Kristallnacht survivor Fred Behrend joins Gov. Jon Corzine on the evening of hope and remembrance.
Photos by Marilyn Silverstein
November 13, 2008
Candles flickered inside the General Assembly chamber in Trenton on the evening of Nov. 10, while outside, State House lights burned into the night in observance of the tragedy of Kristallnacht.
More than 200 Holocaust survivors, students, and state officials, including Gov. Jon Corzine, attended the state’s official commemoration of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht — the dark night of shattered glass in 1938, when the Nazis systematically destroyed Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues in Germany and Austria.
“Kristallnacht is a representation of the worst of the human soul, and one we must never forget,” Corzine said in his brief remarks. “If we do not remember, we are destined to repeat this incredible criminality.
“I am so thrilled that there are so many of you willing to speak to our young people to leave that message as we go forward,” the governor told the assembled survivors. “Those of us who believe in our common humanity must stand up and speak out.”
The two-hour program was coordinated by the NJ Commission on Holocaust Education.
Commission vice chair Rabbi Norman Patz spoke about “the orgy of hatred that was Kristallnacht” as he gave the invocation.
SOMBER COMMEMORATION — Esther Drew, a survivor of Auschwitz, lights a candle to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nov. 9-10, 1938, rampage in Germany and Austria against Jewish people and property that is widely considered the start of the Nazi Holocaust. Among those joining her for the observance at the Alex Aidekman Family Jewish Community Campus in Whippany are Barbara Wind, director of the Holocaust Council of MetroWest, and Rudy Berman, a Kristallnacht survivor and World War II veteran. The ceremony began with personal recollections of the “Night of Broken Glass” by his wife, Carol. It ended with recitation of the Kaddish and renditions of “The Partisans’ Song” and “Hatikva” by Cantor Cathy Barr of Temple Shalom in Succasunna.
Photo by Robert Wiener
Kristallnacht “was a signal of the monstrous events that were about to unfold,” Patz told the gathering. “For us, it must be as real as today’s headlines. It teaches us to remember what must not be forgotten.”
The central voice of the evening was that of 82-year-old Fred Behrend of Voorhees, who gave an eyewitness account of the night of Nov. 9-10 in Cologne, Germany, in “the catastrophic year” of 1938.
Behrend spoke of seeing bands of Nazi stormtroopers dragging Jews out of their homes and businesses and marching them through the city. He evoked images of flames shooting from the roofs of the town’s two synagogues, as piles of burned prayer books and tallitot lay torn and scattered on the streets outside. And he recalled his eventual reunion with his father, who had been taken away that night to a concentration camp.
In February of 1939, he bought his way out of the camp and rejoined his family as they escaped the Holocaust aboard a ship to Cuba.
“I can only tell you this,” Behrend said. “The skeleton that came on board that day in no way resembled my father. He was skin and bones. He barely looked alive. He spoke of the brutal treatment, the beatings, the hangings, and the starvation that were daily occurrences. And all of this was happening in a country that prided itself on being the most civilized, cultured, and enlightened of the 20th century.”
Behrend said he was happy to see so many young people on hand to hear his story.
“When I speak to them, I tell them l’dor v’dor — from generation to generation,” he said. “We must remind the young that the future is in their hands.
“Hatred is a learned behavior,” he said. “Don’t be a follower of bigotry. Be a leader against it. Until hatred and bigotry no longer exist in this world, the meaning of the words ‘Never again’ can never be realized.”
Participants included members of the Jewish War Veterans Post 126 of Cherry Hill, the West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North Choir and Nonette string ensemble, the Anthiel Elementary School Select Chorus of Ewing, the Jersey Sound Chorus of Sweet Adelines International, Cantor David Wisnia of Congregation Ahavath Israel in Ewing, and the Rev. Donald Sullivan Medley of Cadwalader-Asbury United Methodist Church in Trenton.
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