On November 7, 1938, a Jewish teenager, Herschel Grynszpan, fatally shot a German diplomat in Paris. Within three days anti-Jewish violence erupted throughout Germany, initially incited by local Nazi officials, and ultimately sanctioned by the decisions of Hitler and Goebbels at the pinnacle of the Third Reich. As synagogues burned and Jews were beaten in the streets, police stood aside. Men, women, and children—many neighbors of the victims—participated enthusiastically in acts of violence, rituals of humiliation, and looting. By the night of November 10, a nationwide antisemitic pogrom had inflicted massive destruction on synagogues, Jewish schools, and Jewish-owned businesses. During and after this spasm of violence and plunder, 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where hundreds would perish in the following months. So although the Holocaust is history, it’s really not so distant. In fact, some survivors are still alive to tell the tale – memoirists like Dr Edith Eger and Eddie Jaku can still recall the horrors with burning clarity. And with the rising tide of antisemitism and fascism around the world, it feels more pertinent than ever to remember those whose lives were stolen (both physically and mentally), to ensure such hatred never seeps so deeply into society again. It’s easy enough to think that the Holocaust is simply a relic of the past; that it belongs only in history textbooks or in museum displays. Yet, the devastation and destruction it caused lives on today, which is why remembering it is so important. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{

Yes,' she said, 'you're right to ask me that question. What shall I say? Of course, I know about them., but I also know now that I pushed that knowledge away from me. It won't be as bad as it sounds, I thought, and that injustice, I persuaded myself, had to be put on the scales and weighed against Hitler's achievements. Nearly six million unemployed were found jobs. Germany was strong and respected again, the same of Versailles was wiped out. Yes, I looked for the good things and was intentionally blind to the bad. I am sorry, Stella, I wanted so much to believe.” LORE MAY: "There were 500, 600 people - Germans, shouting and singing. There was a lady, I couldn't see her face. They pulled her down the street by her hair." Yes, I did. But will you believe me, Herr Klaar, that I and thousands like me, didn't take all that seriously? After what I saw today I know that I was wrong. But believe me, I thought all that anti-Jewish propaganda was just rabble-rousing, something for that drunken SA mob. I ignored it and thought it unimportant. I felt certain all that would be forgotten once Hitler came to power, that ...'

ERNST BEHM: "The fear was so great that we often didn't have the courage to help our Jewish fellow citizens. Many were helped, more than one might think, but all in secret." The light of kindness and goodness in our heart is ultimately what we must tap into. We do not so much "fight the darkness (of hate and bigotry)" as we illuminate it when we unite our own inner light with the inner light shining in our fellow brothers and sisters” Primo Levi, an Italian chemist, was arrested as a member of the anti-fascist resistance during the war and deported to Auschwitz. His impassioned attempt to understand the 'rationale' behind the concentration camps was completed shortly before his death in 1987. GEORG STEFAN TROLLER: "Things previously frowned upon by the state were suddenly permitted. Anything was allowed. We had become fair game, they could do to us whatever they wanted."

Pogrom November 1938: Testimonies from Kristallnacht, Edited by Ruth Levitt, book review: Night hope was shatteredNARRATOR: Hitler's Reich in the 1930s - the propaganda of the Nazi regime appeals to the German ethnic community, and decides who belongs where, from childhood onwards. Those who don't fit the picture, such as the Jews, are disdained, disenfranchised, persecuted. It begins with the boycotting of Jewish businesses, and leads ever more frequently to violence. The Tobacconist tells a deeply moving story of ordinary lives profoundly affected by the Third Reich. Seventeen-year-old Franz accepts an apprenticeship with elderly tobacconist Otto Trsnyek and is soon supplying the great and good of Vienna with their newspapers and cigarettes. INGE DEUTSCHKRON: "That was the turning point. That was when the Jews in Germany understood they could no longer live in peace as German Jews. That became clear after this night of violence." Told with a fairytale-like lyricism, this is a fable of family and redemption set against the horrors of the Holocaust. A poor woodcutter and his wife lived in a forest. Despite their poverty and the war raging around them, the wife prays that they will be blessed with a child.