6 | NOVEMBER 7 • 2019 

guest column
The Lessons We Learn from Kristallnacht

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T

he night of Nov. 9, 1938, 
marked the beginning 
of one of the most 
horrific anti-Jewish attacks in 
history. Over two days, mobs 
across Germany 
and parts of 
Austria and 
Czechoslovakia 
destroyed syna-
gogues, Jewish-
owned businesses, 
homes, schools 
and cemeteries. 
Under instructions from the 
Gestapo, local authorities did 
nothing to stop the violence and 
destruction. 
When the pogrom was 
over, nearly 100 Jews had 
been murdered and 30,000 
Jewish men had been sent to 
concentration camps. Shards 
of glass from Jewish-owned 

storefronts littered the streets 
of Berlin, Vienna and other 
cities across the three countries, 
giving the attacks the name 
we now remember them by: 
Kristallnacht, or “the night of 
broken glass.
”
Kurt Messerschmidt, a 
Holocaust survivor, recalled 
encountering a crowd of people 
in the aftermath of Kristallnacht 
watching an older man who had 
been ordered by Nazi soldiers to 
clean up the broken glass out-
side his store. Messerschmidt, 
who helped the man, would 
later say, “I’
m sure that some of 
the people standing there dis-
approved of what the Nazis did, 
but their disapproval was only 
silence, and silence is what did 
the harm.
”
Eighty-one years after 
Kristallnacht, we would do well 

to remember Messerschmidt’
s 
poignant words. Silence in the 
face of anti-Semitism — or any 
form of bigotry — can still do 
great harm. And there is much 
hatred in our world about 
which we must not be silent. 
Last year, the Anti-
Defamation League recorded 
“near-historic levels” of anti-Se-
mitic incidents. There were 
1,879 attacks on American Jews 
and Jewish institutions, and the 
number of anti-Semitic assaults 
doubled. We also saw the 
deadliest attack on the Jewish 
community in United States 
history: the mass shooting at 
Pittsburgh’
s Tree of Life syna-
gogue. 
This year has brought more 
heartbreak and terror. In April, 
a shooter at the Chabad of 
Poway in California killed 

congregant Lori Gilbert-Kaye 
and injured others celebrating 
the final day of Passover. Last 
month, anti-Semitic posters 
were plastered to the doors of 
Grand Rapids’
 Temple Emanuel. 
Incidents like this aren’
t just 
happening close to home. On 
Yom Kippur, a gunman in 
Halle, Germany, attempted to 
storm a synagogue, ultimately 
killing two. This followed a 
May warning from Germany’
s 
anti-Semitism commissioner 
to avoid wearing kippahs in 
public after an alarming spike in 
anti-Semitic attacks. 
And all of this happens under 
the specter of an American 
president who poses a clear 
and present threat to the Jewish 
people. It would be horrifying 
enough had President Donald 
Trump only referred to neo-

Rep. Andy 
Levin

D

etroit pride. We often 
see these two words 
associated with our 
local sports teams. While it 
is a nice idea to be proud of 
the skill and 
efforts of the 
Lions, Tigers, 
Red Wings and 
Pistons, I’
ve been 
feeling a whole 
different type 
of Detroit pride 
lately. Pride in our Jewish 
community. 
My time in the Detroit 
Jewish community has been 
short, relatively speaking. My 
husband and I moved here 
nearly 16 years ago. He is from 

Troy and grew up here; but 
these 16 years for me brought 
with them a steep learning 
curve both professionally and 
personally. My parents raised 
me in the Upper Peninsula, 
an experience that included 
many benefits. One benefit it 
didn’
t have was access to an 
organized Jewish community. 
My home synagogue was small 
and important to my own 
growth and development, but 
it had 25 family units living 
within a radius of 100 miles. 
I didn’
t really understand 
what it meant to be part of 
such a well-organized com-
munity until I began, in 
1998, my graduate work at 

the University of Michigan in 
the field of Jewish communal 
service. 
Imagine my shock when 
I learned that working in 
the Jewish community was 
an actual profession. The 
Metropolitan Detroit Jewish 
community was my training 
ground. 
Community lay leaders 
and volunteers gave their 
time and energy to assist in 
my growth as a professional. 
Philanthropists met with me 
to teach me about the art of 
fundraising, how to research 
and establish communal prior-
ities, and they helped to fund 
my education and the educa-
tion of so many professionals.
Numerous Jewish commu-
nal professional leaders from 
many agencies, congregations 
and other organizations served 

as and continue to serve as my 
mentors, close colleagues and 
friends. Detroit pride abounds.
Especially now, as the 
Midwest manager for the 
Shalom Hartman Institute, 
this experience is one that I 
have found to be a unique part 
of being in the community of 
Detroit. Whenever I travel or 
speak in other communities 
about my work and mention 
that I am from Detroit, I often 
get to hear about how lucky I 
am to live and work in such 
a place: a place where Jewish 
communal needs are prior-
itized, a place where a large 
percentage of the population 
participates in Jewish commu-
nal and congregational life, a 
place where dollars are given 
by generous donors on a scale 
of very few other communities 
in North America. Detroit 

Rebecca 
Starr

essay

Detroit Pride 

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