Germany Marks Kristallnacht Anniversary Amid Rising Antisemitism And Calls To Protect Jews

by Stefan J. Bos, Worthy News Europe Bureau Chief

BERLIN/BUDAPEST (Worthy News) – Germany marked the 88th anniversary of the deadly Nazi pogroms that set the stage for the Holocaust amid fresh calls to better protect Jewish communities as antisemitism continues to rise across Europe and beyond.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz warned Monday that antisemitism had become “omnipresent,” saying the country faced a historic test of its commitment to ensuring that the atrocities of Nazi Germany would never be repeated.

Speaking at the Ohel Jakob synagogue in Munich, Merz expressed alarm that Jewish schools, kindergartens and places of worship still require bulletproof glass and armed police protection.

The commemorations recalled Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass,” when Nazi forces and their supporters unleashed widespread violence against Jews across Germany and Austria on November 9–10, 1938.

At least 91 Jews were killed, about 7,500 Jewish businesses were vandalized, and more than 1,400 synagogues and Jewish prayer rooms were attacked or damaged, according to historical accounts. Historians have documented hundreds of additional deaths linked to the violence and its aftermath.

SURVIVOR RETURNS TO BERLIN

Among those remembering the violence was George Shefi, 94, who returned from Israel to Berlin, where he witnessed the aftermath of Kristallnacht as a six-year-old boy.

His mother had kept him inside their home for three days as violence spread through the German capital. When he finally ventured outside, he discovered that the synagogue housing his Jewish school had been burned down.

A nearby Jewish-owned hat store had been looted, while the windows of a stationery shop had been smashed.

Shefi recalled seeing crowds mocking a Jewish shopkeeper who was attempting to clean up the destruction, according to an account published by The Associated Press news agency.

The experience marked the beginning of a childhood shattered by Nazi persecution and the loss of his family.

JEWISH MOTHER MURDERED

In July 1939, his mother, Marie Spiegelglas, sent him alone to Britain aboard a Kindertransport carrying Jewish children to safety. He never saw her again.

His mother was deported to the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in Nazi-occupied Poland, which included Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she was murdered in 1943.

Shefi survived the Second World War in Britain, later lived in the United States and eventually settled in Jerusalem, where he raised a family and worked as a shopkeeper and volunteer police officer.

Returning to his childhood neighborhood, he visited a Berlin park where Jews had once been forbidden to sit.

He told the AP that younger generations should not be blamed for crimes committed before they were born but must understand history to prevent similar atrocities.

HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR WARNS

“You have to learn and study it because you aren’t responsible for what was, but you’ll be responsible in five, 10 years of what’s going to happen,” he said.

Shefi also warned that the number of living witnesses able to describe Nazi persecution firsthand was rapidly diminishing.

His visit coincided with an international gathering of senior law enforcement representatives from Germany, other European countries and the United States at Berlin’s New Synagogue.

The November 5 event, organized by the International March of the Living and partner organizations under the banner “Not on Our Watch: Operationalizing Never Again,” sought to connect Holocaust remembrance with the responsibility of police officers to protect Jewish communities.

Jochen Kopelke, chairman of the German Police Union and president of the European Federation of Police Unions, said officers must understand both contemporary Jewish life and the role of law enforcement during Nazi rule.

POLICE CONFRONT ANTISEMITISM

“The police in the Nazi era actively took part in the Shoah, participated, guarded concentration camps, deported people,” he told the AP, using the Hebrew term for the Holocaust.

He said officers must understand history rather than merely guard Jewish institutions without knowing the communities they protect.

The gathering also recalled Wilhelm Krützfeld, a Berlin police commander who intervened to prevent Nazi stormtroopers from destroying the New Synagogue during Kristallnacht.

Pasha Lyubarsky, chairman of Berlin’s Kahal Adass Jisroel Orthodox Jewish community, told participants that his two sons were afraid to walk alone to synagogue because they were visibly Jewish.

He described antisemitic harassment directed at his children and recalled an October 2023 attack in which masked individuals threw incendiary devices at his community’s synagogue.

JEWISH FAMILIES IN FEAR

The building also houses a Jewish school and kindergarten. No injuries were reported in the attack.

“I do not want to be loved as a Jew. I want to be respected as a human being,” Lyubarsky said.

Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, president of the International March of the Living, warned that protecting Jewish communities was essential to defending democratic societies.

“An attack on Jews is not only an attack on a minority community. It is an attack on the rule of law,” she said.

Her organization brings participants, including law enforcement leaders, to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland to learn about Nazi persecution and the murder of six million European Jews during the Holocaust.

ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS RISE

The commemorations came as Germany continued to confront a sharp increase in antisemitic incidents compared with the years before the Gaza war.

According to the monitoring organization RIAS, Germany recorded 8,725 antisemitic incidents in 2025, more than three times the number documented in 2022 and equivalent to nearly 24 incidents daily. The figure was virtually unchanged from the 8,713 incidents recorded in 2024.

The organization said incidents had remained at a dramatically elevated level since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also called for confronting antisemitism during a commemoration at the former Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald, near Weimar.

He said hatred of Jews must be challenged regardless of whether it emerges from political extremism, mainstream society or Islamist movements.

SIX MILLION JEWISH VICTIMS

Germany is home to an estimated 126,000 Jews, compared with about 525,000 when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Between 160,000 and 180,000 German Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Across Europe, Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered about six million Jews, including roughly one million at the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Merz reaffirmed Germany’s commitment to protecting Jewish communities and supporting Israel, describing the country’s historical responsibility as an enduring obligation.

For Shefi, who lost his mother at Auschwitz, the anniversary underscored the urgency of preserving eyewitness accounts as the last generation of Holocaust survivors grows older. “My generation is the last generation that can tell what happened without anybody saying that’s not true.”