• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

  • Home
  • Advertise
    • Advertise in One or All of our Magazines
    • Advertising Payment Form
  • Digital Subscription
    • Subscribe
    • Subscriber Login
  • Print Subscription
  • Contact Us

Kristallnacht Commemoration

This Sunday: “Kristallnacht: Bridge Walk to Remember”

November 3, 2021 by Grace Bennett

Collaborative Effort to Never Forget “Night of Broken Glass”

Two sister organizations devoted to Holocaust education–whose programming promoting tolerance typically take place from opposite sides of the Hudson River–are collaborating to present Kristallnacht: Bridge Walk to Remember, a solidarity walk on the Gov. Mario M Cuomo Bridge to commemorate the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht.

The walk this Sunday, November 7, starting at 9 a.m. is co-sponsored by the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center (HHREC) and the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education.  It is to remember and honor the victims, survivors and rescuers of the Kristallnacht pogroms and the Holocaust.*

“Just as we will be taking in the beauty of the Hudson River, we can also remember back to 1938 when synagogues and storefronts of Jews were broken into and burned down,” said Millie Jasper, executive director of the HHREC in White Plains. The Holocaust Museum recently opened at Rockland Community College. The HHREC is presenting additional Kristallnacht commemorative events; see below.

“Participants may walk some or all of the Gov. Mario Cuomo bridge, however far they wish,” said Jasper, in remembrance of the terrible events which transpired between November 9 and 10 in 1938 on Kristallnacht, oft referred to as ‘Night of Broken Glass’.

As a child of survivors, I plan to walk, too.  My dad, Jacob Breitstein (who passed away at 97 in 2019) survived Auschwitz and the Holocaust but his mother and four siblings were killed.

My father references Kristallnacht in the opening to his unpublished memoir when he comes upon a group of destitute deportees from Germany in his hometown in Lodz.

… “Last week I was a wealthy man in Germany, and this line I’m standing in is a soup kitchen! The Germans came into my store, told me to go outside, put me on a train, and here I am.” I couldn’t comprehend what happened. It must have been Kristallnacht.”

Kristallnacht is notorious for the solidifying of a nation’s descent into total madness and for the continuing downward spiral toward the massive destruction of the Holocaust. But it’s erroneous to think of Kristallnacht as some sole trigger of the Holocaust, explained Steve Goldberg and Julie Scallero, HHREC’s co-directors of education during a discussion about Kristallnacht.

“From Kristallnacht, yes, the Nazi agenda begins to accelerate, and less than a year later, we have World War II,” said Goldberg. “But November 9 was not an arbitrarily selected date, either. The Kaiser abdicates on November 9, 1918, as Germany loses World War I. On November 9, 1923, Hitler’s smaller Nazi party fails to overthrow the government in Munich and Hitler is sent to prison where he writes Mein Kampf, the rantings of a madman, and he is eventually released.”

  “Kristallnacht was thus very calculated,” said Goldberg–revenge against Germany’s losses and Nazi failure. The breaking, burning, beating and murdering took place all over Germany and in Nazi-occupied territories in Austria and Czechoslovakia too.

The deportations in October 1938 “were a foreshadowing, with so many Jews being put on trains, and dropped callously at the Polish border, told to get out,” said Scallero.

One such victim of the deportations sent word to her son in Paris of their family’s urgent plight. Infuriated, Herschel Grynszpan, made his way to the Embassy in Paris, where he shot a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, who soon died. Soon after, Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for the Nazi regime, greenlighted the pogrom carried out by the Sturmanteilung (SA) aka the ‘Brown Shirts.’

To learn more about Kristallnacht, I also visited the HHREC’s well stocked library of Holocaust related literature and borrowed historian Martin Gilbert’s Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (Harper), a compilation of devastating testimonies from dozens of survivors. From the book jacket summary: “In the early hours of November 10, 1938, Nazi storm troopers and Hitler Youth rampaged through Jewish neighborhoods across Germany, leaving behind them a horrifying trail of terror and destruction. More than a thousand synagogues and many thousands of Jewish shops were destroyed. Kristallnacht–the Night of Broken Glass–was a decisive stage in the systematic eradication of a people who traced their origins in Germany to Roman times and was a sinister forewarning of the Holocaust.” 

From Gilbert’s intro, “In 24 hours of violence, 91 Jews were killed. Within those 24 hours, more than 30,000 Jewish men between the ages of 16 and 60–a quarter of all Jewish men in Germany–were arrested and sent to concentration camps. There they were tortured and tormented for several months. More than a 1000 died in these camps.”

And so, we remember.

To mark Kristallnacht, Armonk’s Congregation B’nai Yisrael community and 7th graders who are studying the Holocaust are having a conversation on Wednesday, November 10 via Zoom with Hannah Deutch, member of the HHREC Speakers Bureau. Hannah experienced Kristallnacht as a young child in Germany.

On November 14, the HHREC will present “Holocaust Memory and Racial Healing” via Zoom featuring Susan Neiman, director of the Einstein Forum and author of Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil. Free and open to the public. To register and receive a link, write to sgoldberg@hhrecny.org

*For more information about Kristallnacht: Bridge Walk to Remember, please contact the HHREC, 914.696.0738 mjasper@hhrecny.org www.hhrecny.org, or the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education at 845.574.4099 www.holocauststudies.org. Registration to this walk, which begins on the Westchester side, is limited to 75 participants.

 

This story was first published this week in the EXAMINER NEWS. Special thanks to publisher Adam Stone and editor Martin Wilbur for including it.

Filed Under: Cover Stories Tagged With: Bridge Walk to Remember, Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, Holocaust Museum and Center for Tolerance and Education, Kristallnacht, Kristallnacht Commemoration

Kristallnacht Commemoration Solidarity Walk of Remembrance Planned Across Mario M. Cuomo Bridge

October 27, 2021 by The Inside Press

On Sunday, November 7th 2021 starting at 9 a.m., the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center of Westchester will join with the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education of Rockland to commemorate the 83rd Anniversary of Kristallnacht with a solidarity walk across the Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge to remember and honor the victims, survivors and rescuers of the Kristallnacht pogroms and the Holocaust. For more information, please contact the Holocaust & Human Rights Education Center  914.696.0738 mjasper@hhrecny.org www.hhrecny.org or the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education at 845.574.4099 www.holocauststudies.org. Please call soon for meeting place and for availability: registration to this walk is capped at 75.

Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of the Broken Glass” was a horrific, violent assault launched by the German Nazi government against the Jews on November 9, 1938. Over the course of the two day pogrom, over 30,000 Jews were arrested, 91 Jews were brutally murdered and hundreds more were injured. Kristallnacht foreshadowed the terror and destruction of the Holocaust.

 

 

Filed Under: Happenings Tagged With: Bridge Walk to Remember, Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center, Kristallnacht, Kristallnacht Commemoration, Mario Cuomo Bridge, Solidarity Walk

Primary Sidebar

Please Visit

William Raveis – Armonk
William Raveis – Chappaqua
White Plains Hospital
Houlihan Lawrence – Armonk
Houlihan Lawrence – Briarcliff
Houlihan Lawrence – Chappaqua
NYOMIS – Dr. Andrew Horowitz
Raveis: Lisa Koh and Allison Coviello
Purple Plains
Compass: Miller-Goldenberg Team
Korth & Shannahan
Douglas Elliman: Chappaqua
Roamfurther Athletics
Beecher Flooks Funeral Home
CPW Vein & Aesthetic Center
Compass: Natalia Wixom
Temple Beth El
Pinksky Studio
New Castle Physical Therapy
King Street Creatives

Follow our Social Media

The Inside Press

Our Latest Issues

For a full reading of our current edition, or to obtain a copy or subscription, please contact us.

Inside Armonk Inside Chappaqua and Millwood Inside Pleasantville and Briarcliff Manor

Join Our Mailing List


Search Inside Press

Links

  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • Digital Subscription
  • Print Subscription

Publisher’s Note Regarding Our Valued Sponsors

Inside Press is not responsible for and does not necessarily endorse or not endorse any advertisers, products or resources referenced in either sponsor-driven stories or in advertisements appearing in this publication. The Inside Press shall not be liable to any party as a result of any information, services or resources made available through this publication.The Inside Press is published in good faith and cannot be held responsible for any inaccuracies in advertising or sponsor driven stories that appear in this publication. The views of advertisers and contributors are not necessarily those of the publisher’s.

Opinions and information presented in all Inside Press articles, such as in the arena of health and medicine, strictly reflect the experiences, expertise and/or views of those interviewed, and are not necessarily recommended or endorsed by the Inside Press. Please consult your own doctor for diagnosis and/or treatment.

Footer

Support The Inside Press

Advertising

Print Subscription

Digital Subscription

Categories

Archives

Subscribe

Did you know you can subscribe anytime to our print editions?

Voluntary subscriptions are most welcome, if you've moved outside the area, or a subscription is a great present idea for an elderly parent, for a neighbor who is moving or for your graduating high school student or any college student who may enjoy keeping up with hometown stories.

Subscribe Today

Copyright © 2025 The Inside Press, Inc. · Log in