Equal Human Rights celebrated at Kristallnacht Remembrance in Keene

Update - Kristallnacht and the Berlin Wall (4.00 / 3)

November 9th is "an important date in German history. It marks the day that the Berlin Wall fell, 20 years ago this month, physically and symbolically uniting a dissevered nation.

The reason it's not a national holiday in Germany, is that November 9th - specifically the night of November 9th - also marks a much darker anniversary: Kristallnacht, the so-called "Night of Broken Glass".

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

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by: kdhalloran @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 08:30:25 AM CST

Kristallnacht on YouTube (4.00 / 1)

I don't know how to post this 5 minute film about the appalling act of the NAZIs on KRISTALLNACHT when their nation and the world stood stand in silence has more than 1,500 synagogues were torched and burned along with thousands of private Jewish-owned businesses and tens of thousands of Jews were arrested.

The silence is regarded as the consent that started World War II.

See this 5 minute documentary on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

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by: kdhalloran @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 12:32:30 PM CST

link etc. (0.00 / 0)

Chilling remembrances from friend's parents who lived through it. This is from the History Channel.

"Here is a good documentary from the History Channel on Reichskristallnacht, the night of broken glass. On November 9--10 November 1938, all across Germany Jewish businesses were ransacked, synagogues burned down, Jews sent to concentration camps and murdered. It was the first big anti-Semitic event in Germany before the war started. Here the events leading up to it are chroncled as well. The most hard-hitting quote is when it is said that this marked the end of German Jewry. Very depressing...

I've uploaded it in recognition of the 70th Anniversary of the Kristallnacht."

"Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does." Allen Ginsberg

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by: JonnyBBad @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 19:21:34 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Heard someone speak (4.00 / 1)

About this event recently, sounds like it is a great event.

(edited excessive capitalization)  

Hope > Fear



Create a free Blue Hampshire account and join the conversation.

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by: Mike Hoefer @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 15:53:16 PM CST

Thanks for turning (4.00 / 1)

the volume down.

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by: Dean Barker @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 17:17:43 PM CST

[ Parent ]

What? NEVER !!! (0.00 / 0)

Tell Kathy to think twice the next time she comes after me - again.  It's getting predictable and boring ... and with her stature, she should be above that.

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by: kdhalloran @ Mon Nov 09, 2009 at 22:56:46 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Kathy had nothing to do with it. (4.00 / 4)

On the Internet, putting things in all caps represents shouting. It's rude and we won't have it.  

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by: Laura Clawson @ Tue Nov 10, 2009 at 06:59:28 AM CST

[ Parent ]

stop yelling ... geez (0.00 / 0)

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by: kdhalloran @ Tue Nov 10, 2009 at 12:11:31 PM CST

[ Parent ]

KEENE Remembrance of KRISTALLNACHT "Compelling" (4.00 / 1)

I attended the Kristallnacht Remembrance at the Colonial Theatre on Main Street in Keene - and I was awed not only by the words and chorus and the dance.  It was the people watching - a FULL HOUSE, rapt in attention and silence, still yet trembling in feeling ...

From Today's Keene Sentinel - From the darkness of the wings of the stage, two girls dressed in simple red leotards tiptoed and twirled to a haunting, melodic prayer.

As a chorus joined in and the intensity of the music swelled through The Colonial Theatre, the girls swept across the stage and the audience watched in silent, rapt attention.

The dance depicted a night 71 years ago, when state-sponsored mass violence against Jews by the Third Reich before the Holocaust killed and arrested Jews in Germany, and hundreds of shops, department stores, homes and synagogues were burned or destroyed.

The night, which came to be known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, for the glass that littered the ground after the destruction, was remembered Monday night in the packed Keene theater.

The unexpected absence of the featured speaker, Rabbi Leo Trepp, a 96-year-old survivor of the Holocaust who was scheduled to give a keynote address titled "Tolerance and Its Very Bitter Experience," did not dampen the urgency of his message, nor the call to witness and take action when the community is assaulted by the violations of rights, by governments, by un-fettered majorities (including the Silent Majorities), and criminals ...

... Rabbi Trepp's absence Monday night a reminder to younger generations of the responsibility they have to pass along the stories of survivors when they are no longer able to tell the stories themselves. "In the end, we know we can only convey a part of what the survivor generation knows," Knight said. "But the part we can convey is the part that calls us to responsibility to those who have gone before us, as they pass onto us the responsibility for the world we share with each other."

Passing along survivors' stories keeps them alive and assures that what they suffered won't be forgotten, Knight said.  He also urged members of the audience to fight indifference in their own communities.

"That is especially significant for us as we gather here, in this place, one of eight downtown businesses that were burglarized just several weeks ago during an annual community event," Knight said. "What happened to those eight businesses happened to the entire town.

"It wounded us all, but it can also bind us together stronger than before. It all depends on who we choose to be."

Indeed.  It all depends on who we choose to be.

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by: kdhalloran @ Tue Nov 10, 2009 at 19:46:50 PM CST