JANUARY 12 • 2023 | 31

we traveled to and toured the
memorial and museum at the
former concentration camp
Sachsenhausen. This is the
very concentration camp to
which Jews were sent following
Kristallnacht. Almost 6,000 Jews
arrived in Sachsenhausen in the
days following the Kristallnacht
riots.
Our group welcomed Kabbalat
Shabbat at the New Synagogue
in Berlin. Prior to the evening
service, we sat down to a conver-
sation with a synagogue member
to learn how the community is
involved in helping refugees from
the ongoing war in Ukraine. At
the service itself, it was striking
how many of the congregants
were young mothers and children
from Ukraine. At the dinner fol-
lowing the service, I was struck
by the children. They reminded
me of myself and my brother
when we were refugees from
Russia. Like us, these children’s
favorite condiment was ketchup.
One of the most striking days
of the trip for me was our group’s
visit to Halberstadt, one of the
places in Germany that had been
home to a large and important
Jewish community for centuries.
Jewish roots in Halberstadt date
back to the 1200s. In Halberstadt,
there are three Jewish cemeteries,
two of which our group visited.
Today in Halberstadt, there is
the Berend Lehmann Museum for
Jewish History and Culture. The
museum is named after Berend
Lehmann who was “one of the
most important court Jews of
his time.” Among other contri-
butions, Lehmann financed the
building of the Klaus synagogue
in Halberstadt as a teaching house
as well as the first printing of the
Babylonian Talmud in Germany.
On Kristallnacht, this syna-
gogue, too, was ransacked, and the
Torah scrolls burned. However,
because the synagogue was
surrounded by other buildings,
it was not burned. Instead, on

Nov. 18, 1938, the local Building
Department ordered the manual
demolition of the synagogue and
billed the work to the Halberstadt
Jewish community.
This city, once home to one of
the largest Jewish populations in
central Europe, today has barely
a half-dozen Jewish residents and
no living Jewish spaces, just muse-
ums to what once was.
Being here was a gut punch.
The absence of Jews and the
museums essentially to a lost
civilization are the world Hitler
sought in his final solution.
Prior to the trip, I picked
up Anne Frank The Diary of a
Young Girl at The Book Beat in
Oak Park. It was my first time
reading the harrowing first-
person account of the Holocaust.
I brought the book with me to
Berlin and finished it on the trip.
I did not realize just how
compulsory Anne’s account would
be to my experience in Germany
and to my own appreciation
of being alive and free to be as
authentic and public in my Jewish
identity and practice as I choose
to be.
I especially connected to a
passage where Anne compares
her own situation in hiding to that
of a Jewish school friend lacking
the safety temporarily afforded
to Anne. Anne writes, “Oh, God,
that I should have all I could wish
for and that she should be seized
by such a terrible fate. I am not
more virtuous than she; she, too,
wanted to do what was right, why
should I be chosen to live and she
probably to die? What was the
difference between us? Why are
we so far from each other now?”
There are no obvious answers.
The trip to Germany reinforced
my gratitude to be Jewish and
alive. And implored me to do as
much good as I can in my brief
time.

Yevgeniya Gazman lives in Farmington.

Statues outside the
Cemetery of the
Jewish Community
of Berlin

The group stands
in a circle during a
tour of synagogue
remains in
Halberstadt.
continued on page 32