Miriam G. Schwartz Annual Lecture: 10 November 1938: A Day of Relentless Sonic Violence against Jews in Germany

This year’s Miriam G. Schwartz Annual Lecture will be delivered by Sara Ann Sewell, Professor of History at Batten University, on Monday, 12 October at 7 PM in BSC 343.

10 November 1938: A Day of Relentless Sonic Violence against Jews in Germany

On 10 November 1938, rank-and file Nazis took to the streets throughout Germany, attacking Jews and their property. Coordinated by the Nazi State, this pogrom resulted in the destruction of approximately 2,000 synagogues, 10,000 businesses, and countless homes. Even more ominous were the murders of a few hundred Jewish men and women as well as the first mass imprisonment of 30,000 Jewish men in the Third Reich’s burgeoning incarceration network. Known as the “November Pogrom” or “Kristallnacht,” this event marked a seismic escalation in the persecution of Jews, and therefore, scholars have widely studied it. This lecture will approach the November Pogrom in an innovative way – through its sounds. Drawing on Jews’ testimonies, it will investigate how Jews heard the November Pogrom’s violent cacophony to enter into their sensorial and emotional worlds amid the wanton brutality and its aftermath.

Sara Ann Sewell is a Professor of Modern European Cultural and Gender History at Batten University. Her current research investigates Holocaust victims’ experiences, focusing on their audial, sensorial, and emotional lives. She is writing a monograph entitled: Sounding, Hearing, Silencing: Experiencing the Holocaust through the Sonic with Purdue University Press. Recent publications include: “Emotional Dissimulation in the Holocaust: The Affective Lives of Jewish Adolescent Girls and Young Women,” in Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History (2026); and “Screams: Expressions of Fear Thundering in Holocaust Soundscapes” in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (2025).