Last night we went with three friends to the local Jewish Temple, and these are my images of the evening. They were remembering the 71st anniversary of kristallnacht (night of broken glass). This took place in Germany on November ninth and tenth. The Nazis conducted a massive, coordinated attack on Jews who were their own countrymen. Thousands of Jewish houses, places of worship, and businesses had all their glass smashed or were burned. All of the streets were so covered with glass that it looked like the aftermath of an ice storm. Jews were beaten and murdered. Over 25,000 Jewish men were rounded up and taken to concentration camps. The Nazis hatred of the Jews led them to destroy their own city of Munich. This was one of the darkest moments in the history of mankind. So a moment of remembrance on my blog for the ones you can identify by the pain in their eyes. The ones whose very DNA is interwoven with strands of pain. "All who rage against you will surely be ashamed and disgraced...Those who wage war against you will be as nothing at all...For I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and it's people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people; the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more." Isaiah 41 and 65
2 comments:
I have never heard this before, thanks for sharing it. I will never understand until the day I die, why people can be so cruel to other people
Thank you so much for sharing this with me, Ginny. As you can imagine, Kristallnacht and every other aspect of the Holocaust have loomed large in my life. Working with survivors has galvanized me, and made me who I am. It's driven my righteous-journalist's soul, and has helped shape my writer's voice, my desire to use my gift to repair the world.
There's a core Jewish goal that we call Tikkun Olam - repair the world - and we teach it to our children and build our communities around it. We hope that this allows us to counter the evils that persist around us - the same ones that can easily result in another Holocaust if we let our guard down for even a brief moment.
As long as we have good souls like you to shed light on these things that matter so much, there is hope.
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