Reflections on Kristallnacht: Night of Broken Glass

By Linda Klempner, WLCJ International Vice President and Torah Fund Patron/Scholarship Patron Chair

On the evening of November 9 to November 10, in an incident known as Kristallnacht, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools, and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. The name Kristallnacht refers ironically to the litter of broken glass left in the streets after these pogroms. Kristallnacht turned out to be a turning point in German policy regarding the Jews and may be considered as the beginning of what is now called the Holocaust.

I took a trip to Poland, and Berlin, Germany with Rabbi Dr. Ronald L. Androphy, Rabbi Emeritus of East Meadow Jewish Center in Nassau County, New York. For me it was an important trip as my father came to America from Poland as a boy. My mother’s neighbor, who was in the Holocaust, referred to my father as “one of the lucky ones.” My father’s entire family came to America, four sisters, my father, and his parents. They were sponsored by cousins who lived in New Haven, Connecticut. The family settled in New Haven where my father attended school and graduated from the University of Connecticut with a degree in pharmacy. As I walked down the streets in Warsaw and Krakow, I tried to imagine my father running down the street, going into a store to buy candy and being a playful innocent child not knowing what was to come.

In Berlin we visited two synagogues from the Night of Broken Glass. One did not survive and all that stands in its place is a billboard telling visitors what was once there. Surrounding the site were garden apartments. One could only imagine what the families saw and felt that night as a house of worship was being burned to the ground.

The second synagogue was the Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue. In the pogrom of 1938 (Kristallnacht), the New Synagogue was spared major damage because the local (non-Jewish} German police captain would not let the Nazis burn it down, but it was destroyed by Allied bombers during World War II. The Synagogue was re-established in 1998. Oranienburger Strasse is one of the ten synagogues of the Jewish Community (Juedische Gemeinde).

On Shabbat morning we attended services at the Synagogue Oranienburger Strasse. Although it is not officially affiliated with any specific movement within Judaism, those coming from a Masorti/Conservative background such as our group could feel very much at home. It grew out of a need for an alternative, egalitarian approach to religious Jewish life. The service was attended by about 20 of their congregants plus our group. It was filled with so much ruach and many of us were honored with aliyot. We admired and appreciated the wonderful work of Rabbi Gesa Ederberg, the first female Rabbi to serve in Berlin since Regina Jonas (d. 1944). Her leadership is doing so much to attract Jews of all ages to return to their Jewish roots and to offer a non-Orthodox option to bring them closer to Judaism. Incidentally, the sermon (in German) was delivered by a first-year German Rabbinical student.

The commemoration of Kristallnacht will be on synagogue calendars in the month of November. My first year as a member of Park Avenue Synagogue, I remember several Holocaust survivors standing on the dais retelling their stories of death and horror. Last year there were no survivors; they were replaced by children and grandchildren who came to retell stories passed down to them by their elders. “L’dor V’dor,” from generation to generation, the events of The Night of Broken Glass must be retold so they will be remembered and never allowed to happen again.

Shabbat Shalom,

Linda Klempner
WLCJ International Vice President and Torah Fund Patron/Scholarship Patron Chair
lklempner@wlcj.org