started slaughtering the Jew s because Hitler thought they were the reason why Germany was blamed for World War I. To Hitler, the Jews were the cause of every little thing that has gone wrong in Germany. Kristallnacht or “The Night of Broken Glass” was perhaps the most important aspect of the Holocaust and the start of the persecution of Jews.

If Cubism was not in Pablo Picasso's life, then would it have affected him otherwise?

Cubism was one of the most influential and revolutionary movements in art and because of this, the world will never be the same. Cubism has been around since the 1900’s and the development was attributed to Pablo Picasso and George Braque. Cubism was the main focus in Picasso's life. He went through many periods of different types of cubism during his lifetime. His blue period, which only last a few years during World War I, consisted of only painting pictures with different hues of blue. He was also going through a difficult time his life, dealing with financial issues and the death of a close friend. His rose period occurred right after his blue period because he believed he had fallen in love. Again, during his rose period, Picasso painted with different hues of red and pink.

Analytic and Synthetic cubism are the two main branches of cubism. Analytic cubism was a radical and influential movement that only lasted from 1907 to 1911 in France. Analytic cubism interprets natural forms and compressed the forms into geometric parts on a two-dimensional canvas. Color was not used often in analytic cubism but mainly used blue, grey, and ochre. Many artists geometric forms like the cylinder, sphere, and the cone to depict the natural world. On the other hand, synthetic cubism is the second main movement within cubism. It was distinguished by the preamble of different texture, surfaces, collage elements, papier colle, and a large variety of merged subject matter. Newspaper clippings and sheet music were popular to include in collages.

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881. His father, Jose Ruiz Biasco, was a professor of drawing and his mother was Maria Picasso Lopez. Picasso’s father taught him how to draw and paint. When he was of age, his father enrolled him into a local art academy but he dropped out when he was 20 and because the famous painter that he is today. He was acknowledged for his work while he was still alive which was rare for the 20^th century. Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973 at the age of 91 because of natural causes.

From the research that I have investigated about Pablo Picasso and cubism, I learned that if cubism was not in Picasso’s life then it would have changed his life dramatically. If he and Braque didn’t influence cubism then they would have never been able to express their emotions and feelings as well as they did through their paintings. When Picasso was going through is “blue period”, he was expressing his emotions through his dark, depressing paintings and cubism helped him express them even more. Picasso’s life would not have been as interesting without cubism because cubism is primarily what made up his life. He, first, founded it and then made it his main focus in his life. After many, many years of using cubism, he finally moved on to work on another type of art movement. But besides that, he became famous for his cubist paintings. If he had not influenced this art movement then he would be an undiscovered painter.

Video on Pablo Picasso:
http://www.biography.com/video.do?name=hispanicheritage&bcpid=1753218635&bclid=1773233161&bctid=1713753559

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