Kristallnacht: How Will We Remember?

by Janet R. Kirchheimer
Special To The Jewish Week

This year marks the 71st anniversary of Kristallnacht and, given the age of the survivors, we will not be marking many more anniversaries with them. Kristallnacht is referred to by history, deceptively, almost poetically, as the “night of crystal — 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 Nazi government-sponsored riots on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, in Germany and Austria. Reported numbers vary, but about 270 synagogues were burned, 7,000 businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed, and 100 Jews were killed. Between 26,000 and 30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to concentration camps. My father was one of them.

My father was a 16-year-old

boy living in Niederstetten, Germany, when he was arrested on Nov. 10 and sent to Dachau. He is now almost 88 years old, and I’ve been thinking about how the Holocaust will be remembered, or if it will be remembered at all. And I’ve been thinking about two ways of remembering that Judaism offers.

One is “to tell” our stories. On Pesach we read the Haggadah, which tells the story of our slavery in Egypt and liberation from bondage by God. There are Yom HaShoah services, events to honor survivors, memoirs by survivors, and organizations working to keep the stories alive, among others.

The other way is to “take action.” There is a midrash, a rabbinic commentary, that says when the Jews were freed from Egypt and about to cross the Red Sea, they were afraid to go in, and only one man, Nachshon ben Aminadav, marched into the sea up to his nose. At that point the Sea split, allowing the people to cross. We must be willing to act — right up to our noses, if necessary — when the situation calls for it.

As more and more survivors pass away, it now becomes our responsibility to remember. It is imperative to know about the history of our people. We also have an obligation to remember the victims and to make certain that their stories are not lost. But I don’t believe there are lessons to be learned from the Holocaust, that some people were good while others were evil, and that we can learn life lessons from those who died. Six million are gone. The only lesson I take is to use that knowledge to try and ensure that another Holocaust does not happen again, to anyone, anywhere in the world.

The poet Cornelius Eady says that poets write to navigate their way in the world. I wrote a book, “How to Spot One of Us,” a collection of poems about the Shoah and my family. My writing and teaching has helped me navigate as I encounter and grapple with an evil that is incomprehensible, knowing that I can never fully wrap my head around it. The pain after the loss of most of my extended family has left me with choice — to live with love or to live with anger. I wish there were more, but there isn’t.

In the aftermath of such horrific events, there are no answers to our questions. Most of the time I’m left in that murky, gray space of ambiguity, trying to understand that which cannot be explained. My parents taught me that it’s better to live a life filled with faith in the future, and that the world can be a better place, even though it seems almost absurd after the Shoah.

These past few years, when I talk to my father on Kristallnacht, he tells me it’s hard to believe how many years have passed, and how he’s beginning to forget some of what happened to him then. I tell him not to worry, that the stories aren’t lost. I tell him I will remember.

Janet R. Kirchheimer is a Teaching Fellow at Clal - The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and author of “How to Spot One of Us.”

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