Why is it important to remember? Does it ever become overkill? What do we lose if we forget our past? Check out this article about the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht. How can we as a society move forward and still honor the past?
THE RECORD (Hackensack, N.J.) Nov. 9, 1998, n.p. Reprinted with permission from Associated Press Newsfeatures. GERMANY JEWS REMEMBER
KRISTALLNACHT by Anne Thompson Associated Press Writer BERLIN (AP)--With a "march of silence" and plans for new synagogues, Germany's Jewish community marked the 60th anniversary Monday of Kristallnacht--the "Night of Broken Glass"--when Nazi storm troopers burned and ransacked Jewish businesses and temples. Germany's Jewish community numbered 530,000 before the Nazis took power; it now is 70,000 strong and growing. But neo-Nazi incidents also are on the rise, and Jewish leaders are more determined than ever that the Holocaust not be forgotten--fighting what they see as a trend toward emphasizing Germany's future at the expense of remembering its past. Politicians, including Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, religious leaders and members of the Jewish community gathered for anniversary speeches in a cavernous, mosaic-covered Berlin synagogue where windows were shattered during the Kristallnacht violence that presaged the Holocaust. Topic No. 1: How to remember the past while moving Germany into the 21st century and its seat of government back to Berlin, Adolf Hitler's capital. Underscoring all the speeches was the theme that Germans still struggle for the right way to preserve the horrors of the Holocaust as a lesson for future generations. Ignatz Bubis, the leader of Germany's Jews, lambasted what he calls an "intellectual nationalism" represented in comments by a prize-winning German author who says repeated media references to Nazi atrocities are designed to perpetuate German guilt. Bubis contends novelist Martin Walser has given neo-Nazis mainstream arguments for anti-Semitic assaults, such as the small swastikas found Monday etched into a monument commemorating the mass deportation of Berlin's Jews to concentration camps. "Whenever someone who is counted among the spiritual elite of the nation makes such statements, they carry a weight of their own," Bubis told the audience of 2,000. "It is certain that right-wing extremists will refer to Walser." The Kristallnacht anniversary has particular significance this year, which saw the election of politicians too young to have memories of World War II. The generational change, coupled with the move to Berlin and the new government's emphasis on a forward-looking Germany has sparked concern that there is a desire to return to a "normal" Germany unburdened by the Holocaust. "For me, normality is to be a Jew and to be able to live in Germany again," Bubis said. "'Normality' cannot mean that we supplant memory and live with a new anti-Semitism and new racism." Berlin's Jewish community held its first "march of silence" Monday in remembrance of Kristallnacht. Some 2,000-3,000 people formed a sea of umbrellas on a dark, drizzling afternoon. A march also was held in Duesseldorf, along with ceremonies in Buchenwald, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Munich. The synagogue ceremony started with a description of Kristallnacht from historian Andreas Nachama, leader of Berlin's Jewish community. On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, Nazi leaders heard a Jew had shot a German diplomat in Paris. In reprisal, they ordered storm troopers into the streets in Germany and Austria, which Hitler had annexed earlier. They rounded up Jews and burned and broke windows in synagogues and Jewish businesses--calling it the "Night of Broken Glass." When the rampage ended on Nov. 10, more than 1,300 synagogues were destroyed and more than 30,000 Jews had been sent to concentration camps. Several hundred people were killed or committed suicide. Today, some say Kristallnacht risks being eclipsed by another watershed--the Nov. 9, 1989, fall of the Berlin Wall, which led to German reunification the next year. Nachama called it a "coincidence" that the events fall on the same date but saw commonality in both resulting from totalitarianism: Kristallnacht from the Nazis and the Berlin Wall from the communists. There was hope, too, in Monday's events. The eastern city of Dresden broke ground for a synagogue on the site of a Jewish temple destroyed in the war. And Berlin unveiled blueprints for rebuilding its temple in the Mitte neighborhood, a center of Jewish life before the war. While both prewar synagogues sat about 2,000 people, the new ones will have seats only for a few hundred. Of the 11 million people who perished under the Nazis, about 6 million were Jews. * * * GERMAN CITY BUILDING NEW SYNAGOGUE DRESDEN, GERMANY (AP)--Sixty years after Dresden's main synagogue burned to the ground in the Nazi pogrom Kristallnacht, officials on Monday laid the cornerstone for a new synagogue on the same site. The new building will be smaller to reflect the city's diminished Jewish community, but the leader of Dresden's Jews, Roman Koenig, expressed hope that it would stand as a sign of tolerance and vigilance. It is the first new synagogue to be built in former East Germany since reunification in 1990. The Semper synagogue, built in 1838 by the same architect who designed Dresden's famed opera house, was one of more than 1,300 destroyed by Nazi storm troopers on Kristallnacht, known as the Night of Broken Glass, on Nov. 9, 1938. But Dresden firefighter Alfred Neugebauer, responding to the blaze, saved a Star of David from the building and hid it in his attic until the war ended. He then returned it to the Jewish community. The star will be placed on top of the new synagogue, which will begin holding services in a year. The city of Dresden and Saxony state have contributed $6 million to build the synagogue. Another $2.4 million has been donated, including $110,000 collected in Columbus, Ohio, Dresden's American sister city. Frank Wobst--a Dresden native and now head of Columbus-based Huntington Bankshares Inc.--helped forge the sister-city relationship, and returned Monday to present the check and underline the American city's commitment to Dresden. "We wanted to be part of rebuilding the synagogue so Dresden's Jewish community would have a synagogue and be more complete," said Wobst, who was only 4 when the old synagogue was destroyed. He left his native city for West Germany in 1952, as the communists secured their hold on East Germany, and moved to the United States several years later. Wobst also brought with him a $30,000 check to help rebuild the city's central church, the Frauenkirche, which was destroyed in the war by Allied bombs.--Frank Ellmers, Associated Press Writer
Thompson, Anne. "Germany Jews Remember Kristallnacht." The Record (Hackensack, NJ) Nov. 9 1998: n.p. SIRS Researcher. Web. 09 April 2010.
