Monday, November 12, 2018

KRISTALLNACHT ‘The Night of Broken Glass’ By Ari Fuld - 3 Kislev 5779 – November 10, 2018

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Yehuda Lave, Spiritual Advisor and Counselor

Forgiving People but never forgetting

If someone has wronged you and then shows sincere regret and asks for forgiveness, what should you do?

Go out of your way to do positive things for him that will express your love and concern for him. In this way, you are encouraging him for realizing his mistake and doing the right thing to correct it.

We can never forgive nor forget the history of Europe. This blog is dedicated to Kristallnacht and its history. The 80th year anniversary was on Friday. I married a girl from the Czech Republic and while I never thought about Europe much before, the history of the Jewish people for the last 2000 years was in Europe and Africa after we were thrown out of Israel, 2000 years ago.

In order to visit her parents, I look for cheap flights from Israel, and Wizz airlines is having sales as cheap as  200 scheckels ($50) round trip if you go in February when it is cold and even in August when it is warm if you pick the date to Warsaw for 400 schecks ($100). I like discovering at these prices so in Febrary I am going to Budapest and Germany and in August to Warsaw and Slovika. I will report on my adventures.

In the meantime, think about Kristallnacht and why the country of Israel is so important to us today.

 

Love Yehuda Lave

 

 

 

KRISTALLNACHT 'The Night of Broken Glass' By Ari Fuld - 3 Kislev 5779 – November 10, 2018

This article was originally written by Ari Fuld HY"D in 2017. We present it again on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

I remember growing up and wondering why my grandmother would jump and go pale every-time a glass broke in the house. At the time I did not understand.

Today? I understand it was not only about the broken glass.

Between November 9-10 in 1938, German para-military forces as well as German citizens carried out a hideous pogrom against the Jewish population in Germany and the world was silent.

Don't ask me where was God in the Holocaust, where was man?! Where were those voices that we hear today as the world condemns Israel time and time again as Jews build in our ancestral land?

Jewish men, women and children were murdered in the streets, over 1,000 Synagogues burned and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed and vandalized and the world was silent!

Where was the outrage that we hear today as the UN condemns Israel more than it does any other country in the world COMBINED?!

Being Jewish loyal citizens of Germany did not help when Jewish homes, hospitals, and schools were ransacked, as the attackers demolished buildings with sledgehammers. And the world was silent!

Where were the demonstrations against the murder of Jews? You know the same type of demonstrations we see fill the streets in Europe when Israel retaliates against rocket fire and the constant attempt to murder Jews and destroy Israel!

They kicked us out of their universities, their Parliaments, their Medical schools, their courts and their businesses and the world was silent!

Where were the boycotts like we see today with people who claim to care for human rights as they boycott JEWISH businesses in Judea and Samaria?

30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated and sent to concentration camps, and the world was silent!

No one came to our defense. You shut your doors and you turned your face away in order not to see or hear as our people screamed or grasped for air as the gas was released.

My grandmother did not jump because the sound of glass startled her, she jumped because she knew there was nothing she could do and there was no one around the world who was speaking up for her or would come to protect or defend her. She was helpless.

Today, I also Jump.

It's a different kind of jump though.

When danger comes towards us as a people and when the they come with knives, bombs, rockets and suicide bombs to murder us, I jump. I jump with tens of thousands of others who will do whatever has to be done to make sure our synagogues, schools, businesses and STATE will not be destroyed or ransacked. We jump into uniform.

A uniform that says ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCE.

As much as we want to work with the world, we will not will wait for them to save us. We will no longer hope they will blow up the death tracks that lead our people to be gassed and burned. We will no longer wait for the world to decide it makes diplomatic sense to get involved only after a million and a half of our children were gassed burned and shot.

We are not looking for wars nor are we looking to kill, but let there be no mistake, the days of jumping out of despair are over.

The Nazis tried to destroy us, all of us and you all stayed silent.

Today, my family lives in the the State of Israel as proud religious Jews. WE WIN!

Our strong religious beliefs are no longer under the pity of the world. We will no longer beg to be proud Jews.

We will defend our right to be Jewish!

So dear world, we understand your need to be diplomatic, but when it comes to our survival and fighting those who seek our destruction, we will pass. The sledgehammers that smashed the windows of 1,000 synagogues were made out of your diplomacy. Your diplomacy allowed the trains to carry millions of us to our deaths.

So with all due respect, or whatever is left of it, if you choose to condemn us for doing what you did not do 78 years ago to keep us from getting killed, please do not get upset if we say, we simply do not care.

נצח ישראל לא ישקר

Merkel on Kristallnacht: 'We Are Living Once Again in a Time of Far-Reaching Change' By Hana Levi Julian - 3 Kislev 5779 – November 10, 2018 0

Eight decades after Kristallnacht, or the "Night of the Broken Glass," German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned about modern-day racism.

"Today, we are living once again in a time of far-reaching change," she said at a Berlin synagogue. "In such times, there is always a particularly great danger of those who react with supposedly simple answers gaining support."

 

"We are commemorating today with the promise that we will set ourselves strongly against attacks on our open and plural society," she said. "We are commemorating in the knowledge that watching as lines are crossed and crimes are committed ultimately means going along with them."

Merkel, dressed in black, noted that "Jewish life is blossoming again in Germany — an unexpected gift to us after the Shoah. But we are also witnessing a worrying anti-Semitism that threatens Jewish life in our country."

On Nov. 9, 1938, Jews were terrorized in Germany and Austria as hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses were burned down. At least 91 people were murdered — some dragged by their beards into the street — and approximately 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and deported to concentration camps.

On Thursday, the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum in Jerusalem held a memorial service and seminar to commemorate Kristallnacht. In attendance was Germany's Ambassador to Israel Susanne Wasum-Rainer.

80th Anniversary Of Kristallnacht

Last Friday, November 9, marks the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht. To commemorate this tragic date – the beginning of European Jewry's destruction – The Jewish Press asked six German Jews what they remember of that night and the following morning.

The whole shul [in Frankfurt] was up in flames. Not only that, across the shul was a nice park, Friedberger Anlage, that had four or five trees. To each tree, [the Nazis] tied up a man to watch the fire. That was their fun – that the Jews should watch. I passed by and saw it all.

[The Nazis] arrested all the men, including my father [Rav Joseph Breuer]. They took them into a big hall in Frankfurt, but he had so much mazal. They were all put in rows and whoever was over 59 could go home. When they asked my father, "How old are you?" he said, "Fifty-seven," but the man questioning him was a guard in the yeshiva [who knew him], so he said, "No, you're 60, go home." That saved him.

— Edith Silverman, born 1919, lived in Frankfurt, Germany

 

* * * * *

 

My family hid me. They were afraid the Hitler Youth or the Nazis would drag me out. We ended up hiding in the attic when they broke into our house. They sacked it. My father had an old safe they tried breaking into, but they couldn't.

We were saved by a gentile neighbor whom my parents were friendly with. He took us out of the house and we ended up taking a train to Frankfurt that night. We shared an apartment with another family when we got there.

I have vivid memories of big bonfires near our apartment in Frankfurt where they burned siddurim and Chumashim. Maybe it was even the same night.

— Kurt Simon, born 1931, lived in Munster, Germany

 

* * * * *

 

I was just 14 and a half when, on that fateful November morning, I made my way to school [in Mannheim], at the synagogue premises. Smoke hung in the air and – as I got near – I saw it all. The [firefighters] allowed the flames to consume the synagogue and used their water to cool neighboring non-Jewish property to prevent it from being damaged. Onlookers seemed to enjoy the sight.

My father had already been deported a few days earlier and I was only spared because I was not at home. After contacting my mother [back] in Karlsruhe, I left to travel home on the 3:22 afternoon diesel train. I have difficulty remembering yesterday's events, but that day and time is indelibly etched on my mind.

It's worth mentioning that in my hometown the walls of one of the burned out synagogues constituted a danger to the public and, to add insult to injury, the Jewish community had to pay the costs of the demolition.

— Walter Bingham, born 1924, lived in Karlsruhe, Germany

 

* * * * *

 

My cousin and I went to the shul the morning of November 10, and all the Sefer Torahs were lying on the floor. One of them happened to belong to my grandfather, so we took it home, and brought it to New York two years later. In 1941, I leined out of it here in New York, and 70 years later my grandson leined out of it.

I lived in a house that belonged to a non-Jew, so the Nazis didn't touch it. But they smashed my uncle's matzah factory. All the [non-Jews] in the factory were crying because it was their parnasah. They told them, "Don't touch the factory," but they didn't listen.

In the morning, policemen came and picked up my father, and a few hours later they came back and picked up my 18-year-old brother. It was terrible. We had no idea where they took them. A few days later we got a card: Send them money in Buchenwald. We sent money, which of course they never got. The Nazis took it away. My father was in Buchenwald five weeks; my brother, eight weeks.

— Henry Rosenberg, born 1928, lived in Momberg, Germany

 

* * * * *

 

On November 10, 1939, I took the train into Kassel where I was learning how to sew from a seamstress. In the town square I saw the remains of burned sif-rei Torah. I grew even more frightened when I saw many men marching with shovels and singing lustily. "Wenn das Judenblut vom Messer spritzt ist Alles wieder gut! – When Jewish blood splatters from the knife, all will be well!"

With my heart pounding in terror, I turned around and fled, taking the next train home. On the train ride home, I saw girls whom I sat on the same bench with in school. I didn't know what to say to them! I just passed them and ran all the way home. You can never explain the feeling. It was terrible!

Our home was no longer safe either. Right after Kristallnacht, German thugs came to burn down our house since they thought it was owned by Jews. The new owner of the house – as we had sold our home the previous week – came charging out with an ax in his hand roaring that he owned the house, saving his home as well as our lives.

— Edith Cohnen, born 1924, lived in Binsfuerth, Germany

 

* * * * *

 

Everything was on fire. You could hear the smashing. Every store in the section of Frankfurt we lived in was Jewish. The next morning, there was broken glass all over and the synagogues were burnt.

I remember seven men in uniform came into our apartment and said, "Any male person has to report right away to the police station." My father went and didn't come back. Nobody knew what was going on. It turned out that they were transported to Buchenwald. My father was there for three months.

When I came to school the next morning, only half my class was there because anybody who wasn't born in Germany – even if one of your parents wasn't born in Germany – was shipped out of the country overnight.

— Ruth Greenwald, born circa 1931, lived in Frankfurt, Germany

Tel Aviv Lights Up to Celebrate 100 Years of Polish Independence By Hana Levi Julian - 3 Kislev 5779 – November 10, 2018

The municipal building in Tel Aviv lit up Saturday night in the red and white colors of the flag of Poland, in order to honor the country's 100th anniversary of its regaining its independence from partition by Russia, Germany and Austria.

View image on Twitterשגרירות פולין✔@PLinIsrael

In 1795, partitioned by neighboring empires, Poland disappeared from the map of Europe. Its citizens finally regained their long-awaited freedom in 1918, after 123 years of occupation and partitioning by Prussia, Austria and Russia.

On November 11, 2018, Poland celebrates its centenary of independence, with nations around the world showing their solidarity in various ways to celebrate along with her.

See you tomorrow

Love Yehdua Lave

Rabbi Yehuda Lave

2850 Womble Road, Suite 100-619, San Diego
United States

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