H eadlines
Kristallnacht Event Encourages Jews to Remember
L OCA L
JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF
BETWEEN THE STATUE
honoring the 6 million Jewish
martyrs of the Holocaust and
the museum-like pillars juxta-
posing the totalitarian Nazi
Germany regime with the
democratic United States, the
Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust
Memorial Plaza stands as a
Center City monument to
historical memory.

And on Nov. 9, the 83rd
anniversary of Kristallnacht,
the Nazi pogrom that ended
with the party sending 30,000
Jews to concentration camps,
starting the Holocaust in
earnest, the plaza lived up to
that vital role.

The Philadelphia Holocaust
Remembrance Foundation,
which operates the Benjamin
Franklin Parkway space, hosted
“Reflection and Resilience,”
an event remembering the
infamous “Night of Broken
Glass,” in which Nazi paramil-
itary forces and German
civilians smashed thousands
of Jewish homes, businesses,
hospitals and schools.

The party’s official reason for
the atrocity, which killed more
than 90 Jews, was the assas-
sination of German diplomat
Ernst vom Rath in Paris by a
Jew, Herschel Grynszpan.

At “Reflection and Resilience,”
Sophie Don, the senior manager
of the Remembrance Foundation,
opened with a speech explaining
why remembering Kristallnacht
is essential.

Then, Jessi Roemer, the
cantor at the Society Hill
Synagogue in Philly, and
Sophie Don, the manager of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, hosted the Kristallnacht
commemoration event.

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Veronica Jurkiewicz, a local
musician, performed a series of
songs, including the Mourner’s
Kaddish. In between rendi-
tions, Molly Wernick, a South
Philadelphia-based activist and
educator, read a poem about the
importance of remembering.

About 50 local Jews gathered
in the plaza for its first-ever
Kristallnacht event.

The statue was unveiled
in 1964 as the first Holocaust
memorial in the United States.

The space expanded into a
plaza in 2018.

“It’s really important to
remember today,” said Eszter
Kutas, the executive director of
the Remembrance Foundation,
of Kristallnacht. “We’re experi-
encing historical highs in the
United States of antisemitism
in the past five years.”
After opening, the plaza was
only used for Yom HaShoah
events each spring. Otherwise,
it was an open space in which
locals could visit, observe the
statue and read the pillars.

Don explained that in 2018
and 2019 the foundation was
figuring out its role. Then
the pandemic happened,
postponing additional
gatherings. But in September 2020, with
society reopening, the founda-
tion hosted an event called
“Stand Against Bigotry,” at
which city council members
spoke about building bridges
across communities.

And once the calendar flipped
to 2021, Don and Kutas started
putting together a full schedule.

The School District of
Philadelphia and other local
districts have brought middle
and high school students. In
May, the foundation held a book
giveaway to remember the 1933
Nazi book burnings. Finally, in
November, it hosted the remem-
brance night for Kristallnacht,
the pogrom that Kutas described
as “the beginning of the end” for
Jews in Germany.

She deliberately used
that description, she said.

According to Kutas, it’s essen-
tial to remember more than
just the Holocaust and the
concentration camps.

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