“I remember the many people who were outside, the flames, smoke and burnt smells of the synagogue, walking through the side paths and the forest so that no one would recognize my father, who was a well-known lawyer in Munich. I also remember the destruction of the day after. I think that the Nazis released the reins to check how the German people would react after the Kristallnacht pogrom, and unfortunately the German people did not protest, they saw what happened but didn’t Dare to go against the Nazi regime.”
Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, the president of the Jewish community in Munich and one of the well-known Jewish figures in Germany, if not the most well-known, celebrated her 92nd birthday last week. She was about 6 years old when her father, Fritz Neuland, received a phone call from a man he did not know on the night of November 9 , who called him to leave his house quickly due to the danger to his life. The father took his family, with the exception of his mother who did not want to leave the house, and tried to get to the office he owns which is not far from his house.
He called to check if anyone was in the office and an unknown person answered on the other end of the line. Charlotte’s father pretended to be another person and asked if he himself was present in the office. The person who was in his office answered him: “We are also looking for Fritz Neuland”, and so the father knew that he had to stay away from his office as well. That night the Newland family wandered the streets of the city to find shelter. When they approached the family friend’s house to warn him of disturbances, they saw him forced out of his house drinking blood with many bruises on his head. That family friend was sent to a concentration camp, was released, and later was sent to the Dachau extermination camp, where he was murdered.
A real danger to life
Charlotta stares at the ceiling from time to time, remembering that terrible night, that few people experienced the pogrom that happened 86 years ago today and who can still tell and share in the first person what happened: “It was a scary sight for a girl. I didn’t understand why the fire department didn’t come to put out the fires. We saw people and SS soldiers breaking windows and knocking on doors. Although I already understood that we as Jews do not belong to the ‘desired group’ in Germany, but the harsh scenes, the cold and the panic affected me. I started to cry and my father asked me to stop, because it put us all in danger. At that moment, the people on the streets did not know that we were Jews, and the anti-Jewish atmosphere on the streets of Munich created a danger to our lives if they were We are recognized.”
At the end of that evening they found shelter in the suburbs of Munich with a non-Jewish family friend. That night between November 9-10, 1938, hundreds of Jews were murdered, and hundreds of others were sent to concentration camps from which they never returned. Thousands of Jews were arrested, most of the synagogues in Germany were set on fire, as were thousands of Jewish shops and much property. The murderous “people’s uprising” backed by the Nazi regime continued all night without the intervention of the security forces, and stopped on the morning of November 10.
After the war and after several members of her family perished in the Holocaust, Charlotte Knobloch got married and wanted to leave Munich, but a sequence of events left her in the country with her father, who joined about 60 other Jews who re-established the Jewish community in Munich.
For decades the community has enjoyed relative peace, but in recent years there has been a strengthening of populist parties on the right and left, with an emphasis on the Alternative for Germany party which also represents extreme right-wing elements, some of whom identify with Nazi ideology, as well as hate shows in universities directed against Israel and the fear of Jews in Germany to wear Jewish symbols in the public sphere cause her great concern: “The atmosphere In Germany at the present time it is slightly reminiscent of the atmosphere that was here in the 20s of the last century. Hitler did not come from heaven, he was chosen by the Germans. True, Jewish life here has developed and we are far from what happened here in the 30s-40s, and anti-Semitism is a global issue. And not only German, but the important question is how the public reacts to anti-Semitism, how the public is not indifferent to the issue, and here education and the transfer of reliable and accurate information are of great importance.”
Education in virtual reality
And so, as part of this insight and together with Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, the “Claims Conference” launched a unique virtual reality project in collaboration with Meta, UNESCO and USCS Shoa. The educational project, called “An Inside Look at Kristallnacht”, combines the personal story of Dr. Knobloch while allowing young people to experience the events of Kristallnacht through the eyes of a 6-year-old girl. The project, which is intended, among other things, for schools And to educational institutions, using advanced technology, conveys a message about the dangers inherent in anti-Semitism and xenophobia, and emphasizes the serious consequences of hate speech.
The project has already begun operating during the past week in public schools in the US and Europe, and provides exposure to the subject of the Holocaust and the lessons that are important to learn, especially against the background of rising anti-Semitism these days, “As someone who personally experienced those horrors and survived, it is important for me to tell what happened in those dark years . It is important to me that they do not forget what humans are capable of doing to other humans, and how an entire system focused on the systematic murder of Jews. Our path to a better future goes through understanding history so that we know what must not be done, and how we can learn from what we did in the past to ensure a better future for humanity.”
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