Kristallnacht commemoration a call for remembrance, reflection, resilience

Kati Preston lit a candle in The Colonial Theatre Wednesday, during Keene’s annual Kristallnacht Remembrance event, for the Hungarian woman who saved her from Nazis.

To a full theater, Preston described how 28 members of her family died at Auschwitz, leaving her the only survivor. She asked the audience to continue to stand up for democracy and against Nazism.

“This woman, who was a very simple girl, decided to save a child’s life,” Preston said of the woman who risked her own life to hide her in a barn. “I’m very grateful to her and every year when I come here, I thank her in Hungarian.”

Five other candles were lit in honor of victims of Nazism, children, refugees, targets of hate, and for the community. Candles are lit at the annual ceremony for memory and hope, and as an attempt to symbolically penetrate the darkness and allow for ongoing reflection.

Organized by Keene State College and its Cohen Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the theme of this year’s Kristallnacht Remembrance was “building resiliency through memory.”

Also known as “The Night of Broken Glass,” Kristallnacht was a night on Nov. 9, 1938, when Nazi leadership in Germany, Austria and the German-controlled part of Czechoslovakia used violence against Jewish residents. A total of 267 synagogues were burned or destroyed, 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized or looted and at least 91 Jews were killed, according to the event’s program.

Alec Doyle opened the ceremony by thanking the audience for attending.

“I believe our choosing to gather together tonight in this space holds immense value,” Doyle, The Colonial’s executive director, said. “Our choosing to renew bonds of community carries great power. Choosing to remember together is the ultimate message.”

A moment of silence was held for Stephan Lewy, which preceded a video of Lewy’s life narrated by Col. Everett Spain. Lewy, who was Jewish and born in Germany, was a Holocaust survivor and U.S. Army World War II veteran. He died on Nov. 9, 2021.

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“German boy, persecuted, stateless, Holocaust survivor, American U.S. Army solider, concentration camp liberator, World War II victor and loving son, husband, father and grandfather,” Spain said in the video. “May Stephan’s legacy and example inspire us to always remember, share what has happened and continue to have the courage to serve as an upstander for others.”

During the final speech of the night, Tom White, the Cohen Center’s coordinator of educational outreach, said that Lewy often said hatred begins at the breakfast table, but also that education can stop hatred there as well. He shared how important it was that New Hampshire made it mandatory for public high schools to teach about the Holocaust and genocide.

Gov. Chris Sununu signed the genocide-education bill into law on July 23, 2020. NH Sen. Jay Kahn, D-Keene, was the primary sponsor of the bill’s Senate version.

“New Hampshire recognizes what is at stake, that mass atrocity is not someone else’s problem. We can and must interrupt it,” White said. “Education and history are not divisive concepts.”

The ceremony concluded with a candle recession and a departure in silent remembrance.

“We must be more resilient than those who seek to divide our communities by building upon fear, insecurity, resentment and anxiety,” White wrote in the event’s program. “We must recognize and reject xenophobic nationalism, nativism, white supremacy, racism, the suppression of civil rights and the poisoning of truth that threatens our democratic experiment.”

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Jamie Browder can be reached at 603-352-1234, ext. 1427 or jbrowder@keenesentinel.com

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