LOOKING BACK
German citizens stand outside
store windows shattered on
Kristallnacht.
A Night Burned In History
Fifty years ago this week, the Nazis destroyed 750
businesses, 200 synagogues and numerous homes on a
fateful rampage known as Kristallnacht
ANDREA JOLLES
Special to The Jewish News
I
woke up and the whole room was
light — like sunshine. It must
have been 10 or 11 at night. My
mother was sitting on my bed and
the bed was shaking because my
mother was shaking.
"I asked her, 'Why is it so light?'
She told me, 'Don't go to the windows.
The synagogue is -burning! "
It was Nov. 9, 1938 — Kristall-
nacht, the night of shattered glass —
a moment in history vividly im-
printed on the memories of those who
experienced it.
So sharp is that memory that, 50
years later, witnesses like Hannah
Deutch, then a 16-year-old in
Bochrum, Germany, can recall the
unearthly light of the burning
synagogue.
Deutch's home, where she lived
with her widowed mother, aunt and
grandmother, was across the street
from the back of the synagogue.
"We got a call during the night
from my mother's fiance that the
Nazis were breaking up the Jewish
stores," Deutch said.
"Someone told him to disappear,
that it was unsafe for Jewish men. He
went to stay with a friend who had a
non-Jewish husband!"
The following day, Deutch saw an
open van going from house to house
picking up Jewish men.
"That bus filled with Jewish men
is still in front of my eyes," she said.
Three days later, the Gestapo call-
ed Deutch's family urging that her
mother's fiance give himself up. He
did, and spent two months in a con-
centration camp.
In February 1939, Deutch left
Germany for England aboard a
children's transport. Shortly after, her
mother married and moved to Chile.
Her grandmother, aunt and her
aunt's baby were sent to Riga and
from there to Theresienstadt where
they perished.
Two hundred synagogues, 7,500
businesses and innumerable homes
were leveled and looted on Kristall-
nacht. Disarray set in where lives
once had been orderly and predic-
table. The following day, Jewish men
were rounded up, imprisoned and
transported to concentration camps.
Walter Keats, then living in Vien-
na, was one of those men.
With no job, the 24-year-old Keats
and his parents lived off savings, a
small stipend from his former bosses
and a soup kitchen run by the Joint
Distribution committee.
Keats will never forget the night
of Nov. 9, 1938.
"Underneath the apartment
Remember The Anguish
ELIZABETH KAPLAN
Staff Writer
T
he dark will be filled with
light on Nov. 9, the 50th
anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Congregations and Jewish com-
munal agencies in the Detroit area,
and throughout the United States,
will leave their lights on from dusk
to dawn to commemorate the in-
famous "Night of the Broken Glass,"
when Nazis destroyed Jewish homes
and businesses all over Germany.
B'nai B'rith and the Jewish
Community Council are sponsoring
the communitywide program.
The JCCouncil also will host
"Kristallnacht: The Price of Silence,"
at 8 p.m. Thursday at the United
Hebrew Schools, featuring David
Wyman, author of The Abandon-
ment of the Jews.
Six witnesses will share
memories of Kristallnacht, and a
candle-lighting ceremony and com-
munity Kaddish will be held.
Also participating in the event
are Cantor Harold Orbach of Temple
Israel, Rabbi Morton Yolkut of Con-
gregation B'nai Israel and Cantor
Larry Vieder of Adat Shalom
Synagogue.
Several local congregations also
will be holding events to com-
memorate Kristallacht.
Temple
Israel
and
the Michigan Psychoanalytic Foun-
dation will co-sponsor "A Remem-
brance of Kristallnacht: 50 years," at
8 p.m. Wednesday at the temple.
The guest speaker will be Peter
Lowenberg, a psychoanalyst and pro-
fessor in the department of history
at the University of California at Los
Angeles.
Lowenberg's topic will be "The
Kristallnacht as a Public Degrada-
tion Ritual."
Dr. Melvin Bornstein of the
Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute
will serve as moderator for the event,
which also will feature Dr. Henry
Krystal of the Michigan
Psychoanalytic Institute and Cantor
Orbach.
Young Israel of Southfield will
hold a service at 11 a.m. Nov. 6 at the
synagogue.
During the ceremony, a member
of Young Israel of Southfield will
discuss his memories of
Kristallnacht and a burial service
will be held for a Torah.
The Torah was stolen by Poles
during World War II and subsequent-
ly damaged during the war.
After the war, a Polish man stop-
ped a Jewish couple on the street and
gave her the Torah.
The woman later settled in
Detroit, bringing the Torah with her.
And the Rev. James Lyons of the
Ecumenical Institute for Jewish-
Christian Studies is urging Chris-
tians to join in the commemoration
of the 50th anniversary of
Kristallnacht.
The Rev. Lyons is asking Chris-
tian communal agencies and
religious institutions to leave their
lights on all night Thursday and to
discuss Kristallnacht from the
pulpit.
The United Jewish Appeal,
which was created as a direct reac-
tion to Kristallnacht, is asking in-
dividuals and Jewish organizations
nationwide to light a yahrzeit candle
Wednesday to commemorate the
"Night of the Broken Glass."
❑
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
57