View of the old synagogue in Aachen after its destruction during Kristallnacht, public domain.
Joel Kontinen
The Jews of Europe were tortured. Their businesses were destroyed, as were their
synagogues. Now, 82 years after Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass, Yad
Vashem is showcasing a new digital exhibition to elaborate on the events that took
place from Nov. 9 to 10, 1938.
The online exhibition entitled, “‘It Came from
Within:’ The November Pogrom (Kristallnacht)” features personal stories,
archives, a Torah scroll, video testimonies and more. The exhibition is
available in English, Hebrew, German and Spanish.
“That night was so aggressive and I want to show that
when people think of Kristallnacht, they think it was only synagogues that were
burning and glass was broken,” Yona Kobo, the curator at Yad Vashem who
created “It Came from Within, said. “They don’t know what happened to the
people.”
In this exhibition, Kobo gathered several stories that
show what exactly happened to individuals during the pogrom.
This marked the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s fought
against the Jews that saw him advancing science to take care of those not fit
for life, and this same Anti-Semitism is still alive today.
Not only did the two-day event have an impact on Jews
across Europe, but the days before and after were just as dangerous. There are
10 interactive pictures to click on, each telling a different story from
Kristallnacht.
“It’s a very important turning because after that, it
wasn’t just anti-Jewish legislation,” Kobo said. “There was a lot of vandalism against the Jews in a very severe way.”
One of the exhibition’s key elements is Lore
Mayerfield Stern’s story about her doll. This wasn’t just a doll, but a symbol
of how she and her mother survived the pogrom in Marburg, Germany.
“She only managed to take her pajamas from her home,”
Kobo said. “The pajama is what the doll is wearing.”
The November Pogrom started with Herschel Grynszpan, a
Jewish teenager living in Paris at the time. He went to the German embassy in
Paris and shot diplomat Ernst vom Rath. The Nazis used the murder as a way to
attack the Jewish communities across Europe. The narrative spread across Europe
that all Jews were responsible and needed to be held accountable.
In a two-day span, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and
deported to various concentration camps. Jewish businesses and synagogues were
destroyed. Roughly 100 people were murdered by the Nazis in the first major mass
incarceration of Jews, and several
committed suicide in the days after.
“They took away their dignity,” Kobo said.
In the days and weeks following Kristallnacht, Jews
began to flee en masse from Germany. Some went to the Netherlands and France,
but ultimately fell victim to the Nazi regime.
Now, in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, Yad
Vashem is seeing an uptick in its website’s traffic. The Holocaust museum
believes it is an opportune time to teach about the events that occurred and
their timeline. And Yad Vashem is getting creative by using the pandemic as a
time to make its collections and exhibitions easily accessible.
We thought nobody would care about it right now, but the numbers are
great,” Kobo said. “People want to see something authentic.”
The biggest lesson of all, though, from the exhibition is to never give up
hope.
“After such a terrible ordeal, you can still get up and continue,” Kobo
said. “We have stories [of people] who managed to leave and build a new life.”
For Kristallnacht’s anniversary this year, March of the Living launched
#lettherebelight, a social media campaign to spread awareness about the night
of terror. They are also inviting people across the globe to keep their lights
on to show solidarity with the Jewish community in memory of those were killed
in the Holocaust.
Source:
Wolkin, Joseph, 2020. Yad Vashem debuts new exhibition on Kristallnacht anniversary. World Israel News. 8 November.
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