Chris Friedrichs

Reflections on Shoah

For 20 years, on the afternoon of Yom Kippur, Prof. Chris Friedrichs delivered a lecture to the congregants of Temple Sholom on the subject of the Holocaust. It started in 2004, when Rabbi Philip Bregman, now rabbi emeritus of the shul, asked Friedrichs to speak on the most solemn day in the liturgical calendar. The rabbi asked him to reprise the lecture the following year, and it became an annual event.

After the 2014 passing of Friedrichs’ wife, Dr. Rhoda Lange Friedrichs, like her husband an historian, Rabbi Dan Moskovitz announced that the presentation would be known as the Rhoda Friedrichs Memorial Lecture.

Two decades of Prof. Chris Friedrichs’ Yom Kippur lectures at Temple Sholom have been compiled into a book, Reflections on the Shoah. (photo from Chris Friedrichs)

Friedrichs, now professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia, decided to end the tradition after 20 years and his friend and UBC colleague, Prof. Richard Menkis, suggested the idea of compiling the lectures in a book.

The volume, Reflections on the Shoah: Yom Kippur Sermons Given at Temple Sholom 2004-2023 is a small but irreplaceable volume offering deep and original insights on the lessons of history from a leading thinker on these subjects.

In these lectures, Friedrichs does not dwell on the facts of history so much as draw broader insights into their meaning. In 2005, he reflected on the term “martyrs,” which is often used in reference to the victims of the Nazis.

“A martyr is someone who has accepted death rather than renounce his or her Jewish faith,” he said. Yet, he noted, among the six million were many, like the Jewish-born Catholic nun Edith Stein, who were not killed because they refused to renounce their faith. Indeed, he said, renunciation would not bring redemption. It was Jewish “racial” identity, not adherence to Jewish ideas, that drove the Nazis’ murderous objectives.

In an historic sense, though, Friedrichs argues, Jews were murdered in the Holocaust because generations of ancestors had refused, against all pressures, to abandon their identities. “And, therefore, it is in fact right to honour those who died as martyrs,” he said.

In 2007, Friedrichs struggled with theologians’ explorations of the meaning of the Shoah, as though some divine purpose could be discerned from it.

“The Shoah was an entirely human event,” he said. “But that hardly removes the question: where was God while it took place? Why did God allow it to happen?”

God gave humans free will, he concluded, but this does not answer the unknowable question.

“In a world we cannot begin to understand, we can still hope for mercy, and we can pray for strength,” he said.

In a brief postscript to this lecture, Friedrichs writes that the daughter of a friend, having heard the sermon, asked her father “Where was God?” In response, the father said, “Where was man?”

In 2012, Friedrichs spoke of the first Holocaust memorial ever created, in May 1943, in the Majdanek death camp, where a group of prisoners persuaded the SS administrator that the camp could be made more beautiful if they could erect a pillar topped by a statue of three eagles about to take flight. The commandant never knew that under the base of the pillar the inmates had buried a container of ashes of the victims taken from the crematorium.

In 2013, Friedrichs addresses the problem with the very word Holocaust, which means a burnt sacrifice.

“What a meaningless term!” Friedrichs declared. “Six million Jews were sacrificed? Sacrificed to what God? Sacrificed to what end?”

In 2020, when his lecture was recorded and shared virtually because of the pandemic, Friedrichs spoke of the sanctity of life.

The next year, after unmarked graves were discovered adjacent to a former residential school in Kamloops, he spoke of the “humanitarian obligation to go beyond just our circle of Jewish concerns.” He drew parallels between the MS St. Louis, the ship of Jewish refugees turned away from ports of refuge, including Canada’s, and the Afghans clambering through the Kabul airport, struggling to escape the country before the takeover of the Taliban.

In 2022, he invoked a very different piece of history. In high school, his most memorable teacher was Anne Schwerner. When the news came, in the summer of 1964, that three civil rights workers had been murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi, one of them Michael Schwerner, Friedrichs realized this was his favourite teacher’s son. He reflected on the lessons of obligation to universal freedom and rights embodied in Jewish tradition.

In his last lecture in the series, Friedrichs spoke of how, when he speaks to audiences of high school students, as he frequently does, he makes the lessons relevant to young, multicultural Canadians.

“I tell the students that it is normal to dislike somebody because that person, as an individual, is bad or unkind or unpleasant,” he said. “But to dislike or hate somebody not because of their own characteristics but because they happen to belong to a group, to hate them just because they are Chinese or Filipino or South Asian or Black or members of any other group, is to take the first step on a path that has led and could lead again to things like the Holocaust.”

In most of his lectures, Friedrichs describes predations that are difficult to read and must have been more difficult to hear on a Yom Kippur afternoon, in a room that includes survivors of precisely such atrocities. This, though, is one of the invaluable aspects of Friedrichs’ approach. Whatever reservations might exist in this time of safe spaces and trigger warnings, one can hardly make the case that it is too burdensome to listen to a few examples of the barbarism for the sake of education, memorialization and understanding, when there are people in our community, including in the congregation Friedrichs was addressing, who experienced the cruelties themselves.

Anyone who heard these lectures when they were delivered, or has heard any of Friedrichs’ many presentations elsewhere, can hardly help but hear his deep voice and commanding delivery while reading his words. Those who haven’t had the privilege of hearing him speak are fortunate to have these lectures compiled in this new book.

Reflections on the Shoah is available at templesholombc.shulcloud.com/form/reflections.

Remembering is not enough

Holocaust survivors participate in the candlelighting ceremony at the community’s Kristallnacht commemoration Nov. 9. (photo by Al Szajman)

Commemorating the Holocaust and the sad succession of genocides that have been perpetrated since is a sacred responsibility – but it is not enough, says Liliane Pari Umuhoza. That memory must be the motivation that drives people to make a better world, she said.

Umuhoza was 2 years old when her father and a million others were murdered during the Genocide Against the Tutsis of Rwanda, in 1994. After experiencing trauma in her adolescence due to that familial and communal history, Umuhoza has devoted her life to commemorating and educating about the genocide and encouraging people to dedicate themselves to healing their societies.

“When we remember, we help ensure that the memories and legacies of the victims and survivors continue to resonate for future generations,” she said at Vancouver’s community Kristallnacht commemoration Nov. 9. “When we remember, we learn about the history and create awareness. But that’s not enough. What matters the most is how we use that history to create a better world.”

The annual event took place at Beth Israel synagogue on the 84th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass,” on Nov. 9-10, 1938, which is the moment when anti-Jewish regulations and systemic discrimination turned into overt violence and murder. It is seen by many historians as the effective beginning of the Holocaust.

The event was presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC), in partnership with Congregation Beth Israel and with support from the Robert and Marilyn Krell Endowment Fund of the VHEC and from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign.

Umuhoza arrived in Vancouver several months ago to attend the University of British Columbia, where she is pursuing a master’s degree in public policy and global affairs. She is founder of the Women Genocide Survivors Retreat and is project officer for Foundation Rwanda, which provides funding for education to those who were born from rape during the genocide.

She began by outlining her own family’s history.

“I was 2 years old in the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda,” she said. “During this tragedy, my father was killed. Some of my uncles, aunties, cousins and many other members of my extended family are among the million Tutsi who were killed by the Hutu extremists in 100 days.

“One million people were killed in 100 days,” she stressed. “I was lucky to survive with my mother, who managed to escape to a neighbouring country, Congo, holding me, a 2-year-old baby, where we lived as refugees until it was safe enough for us to go back to Rwanda.”

She considers herself fortunate in comparison with many of her peers.

“I now have a stepfather and stepsiblings and I cannot tell you how blessed I feel because most of my friends from home grew up without a father or a mother figure in their lives,” she said.

Umuhoza was too young to understand what was happening at the time, she said. “But I grew up facing the consequences of that tragedy in every corner of my life. As many of you may know, psychologically, young children between the age of 0 and 5 are the most vulnerable to the effects of trauma since their brains are in the early development stage. For most people who have been exposed to genocide or war as children, the trauma can become severe at the adolescent stage and adulthood, if it is not properly treated.”

At the age of 12, Umuhoza began to exhibit symptoms of trauma, including depression, post-traumatic stress, nightmares, frustration, anger and confusion. She used the strength of others as an example to recover, including a friend who had to take on the parent role from childhood after she and her younger siblings were orphaned. Umuhoza is now deeply immersed in often deeply difficult aspects of education, such as translating the narratives of other survivors through Foundation Rwanda.

“My role with this organization was to listen to the stories of these women in their Rwandan mother language and translate the stories in English so we could use those stories to create awareness and educate the world about the genocide and its ongoing consequences,” she said. “I found myself in a series of stories I’d never heard before … stories of mass murder, stories of pain, stories of rape.”

One of the lessons she learned from the genocide is to never tolerate injustice, no matter how big or small, Umuhoza said.

“Speak up and raise your voice when you see or hear people denying that the Holocaust happened,” she said. “Speak up when you hear people saying that the genocide did not happen. Speak up when you see minorities being unfairly treated. Speak up when you see women in Tehran being oppressed. Let’s dare to step out of our common comfort zone and cultivate empathy to people around us.”

She concluded: “Individually, we can change our communities. But together we can change the world.”

photo - Liliane Pari Umuhoza speaks with Prof. Chris Friedrichs at the Kristallnacht commemoration, which took place at Beth Israel — Liliane Pari Umuhoza speaks with Prof. Chris Friedrichs at the Kristallnacht commemoration, which took place at Beth Israel. (photo by Al Szajman)

Earlier in the evening, Prof. Chris Friedrichs contextualized the history of the Holocaust, emphasizing the importance of synagogues as a place of refuge for Jewish communities. The Kristallnacht commemoration has been taking place in the sanctuary of Beth Israel for more than 40 years, he said.

There were more than 1,000 synagogues in Germany at the time of Kristallnacht, he noted, some many centuries old, while others were newer, having been dedicated in the presence of senior German officials, clergy and others, a testament to the apparent solidity of the Jewish community’s place in the country.

“But then, beginning in 1933, everything started to change,” said Friedrichs, professor emeritus of history at UBC. “Once the Nazis came to power, Germans were taught to shun their Jewish neighbours. Jews were banned from public places. They could no longer go to the theatre or walk in the park or send their children to public schools. But one place was still open to them – their own synagogues, where they could gather to worship or study or simply spend time with their fellow Jews. And so it was until Nov. 9, 1938, when, in one carefully orchestrated nationwide night of terror, hundreds of synagogues all over Germany were set aflame, thousands of Jews were arrested, over 100 were killed. The next morning, Jews found their synagogues turned into empty shells and the windows of their shops shattered into broken shards of glass and the contents plundered. No Jew in Germany ever forgot that night of broken glass, Kristallnacht.”

Irwin Cotler, Canada’s special envoy on preserving Holocaust remembrance and combatting antisemitism, spoke via video link to the audience.

Of the Holocaust, he said, “It was a continuation and manifestation of history’s oldest, longest, most enduring and most toxic of hatreds, antisemitism, a hatred that mutates and metastasizes over time, which is grounded in one generic, historical, foundational, conspiratorial trope of the Jews – the Jewish people, the Jewish state – as the enemy of all that is good and the embodiment of all that is evil, which led, therefore, to the demonization and dehumanization of the Jew as prologue and justification for Kristallnacht and the Holocaust.”

A parallel between the Holocaust and the genocide against the Tutsis, he said, is that they were preventable.

“Nobody could say we did not know,” said Cotler. “We knew, but we did not act.”

Corinne Zimmerman, president of the VHEC, opened the event. Nina Kreiger, executive director, introduced the speakers and acknowledged dignitaries in attendance.

Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld, a child of Holocaust survivors, thanked Umuhoza and reflected on her words and those of other speakers. He understands the idea of trauma being passed down through generations, he said. Reflecting on Friedrichs’ discussion of the centrality of the synagogue in Jewish life, Infeld said his spiritual leadership of the congregation during the construction of the new synagogue building was a form of response to the history of his family and the Jewish people.

Elected officials also spoke at the ceremony. Taleeb Noormohamad, member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, spoke of his first trip to Berlin, where he walked around the streets of the old Jewish district.

“As somebody who had never really seen firsthand until that trip the horrors of what had happened to the Jewish community and to so many others,” said Noormohamad, “in that moment you come to realize the absolute inexplicable horror that was cast upon people and what it does to people, to communities, to families and to the histories of people.”

He committed to standing with the Jewish community against discrimination and noted the diversity of the audience, which included himself, a Muslim Canadian; Michael Lee, a Chinese-Canadian member of the legislature; and Ken Sim, a Chinese-Canadian mayor.

Parm Bains, member of Parliament for Steveston-Richmond East, was also present, as was Marc Eichhorn, consul general of Germany in Vancouver.

“Antisemitism is not a problem, a fight, that is for the Jewish community alone,” Noormohamad said. “When you look in this room today, we are all in this together. This is our community. You are our family and the remembrance of what happened is our responsibility as much as it is yours.”

photo - Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre president Corinne Zimmerman, left, and VHEC executive director Nina Kreiger with MP Taleeb Noormohamad — Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre president Corinne Zimmerman, left, and VHEC executive director Nina Kreiger with MP Taleeb Noormohamad. *(photo by Al Szajman)*

The Kristallnacht commemoration was the first official community event for Sim, who was sworn in as mayor of Vancouver three days before. He, too, spoke of visiting Germany, along with his wife and their four sons, where they witnessed the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and pondered the Stolpersteine, the “stumbling stones” that have been installed to mark the places where victims of Nazi extermination or persecution lived. The family, he said, has also visited Auschwitz, in Poland, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C.

During the recent election campaign, Sim promised that, as mayor, he would promote the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance Working Definition of Antisemitism, which the previous council failed to do. He repeated his commitment at the ceremony, and council passed the motion on Nov. 16. (Click here and here for stories.)

Sim was joined at the event by Vancouver Councilor Sarah Kirby-Yung, who Sim credited as a stalwart ally of the Jewish community. Together, they read the official proclamation from the City of Vancouver.

“Out of the shards of destruction, in this case the glass on the night of Kristallnacht, often are born the glimmers of hope,” said Kirby-Yung, “and I think that is what keeps all of us going. It is the resilience and faith and the hope of the Jewish community that I think embodies the spirit of what we aspire to deliver here in the city of Vancouver.”

How Nazis stole assets

Prof. Chris Friedrichs speaks at the annual Kristallnacht Community Commemoration, on Nov. 9. (screenshot)

Under the Nazi regime, almost all personal property and wealth owned by German Jews was either explicitly confiscated or, in the case of bank accounts, effectively frozen. Yet, while Jewish property was stolen without compunction, the Reich had scrupulous records and systems in place to ensure that no Aryan German who was owed money by those Jews was deprived of their due.

Chris Friedrichs, professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia and himself the son of a couple who fled Germany ahead of the Holocaust, delivered the lecture at the 2020 annual Kristallnacht Community Commemoration, Nov. 9. The event was recorded and presented virtually due to the pandemic. His lecture, How to Steal from Jews: A Story from Nazi Germany and What it Teaches Us, explored the history of the family of Friedrichs’ late wife, Rhoda (Lange) Friedrichs, as a microcosm of the sprawling bureaucracy the Reich put in place to manage the stolen property.

Rhoda Friedrichs’ grandparents, Carl and Thekla Rosenberg, lived comfortably in Berlin. Their two daughters grew up and migrated to the United States. By the time the Nazis came to power and the Rosenbergs might have been able to escape, Carl was already experiencing dementia.

Because there was no room in the Jewish nursing home in Berlin, he was moved to a facility in Koblenz, hundreds of kilometres away. Thekla was forced from their home and ordered into a sort of dormitory for older Jews, where she shared a single room with five or more other Jewish women. From there, she was assigned to forced labour in a factory.

Eventually, consistent with the plan for the “Final Solution,” almost all the Jews remaining in Germany were transported to Nazi-occupied Poland.

“Every time a Jew was put on a list to be deported to the east, he or she first had to fill out what was called a property declaration, a complete list of all his or her property, which would now become the property of the German Reich,” said Friedrichs.

In the spring of 1942, Carl Rosenberg and the other residents of the Koblenz care home were deported to a death camp in Poland.

In November 1942, Thekla and 997 other Berlin Jews were transferred to a train station and deported directly to Auschwitz.

“Who suffered most on these trains to Poland?” Friedrichs wondered. “Was it Carl Rosenberg, his mind clouded by confusion and dementia, suddenly removed from the caring place where he had lived for two years and put on a train for reasons no one could explain to him? Or was it his wife, her mind clear to the last, not knowing the exact destination but almost certainly able to guess what lay ahead for her? This, like much else, we will never know. But we do know that both of their lives ended in unspeakable misery in 1942.”

Their lives ended, Friedrichs noted, “but their victimization did not.”

The German Reich claimed to own whatever property the Rosenbergs still had at the time of their deportation. Like that of the other German Jews who were deported, the assets came under the authority of German finance offices in cities and towns across the country.

“One might think that this was an uncomplicated matter,” said Friedrichs. “Well, no. There was a problem. If a Jew owned a house or a piece of land, there might be a mortgage on it. The mortgage-holder might be a German, who expected his regular interest payments. If a Jew had any debts or obligations, they might be owed to some German, who expected those debts to be honoured and paid. If a Jew still owed some rent or had not yet paid the last gas bill or electric bill before being taken to the station, the landlord or utility company waited impatiently for that payment. You could steal every penny from a Jew, but you still had to be careful not to deprive even a single penny from a German who was entitled to it. So, all the local offices of the ministry of finance had to handle all these matters with scrupulous bureaucratic precision. Otherwise, they might be accused of cheating Germans of what was due to them.”

In files Friedrichs has copies of, the respective finance offices in Berlin and Koblenz had extensive back-and-forths about which office was responsible for settling outstanding obligations from the Rosenbergs’ estates.

The documentation of the officials was meticulous, something Friedrichs credits more to the nature of bureaucrats than to the Nazis specifically.

“Most of the thousands of people who worked for the German ministry of finance or the local finance offices were not hard-core Nazis,” he said. “The majority of them had been working in those offices for many years, usually starting long before the Nazis came to power.… As long as it was clear which ordinances or decrees were pertinent to the work at hand, they carried on as usual.”

Historians have found several instances of officials defying orders and returning stolen property to their Jewish owners, but this was exceedingly rare, said Friedrichs. “Did they ever wonder if they were in fact facilitating or cooperating with a process of mass murder?” he asked.

As the Nazis’ defeat approached, high-ranking officials circulated an order to the local finance offices in Germany, demanding that all records pertaining to the disposition of Jewish property be destroyed rather than fall into the hands of the invading Allied armies.

Again, behaving more like bureaucrats than Nazis, few offices complied. “The work of the finance offices would be carried on right to the bitter end,” said Friedrichs. “This is how bureaucrats reacted when they were taught what to do but not to think about why they were doing it.”

The care the German officials took with Jewish property juxtaposes bleakly with the fate of the Jewish people themselves.

“It teaches us something not just about the fate of two of the victims, but also about those who participated in the victimization,” said Friedrichs. “The Holocaust, in its fullest sense, was not only the murder of Jews. It was also a relentless project to take whatever the Jews had and make it the property of the German Reich or in some cases of their accomplices in other parts of Europe. After all, the Nazis valued everything the Jews owned, everything, that is, except their lives, which the Nazis regarded as worthless.”

screenshot - As part of the Nov. 9 Kristallnacht commemoration, candles of remembrance were lit by Holocaust survivors in their homes — As part of the Nov. 9 Kristallnacht commemoration, candles of remembrance were lit by Holocaust survivors in their homes. *(screenshot)*

Friedrichs’ lecture dovetailed with the theme of the exhibition currently ongoing at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. Treasured Belongings: The Hahn Family & the Search for a Stolen Legacy tells the history of Max and Getrud Hahn, whose collection of Judaica and other artwork was stolen by the Nazis, and the efforts by their descendants, including their grandson Michael Hayden, a UBC professor, to locate and restitute some of the artifacts.

Friedrichs’ talk paid tribute not only to his wife’s grandparents, Thekla and Carl Rosenberg, but also to his wife Rhoda, who, he said, had hoped to pursue the research on this aspect of history and share it with the public herself, but who passed away due to cancer in 2014.

The lecture was presented by the VHEC and Congregation Beth Israel. It was made possible with support from the Robert and Marilyn Krell Endowment Fund at the VHEC and contributions to the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign.

Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld thanked Friedrichs and reflected on his words and their meaning. Nina Krieger, executive director of the VHEC, read a proclamation from the City of Vancouver on behalf of Mayor Kennedy Stewart.

Corrine Zimmerman, president of the board of directors of the VHEC, introduced the event, which took place on the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, Nov. 9-10, 1938. That date is seen by many as the beginning in earnest of the Holocaust. The well-orchestrated pogrom, planned to appear like a spontaneous anti-Jewish uprising, saw violence across Germany and Austria that night. Rioters destroyed 267 synagogues, damaged or destroyed 7,000 Jewish businesses and 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and incarcerated.

Candles of remembrance were lit by Holocaust survivors in their homes and incorporated via video into the commemorative program. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted El Moleh Rachamim.

Kristallnacht programs

Dr. Chris Friedrichs will deliver the lecture “How to Steal from Jews: A Story from Nazi Germany and What It Teaches Us,” which will be available from Nov. 9, 7 p.m., from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. The Victoria Shoah Project is also holding a commemoration, called “The Persistence of Creativity Emerging from the Shards of Tragedy.” (photo from VHEC)

On the evening of Nov. 9, both the Vancouver and Victoria Jewish communities will be holding virtual Kristallnacht commemorations. This year’s commemoration marks the 82nd anniversary of the state-sponsored Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), which took place throughout Germany and Austria on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938. In the course of just a few hours, hundreds of synagogues were burned, thousands of Jewish-owned places of business were destroyed, almost 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The shards of broken window glass seen in front of Jewish-owned stores all over Germany the next morning gave the memorial event its name.

The Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, in partnership with Congregation Beth Israel and with support from the Robert and Marilyn Krell Endowment Fund of the VHEC and funds from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, is presenting the lecture “How to Steal from Jews: A Story from Nazi Germany and What It Teaches Us,” by keynote speaker Dr. Chris Friedrichs.

The Nazi regime not only murdered millions of Jews, it also relentlessly confiscated Jewish property from owners later sent to their deaths. The illustrated lecture by Friedrichs will describe the step-by-step process by which two elderly Jews from wartime Berlin were stripped of all their assets before they were deported to the death camps – and shows how Nazi officials then fought with one another about what to do with the stolen property.

Friedrichs is professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia, where he taught for 45 years before his retirement in 2018. He is a specialist in German history and has been active for many years in Holocaust awareness education.

The Vancouver event is pre-recorded and will be available for viewing any time after 7 p.m. on Nov. 9: visit vhec.org/events-gallery/#videos.

* * *

In Victoria, live-streaming via Zoom, the Victoria Shoah Project will present a program titled “The Persistence of Creativity Emerging from the Shards of Tragedy.” It is a remembrance of those who suffered on Kristallnacht and in the Shoah, as well as a reminder of how and why we, as a collective society, commemorate such tragic events. Remembrance is essential; however, we also must act in tangible ways to protect all peoples in our diverse community.

In recent years, there has been the unfortunate growth of attacks on minority groups and those who are “ the other.” This highlights the need for us to stand together to protect and safeguard all peoples, regardless of religion, race, sexual orientation or other factors, which may make them targets of a hateful few. And, in this context, the Victoria Shoah Project is inviting political and law enforcement leaders, as well as representatives from the diverse faith communities, to join together at the commemoration to lead the reading of a pledge of mutual respect and support.

It is also inviting the entire community to join the event – to remember the past and commit to take action for a better future, where we will respect and protect our neighbours, not remain silent in the face of any injustice against any person or group and work towards building bridges leading to unity and shalom (peace) in our community and beyond.

For more information, email [email protected], or visit victoriashoahproject.ca or facebook.com/victoriashoahproject.

Lessons of Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, which took place 80 years ago this month, saw hundreds of synagogues burned, Jewish-owned businesses destroyed, 100 Jews murdered and 30,000 incarcerated. (photo from commons.wikimedia.org)

Kristallnacht, which took place 80 years ago this month, was the “Night of Broken Glass” that saw hundreds of synagogues burned, Jewish-owned businesses destroyed, 100 Jews murdered and 30,000 incarcerated. The state-sanctioned pogrom was staged to look like a spontaneous uprising against the Jews of Germany, annexed Austria and occupied Sudetenland. It is frequently seen as the beginning in earnest of the Holocaust. According to Prof. Chris Friedrichs, who delivered the keynote address at the annual Kristallnacht commemorative evening Nov. 8, global reaction to the attack, which took place on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, sent messages to both Nazis and Jews.

“The world was shocked,” said Friedrichs, professor emeritus of history at the University of British Columbia. “Newspapers in the free countries of Europe and all over the Americas reported on these events in detail. Editorials thundered against the Nazi thugs. Protests took place. Demonstrations were held. Opinion was mobilized – for a few days. But soon, Kristallnacht was no longer front-page news. What had happened was now the new normal in Germany, and the world’s attention moved elsewhere. And this is what the Nazis learned: we can do this, and more, and get away with it. Nothing will happen.

“And the Jews of Germany learned something too,” said Friedrichs, himself a son of parents who fled the Nazi regime. “By 1938, many Jews had emigrated from Germany – if they could find a country that would take them. But many others remained. Much had been taken away from them, but two things remained untouched: their houses of worship and their homes. Here, at least, one could be safe, sustained by the fellowship of other Jews and the comforts and consolations of religious faith and family life. But now, in one brutal night, these things, too, had been taken from them. Their synagogues were reduced to rubble, their shops vandalized, their homes desecrated. Nothing was safe or secure. The last lingering hopes of the Jews still living in Germany that, despite all they had suffered at the hands of the Nazis, they might at least be allowed to live quiet private lives of work and worship with family and friends, collapsed in the misery of fire, smashed glass, home invasions, mass arrests and psychological terror on Nov. 9, 1938.”

Friedrichs’ lecture followed a solemn procession of survivors of the Holocaust, who carried candles onto the bimah of Congregation Beth Israel. The evening, presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC) and Beth Israel, was funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver annual campaign, with support from the Robert and Marilyn Krell Endowment Fund of the VHEC and the Azrieli Foundation, which provided every attendee with a copy of Dangerous Measures, the memoir of Canadian Joseph Schwartzberg, who witnessed Kristallnacht and fled Germany with his family soon after.

“We are gathered tonight in the sanctuary of a synagogue,” said Friedrichs, who retired in June, after 45 years of teaching and researching at UBC. “A synagogue should indeed be a sanctuary, a quiet place where Jews can gather, chiefly but not only on the Sabbath, for prayer, worship and contemplation. Recent events have reminded us only too bitterly that this is not always the case.

“Our minds are full of mental images of what happened in Pittsburgh less than two weeks ago, but I invite you to call up a different mental image,” he said, taking the audience back to the time of Kristallnacht. “Think of a synagogue. Just a few days earlier, on the Sabbath, Jews had gathered there, as they have gathered in synagogues for 2,000 years, for prayer, worship and fellowship with other Jews. But now, suddenly, in the middle of the night, a firebomb is thrust through a window of the synagogue. As the window glass shatters to the floor, the firebomb ignites a piece of furniture. Within minutes the fire spreads. Soon the entire synagogue is engulfed in flames. It is an inferno. The next morning, the walls of the synagogue are still standing, but the interior is completely gutted. No worship will ever take place there again.”

Friedrichs paused to note that some in the audience would recall a similar attack that destroyed Vancouver’s Reform synagogue, Temple Sholom, on Jan. 25, 1985. He recounted the reaction of police and firefighters, civic leaders and the general public, who rallied around the Vancouver congregation at the time, and compared that with the reactions of non-Jews in Germany and the territories it controlled at the time of Kristallnacht.

“Police and firefighters are on the scene,” Friedrichs said of the situation during Kristallnacht. “But the firefighters are not there to put out the blaze. They are there only to make sure the fire does not spread to any nearby non-Jewish buildings. The police are there only to make sure no members of the congregation try to rescue anything from the building.

“The next morning, crowds of onlookers gape at the burnt-out shell of the synagogue. Some of the furnishings and ritual objects have survived the blaze, so they are dragged out to the street and a bonfire is prepared. But first, the local school principal must arrive with his pupils. Deprived of the opportunity to see the synagogue itself in flames during the night, when they were asleep, the children should at least have the satisfaction of seeing the furnishings and Jewish ritual objects go up in smoke. Most of those objects are added to the bonfire, but not all. Not the Torah scrolls – the Five Books of Moses, every single word of which, in translation, is identical to the words found in the first five books of every Christian Bible. No, the Torah scrolls are not added to the bonfire. They are dragged out to the street to be trampled on by the children, egged on by adult onlookers, while other adults rip apart the Torah covers to be taken home as souvenirs.

“And now consider this: events like this did not happen in just one town,” Friedrichs said. “The same things took place in hundreds upon hundreds of cities and towns throughout Germany and Austria, all on the very same evening and into the next morning. There were minor variations from town to town, but the basic events were exactly the same, for it was a nationwide pogrom, carefully planned in advance.”

photo - Prof. Chris Friedrichs — Prof. Chris Friedrichs *(photo from VHEC)*

Friedrichs, who devoted 25 years to serving on the organizing committee of the Kristallnacht commemorative committee, including eight as president, reflected on the history of Holocaust remembrance in Vancouver, including the decision to single out this date as one of the primary commemorative events of the calendar.

“Why should we commemorate the Shoah at this particular time in November?” he asked. “Consider this: 91 Jewish men died on Nov. 9th and 10th, 1938. Yet, on a single day in the busy summer of 1944, up to 5,000 Jewish men, women and children might be murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz on one day. Why not select some random date in August 1944 and make that the occasion to recall the victims of the Shoah? Why choose Kristallnacht?”

The earliest Holocaust commemorations in the city, he said, citing the work of local scholar Barbara Schober, was an event in 1948 marking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

People who had founded the Peretz School in Vancouver, in 1945, hoped to preserve the memories and values of the East European Jewish culture, which had been almost totally wiped from the map, he said. “Yet, rather than focus on the six million deaths, their intention was to honour those Jews who had actually risen up to fight the Nazi menace – the hopeless but inspiring efforts exemplified above all by the heroic resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto fighters who used the pathetically meagre supply of weapons they could find to resist the final liquidation of the ghetto by the Nazis in the spring of 1943,” said Friedrichs. “That effort failed, but it was not forgotten.”

This event continued, with the support of Canadian Jewish Congress, into the 1970s, he explained.

“There was an emerging concern that Jews should not just recall and pay tribute to the victims of the Shoah,” said Friedrichs. “The increasing visibility of the Holocaust denial movement made it apparent that Jews should also make their contribution to educating society as a whole – and especially young people – about the true history of what had happened. Prof. Robert Krell and Dr. Graham Forst undertook to establish an annual symposium at UBC at which hundreds of high school students would learn about the Holocaust from experts and, even more importantly, from hearing the first-person accounts of survivors themselves. It was in those years, too, that the Vancouver Holocaust Education Society was established to coordinate these efforts. The survivor outreach program, through which dozens of survivors of the Shoah in our community spoke and continue to speak to students about what they experienced, became the cornerstone of these educational efforts. Their talks are always different, for no two survivors ever experienced the Shoah the same way, but the ultimate object is always the same – not just to teach students what happened to the Jews of Europe between 1939 and 1945, but to reflect on the danger that racist thinking of any kind can all too easily lead to.”

But this was education, he noted, not commemoration.

“With the decline of the Warsaw Ghetto event in Vancouver, the need to commemorate the Shoah came to be filled in other ways. One of those ways was the emergence of the Vancouver Kristallnacht commemoration. The origins of this form of commemoration lie right here in the Beth Israel congregation. In the late 1970s, members of the Gottfried family who had emigrated from Austria in the Nazi era, now members of Beth Israel, proposed that their synagogue host a commemoration of Kristallnacht.”

Friedrichs spoke of the burden carried by each of the survivors who carried candles onto the bimah moments earlier.

“You might think that a candle is not very hard to carry, but, for each one of these men and women, the flame of the candle has reignited painful memories stretching back 70 or 80 years, to a dimly remembered way of life before their world collapsed,” he said. “These men and women survived, and sometimes a few of their relatives did as well, but all of them, without exception, you’ve heard this before, had family members – whether parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, siblings, or cousins – who were murdered. One could not reproach these men and women if they had chosen to stay home on a night like this. But, instead, they are here.

“Many of these men and women have done more, even more, as well,” he continued. “For many of them have done something for years and continue to do so even now: to speak of their experiences to students in the schools of our province. To stand in front of two or three or four or five hundred students of every race and every heritage and describe life in the ghetto or the camp or on the death march or the anxiety of living in hiding and being pushed into a basement or a closet every time some unwanted visitor arrived – this is not easy. But there is a purpose. The young people of our province are barraged with images and messages and texts telling them that people of certain religions or races or heritages are inferior and unwanted members of our society. They must be told just what that kind of thinking can lead to. No textbook, no video, no lecture can do the job as powerfully as hearing a survivor describe exactly what he or she experienced during the Shoah.”

Corinne Zimmerman, vice-president of the VHEC, welcomed guests and introduced the candlelighting procession. Cantor Yaacov Orzech chanted El Moleh Rachamim, the memorial prayer for the martyrs. UBC Prof. Richard Menkis delivered opening remarks and Helen Pinsky, president of Beth Israel, introduced Sarah Kirby-Yung, a Vancouver city councilor who read a proclamation from the mayor. Nina Krieger, executive director of the VHEC, introduced Friedrichs. Beth Israel’s Rabbi Jonathan Infeld provided closing remarks, and Jody Wilson-Raybould, minister of justice and member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville, sent greetings on behalf of the Government of Canada.