BERLIN — “We must not be silent” about condemning anti-Semitism, German chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday as Germany and Israel commemorated the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.
With concerts, prayers and ceremonies, participants vowed to honor Kristallnacht victims with renewed vigilance. The riots are seen by many as the first step leading to the Nazis’ systematic murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust.
Merkel recalled the Nov. 9, 1938, riots in which more than 91 German Jews were killed and more than 1,000 synagogues damaged, telling Germans that the lessons of the nation’s past were crucial in confronting a current increase in xenophobia and racism.
“Anti-Semitism and racism are a threat to our basic values — those of democracy and respect for diversity and human rights,” Merkel said at a ceremony in Germany’s newly renovated largest synagogue.
At Israel’s weekly Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Kristallnacht — Night of the Broken Glass — was “the turning point toward the inevitable destruction of a greater portion of the Jewish people in Europe between 1939-1945,” adding that Israel “will never forgive or forget” the crimes of the Nazi regime.
About 30,000 Jewish men and boys were arrested and sent to concentration camps during the pogrom that left the streets of Germany littered with shards of glass from the smashed windows of Jewish homes and shops.
Germany’s southern neighbor Austria — where Kristallnacht claimed 30 Jewish lives — also commemorated the day, while Pope Benedict XVI called for prayers for Kristallnacht’s victims in “profound solidarity with the Jewish world.”
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