Tagged Kristallnacht

(L-R): Howard Levkowitz, Ella Levkowitz, Elayne Levkowitz, Tom Herz, Bertie Levkowitz, Helene Goodman, and Dan Goodman at the Tucson Hebrew Academy Tikkun Olam dinner Oct. 27. (Courtesy Tucson Hebrew Academy)

Tucson’s Jewish History Museum hosted a panel of local Holocaust survivors on Friday, Nov. 8, in commemoration of Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass,” a series of pogroms on Nov. 9, 1938 that signaled the beginning of the Holocaust. The survivors read from “To Tell Our Stories: Holocaust Survivors… Read more »

The Ruth & Irving Olson Center for Jewish Life (Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Northwest Division) will commemorate Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” that took place in Nazi Germany Nov. 8-9, 1938, with a program on Sunday, Nov. 10, from 10 a.m.-noon. Many historians view Kristallnacht, in which… Read more »

Though he was just 6 years old on the night of Kristallnacht, Rabbi Chanoch Ehrentreu can still recall the horror: Torah scrolls burning in the courtyard of his father’s synagogue. His father taken by the Gestapo to the concentration camp at Dachau. The grandson of a prominent rabbi from… Read more »

From Wikipedia, eyewitness accounts and reports from Holocaust survivors While the initial purpose of Kristallnacht was the need of financing for the Nazi Party, there were underlying racial and social hatred. That hatred was expanded to include Gypsies, homosexuals and members/leaders of other religions. The international Evian Conference on… Read more »

KALININGRAD, Russia (JTA) — Walking to school and back, Michael Wieck twice a day would pass by one of Europe’s largest and most spectacular Jewish places of worship: Koenigsberg’s New Synagogue. The mammoth shul was built in 1896 in the Aesopian style in the bustling port city that is… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) – For decades as an adult, Lore Mayerfeld kept a doll on a chair in an off-limits bedroom or high on a shelf. Her children – and later her grandchildren and great-grandchildren – knew not to play with the toy for fear of breaking it. Dressed in… Read more »

"Kristallnacht: Shattered, Yet Unbroken" mandala by Robert Wertz

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, refers to the windows broken at  synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses that were plundered and destroyed during a wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938 throughout Germany, Austria, and the Czech Sudetenland. The event is commonly thought to be… Read more »

After the death of his youngest sister in Stuttgart, Germany, my father thought deeply about the meaning of life and death, and the idea of becoming a rabbi became a calling. The 17-year-old Karl Richter, with youthful enthusiasm, decided to do his university as well as rabbinical studies at… Read more »

AMSTERDAM (JTA) — His name was never mentioned during the Netherlands’ main commemoration event for Kristallnacht, but Donald Trump was likely on everyone’s mind at the ceremony at the Dutch capital’s majestic Portuguese Synagogue. It wasn’t for any imagined parallels between Trump’s election as U.S. president and the campaign… Read more »

Hélène Berr

  In commemoration of Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass), which for many marks the beginning of the Holocaust in 1938,  the Jewish History Museum will host an opening reception of an exhibit entitled “Hélène Berr, A Stolen Life” on Sunday, Nov. 9 from 3 to 5 p.m., at… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — Each year on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we recall the opening salvo of the violent assault on Jews that foreshadowed the Holocaust and ask ourselves what should have been done at that moment. In thinking about Kristallnacht, we should also consider the outpouring of violence… Read more »

Gabrielle Selz

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. (JTA) — Four years ago, I applied to re-obtain German citizenship on behalf of my son and myself. Neither of us was born in Germany. I was born in sunny California and my son on Long Island. But I had learned that under the German Constitution, “Former… Read more »

Let us remember … that in the end we go to poetry for one reason, so that we might more fully inhabit our lives and the world in which we live them, and that if we more fully inhabit these things, we might be less apt to destroy both.… Read more »

Raymond-Raoul Lambert, seen in his Strasbourg office in the 1930s, founded the Committee for Assistance to Refugees. (Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum)

(JTA) — His hearing isn’t what it used to be, but Georges Loinger still remembers Adolf Hitler’s voice emanating from the radio at his Strasbourg home. Growing up in the heavily Germanic Alsace region of eastern France, Loinger and his family tuned in regularly to broadcasts of Hitler’s speeches.… Read more »

The 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” a dark time in Jewish and world history, will be commemorated Nov. 9 and 10. The Tucson Jewish community will host several interrelated events to memorialize what’s often referred to as the start of the Holocaust, when violence against… Read more »

Marion Achtentuch, 83, with her granddaughter, Shira Sheps, 25. (Shira Sheps)

(JTA) — Shira Sheps remembers walking through an exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan and stumbling upon her grandmother’s long-ago school reports alongside family photos and her great-grandparents’ wedding invitation. Sheps, 25, had known that her grandmother shortly after Kristallnacht had left Furth, Germany, at… Read more »

I would like to commend Bob Cohen, director of the Tucson Jewish Community Library; the Coalition for Jewish Education; and all the people involved in presenting the touching and well-organized “The Night of the Broken Glass” with Kristallnacht survivors speaking at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on Nov. 10.… Read more »

A destroyed Jewish clothing store in Magdeburg, Germany, after Kristallnacht, Nov. 11, 1938. (H. Frederick, Hanover)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Before it was called Kristallnacht, it was known simply as “the pogrom.” Designated “the night of broken glass,” the 14-hour wave of Nazi violence on Nov. 9-10, 1938 left hundreds of Jewish storefronts and synagogues across Germany and parts of Austria in shards and splinters,… Read more »

This is the 73rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, and the first one I will mark without my father.  Kristallnacht is referred to as the “night of broken glass.” But it was much more. It was the beginning of the end of most of European Jewry. It was two days of… Read more »

Rafael Medoff

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Most American Christian leaders strongly condemned the Kristallnacht pogrom that the Nazis carried out against Germany’s Jews 73 years ago next week, when hundreds of synagogues were torched, the windows of thousands of Jewish businesses were smashed, 100 Jews were murdered and 30,000 more were dragged… Read more »