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