Germany marks 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht

GERMANY marked the 70th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, a prelude to the Holocaust, with solemn ceremonies throughout the country and celebrations of the rebirth of Jewish life in the country yesterday.

Chancellor Angela Merkel and Jewish leaders gathered at Germany’s biggest synagogue to pay tribute to the victims of Kristallnacht on November 9-10, 1938, and to the revival of a Jewish community against all odds.

The leader of the Central Council of Jews, Charlotte Knobloch, said she hoped a reminder of the atrocities would rekindle Germans’ commitment to tolerance in the face of a resurgent far-right.

“It is our responsibility to keep the memories alive,” Knobloch, who witnessed Kristallnacht as a six-year-old in the southern city of Munich, told the congregation of about 1,200 people at Berlin’s Rykestrasse synagogue. “Six million children, women and men must never be degraded to a footnote of history,” she said.

The pogrom, also known as the Night of Broken Glass, saw Nazi thugs plunder Jewish businesses throughout Germany, torch about 300 synagogues and round up close to 30,000 Jewish men for deportation to concentration camps.

Almost 90 Jews were killed in the violence.