Germans commemorate ‘Night of Broken Glass,’ as antisemitism is on the rise again
BERLIN — Across Germany, in schools, city halls, synagogues, churches, and parliament, people came together Thursday to commemorate the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” in which the Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Germany’s main Jewish leader, Josef Schuster, spoke at an anniversary ceremony at a Berlin synagogue that was attacked with firebombs last month.
“Jews have been particularly affected by exclusion for centuries,” Scholz said in his speech.
“Still and again here in our democratic Germany — and that after the breach of civilization committed by Germans in the Shoah,” they are being discriminated against, the chancellor added, referring to the Holocaust by its Hebrew name.
“That is a disgrace,” he added. “It outrages and shames me deeply. Any form of antisemitism poisons our society. We do not tolerate it.”
The commemoration of the pogrom comes at a time when Germany is again seeing a sharp rise in antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, which started with an Oct. 7 Hamas incursion in southern Israel that killed 1,400 people. Israel responded with a relentless bombing campaign in Gaza that has killed thousands of Palestinians.
On Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis killed at least 91 people and vandalized 7,500 Jewish businesses. They also burned more than 1,400 synagogues, according to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of them taken to concentration camps. It was a turning point in the escalating persecution of Jews that eventually led to the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their supporters.