"Remembering Kristallnacht
(The Night of Broken Glass): 70 Years Later"
A sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
November 9, 2008
ANCIENT & MODERN READINGS:
Our first reading is from the 4th Chapter of the Book of Genesis:
Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let us go out to the field.' And
when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel
and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, 'Where is your brother
Abel?' [Cain] said, 'I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?' And
the LORD said, 'What have you done? Listen; your brother's blood
is crying out to me from the ground!
Our second reading, Kristallnacht: the Night of Broken Glass,
is from the jewishvirtuallibrary.org website:
On the nights of November 9 and 10, rampaging mobs throughout Germany
and the newly acquired territories of Austria and Sudetenland freely
attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places
of work and worship. At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more
injured, more than 1,000 synagogues were burned (and possibly as
many as 2,000), almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries
and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent
to concentration camps. (Mitchell Bard from his book The Complete
Idiot's Guide to World War II. NY: MacMillan, 1998, pp. 59-60).
The official German position on these events, which were clearly
orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels , was that they were spontaneous
outbursts. The Fuehrer, Goebbels reported to Party officials in
Munich, "has decided that such demonstrations are not to be
prepared or organized by the party, but so far as they originate
spontaneously, they are not to be discouraged either." (Conot,
Robert E. Justice At Nuremberg. NY: Harper & Row, 1983:165)
SERMON:
Today we commemorate Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass,
70 years after the events of the night of November 9 in the early
morning hours of November 10, 1938 in Germany. It was on this night,
that years of well groomed intolerance, hatred and fear erupted
into an unmitigated attack on Jewish men women and children, and
their property throughout the Third Reich. Today we commemorate
those events so that they might not be forgotten; so that they might
remind us of real experiences of humanity's inhumanity; so that
we might better know where we have been, so that we will now where
we want to go. Today we commemorate the events of Kristallnacht
through the recollections of those events by some of our own, who
were mere teenagers at the time when glass was broken and worlds
were shattered.
Kurt Gimson is a longtime member of our congregation who moved
from here, not very many years ago, with his wife, Millie, to Pipersville,
PA. His 90th birthday will be two weeks from tomorrow. Today, Kurt
is in the hospital at Doylestown, following a nasty fall he took
just a couple of weeks ago. Please join me in sending loving thoughts
and healing prayers for his quick and full recovery. Those of you
who know Kurt know him to be and absolutely wonderful guy, as well
as a great lover of tennis.
Kurt was raised in the town of Krefeld in northwestern Germany.
That's where he was, as a teenager, on November 9 and 10, 1938,
when he wrote the following journal entry about his experience:
 November
10, 1938: I awoke earlier than usual this morning, got out of bed,
washed up and had some breakfast, which my mother had prepared.
I left the house shortly after 6 AM, while normally I used my bike
to get to my job a little before 7 AM. One of my friends had been
waiting at the street corner for me. He told me that our synagogue
was in flames and our community house and meeting hall had also
been burned down. All remaining Jewish owned stores had been wrecked
and plundered, their windows smashed, the display items thrown all
over the streets. I took my bike and rushed off to the synagogue.
As it was still early and very dark, not many people had come to
watch it burn. The moment I saw the fire my heart stood still. The
tower, the roof and the entire upper part of the once beautiful
building had caved in. The fire had been of tremendous intensity
prior to my coming. It was fed by gasoline which had been poured
into the building sometime in the very early morning. Never in my
life will I forget this picture of the burning ruins of the synagogue
with men of the fire department standing on the street and watching
the building burn, while they held dry fire hoses in their hands
from which no water emerged.
 A
FEW DAYS LATER...I waited several days before I even gave a thought
to take photos of this destruction. I wanted the ashes and the fine
mist that pervaded the air to dissipate to get a clearer view of
the scene. I also realized that I [could] not appear there with
a camera in my hands, as that would definitely be a provocation
for arrest. Therefore I devised a method by which I would try to
get some meaningful views on film. I took an empty shoe box, cut
a hole the same size as the lens of my camera on one small side
of the box, bolted the camera to the floor of the box and cut a
small hole on the long side to admit a cable release which connected
to the shutter. This, of course, made it very awkward to focus on
the subject as I carried the shoebox under my left arm, waist-high
and just guessing with an approximate aim toward the ruins, like
"shooting from the hip." The film was later developed
by a commercial laboratory but no paper prints were ever made in
Germany. I took enough chances so far and could not afford to challenge
my fate any further.
 The
scans, which we are projecting on the screen here, thanks to David
Lewis, Brian Jude Piatkowski and Nick Lewis, were made from the
original photos that Kurt took. The quality of the pictures is pretty
incredible, especially given the challenges. It's rather amazing
that a teenager would have the presence of mind to fashioned himself
a photojournalist and historian. But Kurt was a rather amazing teenager,
I'm sure. You can only too clearly see the burnt out and scorched
windows of his family's synagogue, the missing roof and the sad
destruction that was left in the wake of that horrible night.
How devastating it must have been for young Kurt. But he was not
devastated. Soon after this German pogrom, he escaped to the Netherlands,
established sponsorship in the United States, and emigrated shortly
after. Once in the States, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and went
back to Europe to fight in World War II. Extraordinary times often
call for extraordinary responses.
Another member of our congregation, Renny Freundlich, also lived
in Germany 70 years ago. I had the wonderful opportunity this past
week to sit with Renny in her living room over on College Avenue.
She told me her story. Renny was 16 years old on Kristallnacht.
Her home was in Nuremberg with her mother, Emmi Tuchman, who had
been widowed for a number of years at that time.
Nuremberg was particularly a bad place for Jews, even before Kristallnacht.
Like Munich, it was a major headquarters of the Nazi Party. It was
where Adolf Hitler held bi-annual meetings of the Nazi Party Congress.
At those times, the city would fill with not only party officials
but with truckloads and trainloads of Nazi soldiers. Renny and Emmi
would hide out in their country retreat during those conventions.
Most Jews would do their best to keep off the streets and out of
sight. Still, many Jewish men were taken prisoner long before November
9, 1938.
I asked Renny when did she begin to feel afraid of the Germans?
"Very early," she said. "Very early, I knew that
I had to take care, because, well, you knew you were different."
Renny says that her account of Kristallnacht is really her mother's
story, but I see it as their shared journey. Renny was away at school
in Hamburg on the night it began. Emmi was at home, alone in Nuremberg,
when the mob rushed her apartment. It's difficult, if not impossible,
for many of us to imagine the horror she must have experienced as
they battered down the door and stormed into her life, into her
home. With axes and clubs they totally demolished a beautiful grand
piano and then destroyed all the furniture in the living and dining
rooms, shattering windows, and artwork and woodwork, as they went.
At 4:00 AM, dressed only in her bedclothes, she was thrown out
of her apartment and into the street. She was freezing in the cold
November temperatures. There were no Jewish homes that could offer
her safe harbor. She decided to call on an acquaintance, a woman
named Loisi, whom the family had employed previously as a housekeeper
for many years. She couldn't call Loisi on the phone. And she would
have to take a taxi to get to her house. That wouldn't be easy because
she was in her nightgown with no money. Finally, a cab driver took
pity and gave her a ride. He was paid on the other end of the trip
by Loisi, who then took Emmi into her safekeeping.
In the morning, Emmi called her only daughter Renny in Hamburg
and told her to catch the next train for home, which she did. They
were reunited in Nuremberg. Then, after a couple of days staying
at Loisi's house, they were able to get back into their apartment.
There, they somehow managed to keep house for a short while, by
staying in the bedrooms, which had been surprisingly spared from
the destruction that had taken place on Kristallnacht.
As soon as it could be arranged, Renny boarded a train to Frankfurt,
where she stayed overnight with relatives. Then, like Kurt Gimson,
she escaped Europe via the Netherlands. She remembers that when
she got off the train in Amsterdam, she was greeted by a passing
porter who smiled at her and said, "Shalom." Renny thought
it was something of a miracle to be greeted by a stranger so humanely.
It had been a while since she'd experienced anything like that from
a stranger. After a couple of days in Holland, she was off to England,
where she would stay with relatives for the next year and a half,
before finding sponsors and coming to the States. "We got out,"
she said. "So many did not, especially the Orthodox, did not
get out."
When I asked Renny what concerned her most about the experience
of Kristallnacht itself, she said that she was most concerned with
the safety of her mother. Emmi ended up staying in Nuremburg for
an additional three months after Renny left but, the two of them
were then reunited again in England.
I asked her what she might especially want you all to know about
her experience of that night and the days immediately following
Kristallnacht. She said, "It was just one [individual] experience.
Of greater significance was the a whole life of a Jewish young person.
It was difficult everyday, for a long time. It was a life of isolation."
I had to ask how Renny how she felt about the people who had done
these things to her, and her family and her people. How did she
feel about the Germans? The Germans were my people, though that
went unsaid in our conversation. But still, I had to ask, how did
she feel about the Germans? "Well," she said, "I
didn't like them." Pretty amazing restraint and graciousness,
I think. And we're so glad that Renny is here with us this morn-ing.
Alicia Rehl, another longtime member of our congregation, spent
a significant amount of time in one of the German concentration
camps. But Alicia was a Polish Jew and the war didn't begin in Poland
until 1939, a year later. Her hardships were no less; in fact in
many ways they were even greater. They just didn't happen to coincide
with Kristallnacht. Knowing Alicia as I do, I'm sure she was quite
aware of the events in Germany on that night. She sensed what they
would eventually mean for her and her family. I'm just a sure that
she was determinedly unwilling to allow anyone to compromise her
indefatigable faith in the human spirit. Anyone who knows Alicia
knows that she continues to have such a faith.
There is one more short story that I'd like to share that comes
from the Slezak family. Bill and Rickey Slezak are friends of mine
and to many of us in this congregation, although they are members
of the Orange UU Congregation. Two of their children, Jody and Jonathan,
were members of our youth group here during their high school years.
Rickey's late mother, Hilda Goldsmith (born Hilda Weis), was also
a 16 year old in 1938. When Rickey learned that I was preparing
this service for the anniversary of Kristallnacht, she sent me the
following email:
My mother's Uncle Ludwig (her father's younger brother, whom
she was very fond of) was out in the village when the rioting
began. They lived in a house that had a wall around it and a gate,
and he ran for the house, but the mob caught up with him before
he made it. My mother (who had turned 16 exactly one month earlier)
watched from her window as the crowd "beat my uncle within
an inch of his life." Those words have stayed with me all
these years.
Hilda went on to survive the Holocaust. Ludwig did not. I had the
honor of participating in Hilda's funeral service not many years
ago, up near Armonk, NY.
These are just a few among the thousands, the tens of thousands,
the millions of stories from that night. Here is some of the significance
of these stories for me. Unspeakably horrible things happened to
people, were done to people, who were not just some unknown people.
They were our people. Folks who are here with us, in body or in
spirit right now. Unspeakably horrible things happened to our people,
and by extension to their people. We are all connected with one
another through these stories. These terrible things happened while
others, who are or were also our people, both abroad and here in
the U.S., were either responsible for these unspeakably horrible
things, or stood by and let them happen for far too long. We are
all connected to in these stories.
The significance is that these things should never have happened.
The significance is that there are people in the world today, who
are similarly suffering unspeakably horrible things. We may not
now fully realize that they, too, are our people. But the truth
is that they are. Am I not, are we not, our brother's and sister's
keeper? How can we fail to connect with the stories of old transgressions,
without better coming to know who we are in the world today? How
can the stories not help us to know how we are, or should be, in
the world today?
Rwanda, the Baltics, Israel and Palestine, Darfur - there are too
many places where there have been or are systematic attempts to
destroy the entire cultures of people. It's not much of a stretch
to realize that there are structures all around us here that keep
certain populations of children contained in inner-city schools,
imprisoned in apartment projects, and ghettoized in prison systems
where they learn that they are less than others, different from
what is good, and where their safety is too often forfeited to vandalism,
drugs, gunshots and thuggery.
By remembering Kristallnacht, we realize that we can do much worse.
There are still greater depths to which we could yet sink. But we
don't have to. This past week we elected a new president. Barack
Obama was elected to be the President of the United States with
the hope that we can do so much better than this.
All this week, wherever I've been, I have experienced a renewal
of the spirit of hope in the people around me - hope for a brighter
future, hope for reason and compassion, hope for justice and sustainability,
hope for the redemption of fear and hatred.
Today we are at a new beginning for this country. We have turned
a corner. The future awaits our fulfillment of a promise to do things
better, to get it right, to be the keepers of our brothers and sisters,
to be blessings to one another, and to make sure that no group within
the human family is left out, isolated from the blessings of potential,
the blessings of liberty, and the blessings of justice.
Today we remember what has been; we remember Kristallnacht, so
that those who have endured the hardships of the past might be honored;
so that the rest of us might be more determined to fulfill the promises
of hope that the future holds.
How do we redeem the past? Nobel Laureate, Holocaust survivor and
historian, Elie Wiesel put it this way:
This is the duty of our generation as we enter the twenty-first
century - solidarity with the weak, the persecuted, the lonely,
the sick, and those in despair. It is expressed by the desire to
give a noble and humanizing meaning to a community in which all
members will define themselves not by their own identity but by
that of others.
How do we redeem an event such as Kristallnacht? By not leaving
the task of redemption to others, but by redeeming it ourselves
- individually and collectively.
How do we redeem wrongs that have occurred in the past and is occurring
in the present? By bringing justice to where it has been broken.
By being in the present together. By moving into the future together.
How do we redeem the blood of our brothers and sisters that has
been spilled out onto the ground? By making sure that hope is alive,
and that it is a currency equally shared by all God's children.
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