KRISTALLNACHT

The night of November 9th / 10th, known as  kristallnacht  ( the night of the broken glass) is the anniversary of  one of the most  terrible and horrifying  events that led to the   intensifying of Nazi pogroms against Jews and the ‘final solution’ of the Holocaust.

In one night  over 1600 synagogues were ransacked and torn apart and 267 were burnt to the ground. Jewish homes and businesses in Germany and Austria were destroyed  and broken glass from shattered windows littered the streets.

Thirty thousand Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps, amongst them, my grandfather.

There is no shortage of  terrifying and heart rending  stories – many of which  almost defy belief  - about  the suffering that Jews went through and the  sacrifices they made to help each other and retain their own sense of humanity.

 

And there are stories of people who survived the Nazi hell and  took their horrifying experiences and used them to ensure that others would not have to suffer the  feeling of being without family or home – like Hanna Bar Yesha below.

 

 

The story told below ( which you may have seen as it went viral on the internet this month) is slightly different as  Alice Sommer Herz was a concert pianist and this saved her life when  she was chosen to be in the camp orchestra in Theresienstadt.   Theresienstadt  was  a ‘so-called’ model  concentration camp that the Germans built to  try and convince the world that  all their concentration camps were as  humane and holiday-camp like as this one . Here the  starving inmates, under threat of immediate extermination,  had to play   music, sing in choirs and perform plays to show how cultured and fun their life was. 

Her love of life and appreciation of everything she has is an inspiration to us all. She bears no hatred for  anyone which could be the reason that at 106, apart from being the oldest Holocaust survivor, she also still plays her beloved piano regularly and entertains her many friends every day in her flat. Her ‘simchat chaim’  joy of life on a daily basis is an inspiration to us all.

UNFORTUNATELY THE 12 MINUTE VIDEO IN WHICH ALICE DESCRIBES HER LIFE IN THE CAMP,  HER MUSIC AND HER LIFE NOW   HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE INTERNET SINCE THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN.

I HOPE YOU MANAGED TO SEE IT SOMEWHERE IT WAS TRULY INSPIRING .

 

In a post several months ago I told  of another  story that took place in Theresienstadt , the  setting up of a  beautifully decorated, hidden synagogue.

The descendents of Asher Berlinger  who risked his life to build and decorate this shul are still looking for anyone who actually  saw this shul while they were in the camp during the war.

Thank G’d my parents and both sets of grandparents  escaped from Germany and, compared to so many others, did not suffer  torments at the hands of the Nazis. The Holocaust  was rarely mentioned in our home when I was a child, as far as I can remember, and it was only as a teenager that I started to think about it.

Nevertheless, in some way I still think of myself as a 2nd generation survivor with an obligation to ensure that our children and grandchildren  don’t just think of this as another part of  Jewish history.

The reverberations of the Holocaust are still with us. Holocaust denial is an accepted contagious  disease  spreading throughout the Western world and neo-Nazism  and anti-Semitism, in  many forms and disguises, are  getting stronger every day.

We’d be blind  fools to think it couldn’t happen again.