Event honoring Holocaust survivors also a rally against hate

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Temple Beth Sholom

Sixteen Holocaust survivors are shown at a Temple Beth Sholom event Sunday, Nov. 4, 2018.

Tue, Nov 6, 2018 (2 a.m.)

About 130 people, some of them Holocaust survivors, gathered inside Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas on Sunday to pay their respects and hear the stories of those who survived Kristallnacht.

Kristallnacht, or the night of broken glass, is commonly regarded as the beginning of the Holocaust. For 48 hours starting Nov. 9, 1938, Nazis destroyed and burned synagogues and homes in Germany, murdering 91 Jews and arresting 30,000 others.

The event marked a stark change in the statewide treatment of the Jews in Germany. Prior to Kristallnacht, the oppression of the Jews had occurred through governmental policies, not violence. 

Esther Finder, president of the Holocaust Survivors Group and Generations of the Shoah Nevada, compared Kristallnacht and the current political climate and increase in hate crimes in the U.S., specifically the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting on Oct. 27.

“On that night, persecution of the Jews went from political, legislative, economic and social to the physical,” Finder said. “Until this horrible night in 1938, Jews in Germany thought maybe Hitler and the Nazis might be a passing thing … and if they remained calm and kept their heads down, this would run its course … but there was something different this time.”

Finder then played three video interviews from eye-witnesses present during Kristallnacht, which were compiled by the USC Shoah Foundation and chosen for viewing by Generations of the Shoah Nevada.

After hearing the accounts of survivors — then-children who watched the Nazis break into and destroy their homes — Rabbi Felipe Goodman talked about the Pittsburgh shooting and what people can do in Las Vegas to fight hatred so history doesn’t repeat itself.

“There were 2,000 people here Thursday [to honor those lost in Pittsburgh] — and a lot of the people here weren’t Jewish,” Goodman said. “And that’s very important because it means that beyond ourselves and our little sphere, people actually cared about what happened in Pittsburgh. They were alarmed. They were in shock … [but] for us to think that this kind of thing doesn’t happen here is kind of innocent and naïve, because ever since that moment in Kristallnacht, it keeps repeating itself in different ways all over the world.

“The Jews in Germany didn’t believe it could happen to them, just like we believe it can’t happen to us here,” he continued. “They were confident this was a passing thing, they lived in the most enlightened society of their time. They had fought in their wars. People went into the gas chambers wearing medals that they were granted by the German army.”

Goodman, who was born in Mexico, recalled growing up in fear, never taking his shoes off and sleeping with his passport at his bedside in case he ever needed to flee.

“Last week in Pittsburgh really shattered our innocence,” Goodman said. “We thought we were white. We thought we were above and beyond the reach of hate. And the answer is, no one is above and beyond.”

Goodman ended his remarks on a note of encouragement, to stand up to hatred of all kinds. “People showed up for us,” he said. “They didn’t wait until it was their turn to confront hate. It’s about the rhetoric, and if we don’t stop it — if it’s not us, it’s going to be somebody else.”

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