This year’s community-wide Kristallnacht commemoration will take place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, at Congregation Ohev Sholom. It will feature a panel of Holocaust survivors who will share their recollections as witnesses to the events of Kristallnacht. The panel consists of Esther Bergh,Tom Lewinsohn, Erwin Stern and Peter Newman. Complimentary reservations are available by calling 913-327-8196 or emailing .
This Kristallnacht commemoration marks 80 years since the Nazi SS and other national police agencies in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland carried out a series of violent, state-sponsored, anti-Jewish pogroms devised by Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minster of public enlightenment and propaganda.
These events of Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, designed to appear spontaneous, came to be known as Kristallnacht (commonly translated as “Night of Broken Glass”) a reference to the broken windows of synagogues, Jewish-owned stores, community centers and homes destroyed and plundered by the rioters.
In all, 267 synagogues were burned or destroyed, 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized or looted, at least 91 Jewish people were killed and approximately 30,000 Jewish men were imprisoned in concentration camps. Rioters also damaged Jewish cemeteries, hospitals and schools while police and fire brigades stood aside, under orders to intervene only if the fires threatened non-Jewish property.
Kristallnacht ended the illusion that normal Jewish life under the Nazis was still possible. It also marked a turning point in Nazi anti-Jewish policy that would culminate in the Holocaust — the systematic, state-sponsored mass