Library offers program to honor Kristallnacht
STEPHANIE N. HENSCHEL
Staff Writer
On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, a mere five years after Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany, a rampaging mob descended upon the streets throughout Germany and parts of Austria and Sudetenland. Jews were openly attacked - in the streets, in their homes, at their workplaces and at their places of worship.
Windows of Jewish businesses, as well as synagogues and homes, were shattered, littering the streets with shards of glass. Almost 100 Jews were killed; hundreds were injured. Synagogues were burned, businesses destroyed, cemeteries and schools defaced. About 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
The event, known as Kristallnacht, or night of broken glass, marks the crystallization of what horrors were to befall the Jews of Europe.
Nancy L. Stevenson wants people to remember it.
The adult services librarian for Maricopa County Library District's Litchfield Park Branch Library organized a special program so they will.
The two-day program, "Remembering Crystal Night," featured rabbis, Holocaust survivors, World War II veterans and historians. Speakers at the Nov. 4-5 event addressed issues of the Holocaust and Kristallnacht.
Stevenson had previously organized two other programs, known as "The Holocaust Panel Discussions." The first of these, in April 2003, received so much attention that she felt it was necessary to continue the programs. Both sessions, the second in October of the same year, were filled to capacity.
In fact, Stevenson herself received many accolades, winning the Shofar Zakhor Award in April 2004 from the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors' Association. The award recognizes those who play an indispensable role in Holocaust memory.
Stevenson, who is not Jewish, said she was nominated for the award by Holocaust survivor Helen Handler, a member of the association.
"She had put a lot of trust in me," Stevenson says of Handler's nomination. "I wanted to go ahead and fulfill that trust."
After the awards ceremony at Temple Chai, Stevenson was bombarded with questions and she could tell the interest was there.
Thus the Kristallnacht program was born.
Educating the public is so important, especially on such a topic as the Holocaust, she says.
"The community wants to be educated, so I want to offer it," she says.
"More and more, the survivors are not with us any more," Stevenson explains. "And when they're gone, who's going to tell us what happened?"
Handler couldn't agree more.
"I look at the programs of the Holocaust and they are presented by very educated professors," says the 76-year-old Hungarian woman. "But they never lived it."
Handler was 15 years old when she was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. She is the sole survivor of her family.
Handler said many presentations are made on the horrors of the Holocaust, and they are intelligent and factual.
"But it never comes close as if you lived it," she says.
Accounts such as "The Diary of Anne Frank" win critical acclaim, but are in fact incomplete, Handler says.
"Anne Frank died in the concentration camps," Handler says. "The last chapter was never written. It doesn't talk about a young girl's death. I can tell you about that last chapter because I lived it."
Rabbi Arthur Lavinsky of Beth El Congregation in Phoenix, who discussed at the event how Jewish law was affected by the Holocaust, said it is important to not let the memory be forgotten.
"The more people learn about the Holocaust, they will be more mindful of the concerns of Jews," he said. "Why we are so committed to the freedom of everyone, why we are a loving religion and that we will continue to flourish for years to come."
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