To Remember and to Reflect: Kristallnacht Commemoration & Remembrance for the Righteous

"Room of Remembrance" (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green)

The Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie is presenting a program Sunday (11/08) at 1:30 PM: Kristallnacht Commemoration & Remembrance for the Righteous. Reservations are required and registration is filling fast, so be sure to call 847.967.4842, or register online, where there is more information about the program and speakers. See more about the history of Kristallnacht at the end of this post.

I had a special reason for visiting the Holocaust Museum this week. Over the summer I worked on a film through the CJE SeniorLife Elder Film Program and spent many hours hearing the testimony of  Esther Avruch. Born in Sochaczew, Poland a small city west of Warsaw, Esther remembers a pleasant childhood filled with memories of Shabbat (Friday night Sabbath) meals, the local synagogue, and the new clothes she received on Passover. Her world was shattered in February of 1941 when the Nazis moved her family first to a Jewish ghetto in Sochaczew and then to the Warsaw Ghetto later that month.

Warsaw Ghetto

Her brother was sent to the death camp Treblinka for his role in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. At the age of 12, Esther managed to escape from the Ghetto and lived a life in hiding for the next five years. She managed to obtain a ration card in the name of Marishka Rakofsky, begged for food, and often ate food meant for livestock. She lived on the streets and slept in cemeteries, in a stable with horses, or on the steps of buildings outside the Ghetto.

At the end of the war, she walked “about a thousand miles,” back home to Sochaczew, but her family had disappeared. She was sent to a Displaced Persons camp in Bavaria where she met her husband Sol. They lived there for 5 years before coming to America.

I thought of Esther’s story as we walked through the exhibits at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center. There are videos from many survivors, telling their stories – when you visit, stop and listen to their voices. It is a way we can bear witness to the enormity of the tragedy as well as astounding resilience of the human spirit.

The special program Sunday commemorates Kristallnacht, or the “Night of the Broken Glass,” which was a government-directed attack on Jews and Jewish businesses and institutions  in Germany and Austria November 9-10, 1938. Nazi storm troopers along with members of the SS and Hitler Youth beat and murdered Jews, broke into and wrecked Jewish homes, and brutalized Jewish women and children.

All over Germany, Austria and other Nazi controlled areas, Jewish shops and department stores had their windows smashed and contents destroyed. Synagogues were especially targeted for vandalism, including desecration of Torah scrolls. Hundreds of synagogues were systematically burned while local fire departments stood by, or simply prevented the fire from spreading to surrounding buildings. Every synagogue in Austria was attacked that night.

About 25,000 Jewish men were rounded up and later sent to concentration camps where they were often brutalized by SS guards and in some cases randomly chosen to be beaten to death. People who are still among us remember that night, people who survived Kristallnacht, survived the camps and the war and somehow, went on with their lives. For more online information about Kristallnacht click here for the U. S. Holocaust Museum site.

The Kristallnacht program at the Holocaust Museum begins at 1:30 pm Sunday with a tribute to the courageous acts of rescuers, a brief ceremony of dedication at the Museum’s Fountain of the Righteous.

The program continues at 2:00 PM at the Goodman Auditorium inside the Museum with a commemoration of the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht.

There will be an address by Rabbi Herman Schaalman on the dynamic of altruism in 1938; Rabbi Schaalman was one of five young Rabbinic students rescued in 1935 from Nazi Germany by the Hebrew Union College and is the Rabbi Emeritus at Chicago’s Emanuel Congregation.

Chuck Meyers, President, Avenue of the Righteous,  a non-profit interfaith organization devoted to honoring righteous behavior during the Holocaust, remarks on the courage to care.
There is no charge for this program. However, please call 847.967.4842 or email Lillian.gerstner@ilhmec.org
prior to the program to register. The museum is open every day of the week, but not recommended for children under 12.