Cover Story: Prelude To The Holocaust Time To Remember Neo-Nazi in ltrator to help commemorate Kristallnacht in campus forum. SHIRT REVITAL BILIK Special to the Jewish News T he subject of the original cable television movie The Infiltrator will speak Monday, Nov. 8, at a Kristallnacht commemoration in Ann Arbor. A speaker at the annual student- planned Holocaust Conference held last March at University of Michigan, author Yaron Svoray will again detail his attempts to expose the Neo-Nazi movement from within its ranks. Svoray, an Israeli, spent nearly a year undercover as a member of the move- Shiri Revital Bilik of Commerce is a sophomore in the Residential College program at the University of Michigan. She is a political science major. ment. In often life-threatening, always frightening situations, Svoray succeed- ed and went on to capture his experi- ences in print and film. Svoray's book, In Hitler's Shadow, has been translated into 23 languages and was produced as a HBO movie. Despite the danger and his back- ground round as the son of a Holocaust sur- vivor, Svoray, 46, continues heading an effort to expose the movement and its connections to the U.S. The 61st anniversary of Kristallnacht commemorates the coor- dinated attack incited by the Nazis against Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes on Nov. 9-10, 1938. The pogrom was named "The Night of Broken Glass" because of the vast destruction: 267 synagogues destroyed, 7,500 businesses vandalized and, worse, 91 Jews killed all across Germany, according to Saul Friedlander's 1997 book, Nazi Germany and the Jews. Svoray's book and lecture based on it chronicle his yearlong advances in the hierarchy of the German move- ment and the efforts that followed. The book exposes "the real Neo-Nazi movement from down in the trench- es," he said. It allows readers and lis- teners to "learn a most valuable lesson in responsibility and taking a stand when the time is right." Svoray said his recollections are "often humorous, as I recall several of my bigger mistakes and near misses." Senior Celia Alcoff of Pittsburgh, chair of the conference last March, helped bring Svoray back to the U-M campus. It is a rare opportunity that we get to interact with an actual hero — and Yaron Svoray has truly proven himself as one through his courageous actions," she said. "Each year, we try to bring diverse programming to campus in order to promote a broader awareness of the Holocaust and its lessons," said sopho- more Josh Samek of Miami, co-chair of the upcoming 21st U-M Holocaust conference with Shira Revital Bilik. Each year's Holocaust program advances understanding of the Holocaust and its repercussions, but the forum has become more challeng- ing, according to Zvi Gitelman, direc- tor of Judaic studies and a political science professor at U-M. "I feel a ten- sion between the need to know about, remember and think about the Holocaust," said Gitelman, himself a past conference speaker. The professor described the need as perhaps greater as we get farther away " A Different Kind Of Survivor A restored remnant of Kristallnacht is on display, just in time to commemorate the 61st anniversary. SAM ENGLAND Staff Writer n Dearborn's Henry Ford Museum stands an 18th-century European desk, a recent donation. Stately and ornate, the wooden piece doesn't show its 200-plus years — or the scars of certain terrors it's witnessed. "This desk looks perfect, doesn't it?" reads the accompanying label. "It was once in pieces, bro- ken by Hitler's troops in Dusseldorf, Germany, during Kristallnacht (`The Night of Broken Glass') on Nov. 9-10, 1938." The same could be said for the life of Ruth Adler Schnee, who was 15 when the Gestapo stormed into her home, and those of millions of other German Jews, during Kristallnacht. Schnee donated the desk recently, and the museum moved swiftly to display it in time to commemo- rate the night. For Schnee, Kristallnacht marked a turning point for her and her family, who had been bear- ing persecution from the Nazi government for several years leading up to that cataclysmic event. Sitting with her husband, Ed, in their elabo- rately decorated Southfield home, Schnee recalled 11/5 1999 7 n no+rnit_lavuich_Novac a happy childhood in Dusseldorf, then spoke of the radical change as Adolf Hitler took power in Germany. "I have many memories. Actually, I have some wonderful memories. Our lives in Germany were wonderful until 1936, when the Nuremberg laws were established." Kristallnacht came two years later. We were not in the house when our house was destroyed. Neighbors warned us that they (the Gestapo) were on the way," she said of the event. "We just walked the streets all day. Because there was no place — we couldn't come to our friends' house or we would be discovered. At night, we came back to our house and it was a total — all my mother's dishes were in a big heap." Little by little, memories returned to Schnee, as she recounted a kind neighbor who risked severe punishment by bringing tea and cookies to the distraught family. Despite that kindness, the Adlers' lives were bleak and they soon fled their Dusseldorf home. They escaped Germany with the desk — after being forced to pay for its restoration so it would provide no obvious evidence of Kristallnacht — and emigrated to the United States, settling in the Detroit area. Ruth Adler Schnee and the family desk she donated to Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.