“Crystal Night” is the name that’s been given to the night of 9-10 November 1938. In almost all large German and Austrian cities and some smaller ones that night, store windows of Jewish shops were broken, Jewish houses and apartments were destroyed, more than 1000 synagogues it’s Torah scrolls and prayer books were demolished and set on fire. Many Jews were arrested, some were beaten, and some were even killed. The “Reich Crystal Night” (Reichskristallnacht). My father was taken to Buchenwald, and then released to travel to his family who had succeeded to come to South America, but he ended up in occupied Holland, were destiny made him meet my mother and they then together fled with false documents through Belgium to France until the end of the war in Normandy. Crystal night is very close to me as second generation of survivors, and as third generation of all my maternal family who ended up in the nazi gas chambers. We remembered their memory in Synagogue tonight with the best speech I have heard of a survivor Mr Franz Cohn, who took us back to the horror of Germany 1938. The also performance of an excellent choir of youngsters who sang between others the Barchu of Salomon Rossi, a composer so dear to me, touched me deeply.

We then walked to the 500 meters away Adat Ieshurun Synagogue which has all its furniture rescued from Crystal Night in Hamburg and functions today as one of our orthodox shuls.

As Mr Cohn said in his speech, the nazis didn’t succeed, we are here with our families and with our God, the same God that during 4000 years has kept us as the Jewish people and will continue to do so, in spite of all the hatred the antisemitism continues to spread.

May all the martyrs after the  years that followed Crystal Night and the horror Europe lived in second world war, rest in peace. And may Eretz Israel grow stronger and stronger.