On Friday night, Nov 9 (the anniversary of Kristallnacht) we went to an evening program of a local church. Neither of us have any affiliation with this church, nor do we know of anyone who attends this church as it is not near where either of us live, but rather it's near the office. However, it was also noted in the local newspaper in advance, so we went.
The evening started with an overview of the number of children in the Cologne Jewish school before Kristallnacht and then today, and then an introduction of the main speaker whose name is Henry. He started off by telling us that he was born in Cologne and about his early childhood years of playing soccer in the streets of Cologne Ehrenfeld with his friends. However, all of that changed one day when his Catholic friends told him that he could no longer play with them.
On the actual night of Kristallnacht he remembers (the SA or SS, I missed which) came to his house. They threw the family's furniture out the window. He remembers their neighbors just standing there and watching, not saying anything. At this point there was a musical break, and a pianist played something from Bach.
Fortunately, he was sent on a Kindertransport to the UK where he made many friends. At the end of the war, these friends scattered around the globe: to the US, Canada, Israel, etc. His sister was a bit older so she didn't get to go on the transport, and was killed in Auschwitz. Around this part my German started to go downhill, so I missed a bit as to what he did next, beyond stay in the UK. However, he decided to return to Germany 35 years ago, and both D and I missed his reason for coming back then.
Next the Jewish choir from D'dorf sang with piano accompaniment. There were some short readings after that by children in the local school, who went in pairs to read some historical data. Then Henry came back and had a scripted interview with two of the children who asked him such questions as 'do you hate the Germans for what they did?' (the answer was no). Finally, the choir sang again a few songs, but this time in German, with a closing song in in Hebrew or Yiddish, inviting the audience to join in the hand clapping.
The evening closed with the church leader (I think), thanking each group for their contribution to the evening while the audience continued to clap during his two minutes of thank yous. As the crowd filed out, there were two unattended baskets at the exit where people could give money. Having come from the Catholic tradition, there are plenty of baskets for money, but never unattended where I come from. I was further surprised that there were large bills in the unattended baskets, such as 50's. The choir had a bus waiting to ferry them back to D'dorf.
Overall it was an interesting Friday evening. There were perhaps 200 people in the audience, and only 2 people left during the entire evening. We lingered a few additional minutes to read some of the materials they had posted on the walls. They had some local histories of other people who were in this Cologne school and who had also gone on the Kindertransport, and what had happened to them since. Most featured were now living in Israel. They also had some historical info on the school, before/during/after Kristallnacht.
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2 comments:
Wow. Powerful story. Thanks for sharing.
I thought it was ironic that the Berlin wall fell on the 9th of November as well. I had heard of the Kristallnacht, but forgot that the date was also the 9th of November.
gardner--even more ironic--i forgot the berlin wall also fell on that date.
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