'Let there be light:' Temple B'nai Israel commemorates Kristallnacht

LACONIA — Eighty-three years after the “The Night of Broken Glass,” also known as Kristallnacht, Temple B’nai Israel joined in a global campaign to unite in solidarity against antisemitism, racism, hatred, and intolerance by keeping the lights on from sundown to sunup.

A group of temple members and community leaders, including newly re-elected Mayor Andrew Hosmer and City Council Ward 4 member Mark Haynes, gathered on the front steps of the temple on Court Street Tuesday. They gathered to commemorate the events of Nov. 9, 1938, when violent anti-Jewish demonstrations broke out across Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland region of then-Czechoslovakia.

Nazi officials depicted the riots as justified reactions to the assassination of German foreign official Ernst vom Rath, who had been shot two days earlier by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish Jew distraught over the deportation of his family from Germany. Over the next 48 hours, violent mobs, spurred by anti-Semitic sentiments from Nazi officials, destroyed hundreds of synagogues, burning or desecrating Jewish religious artifacts along the way. Acting on orders from Gestapo headquarters, police officers and firefighters did nothing to prevent the destruction. Approximately 7,500 Jewish-owned businesses, homes, and schools were plundered, and 91 Jews were murdered. An additional 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Nazi officials claimed the Jews themselves were to blame for the riots, and a fine of about $400 million was imposed on the German Jewish community.

The Nazis came to call the event Kristallnacht, “Crystal Night” or “The Night of Broken Glass,” referring to the shattered windows littering the streets afterwards. Kristallnacht was a turning point for Third Reich, marking the shift from anti-Semitic rhetoric to violent, aggressive anti-Jewish measures that would culminate with the Holocaust.

The lights were shining from every window inside Temple B’nai Israel during the brief ceremony, which began with a reading of Martin Niemoller’s poem, “The Quotation” by Lois Kessin. Niemoller, a prominent Lutheran pastor in Germany, emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. Barbara Katz, a member of the board of directors, also shared a poem selected by Rabbi Dan Danson by Avraham Shlonsky.

“Let There Be Light” was launched in 2020 by the International March of the Living, an annual educational program, bringing individuals from around the world to Poland and Israel to study the history of the Holocaust and examine the roots of prejudice, intolerance, and hatred.