75 Years After Kristallnacht

The Reich Pogroms of November 1938: The End of the Beginning and the Beginning of the End

Presented to the 25th annual conference for the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants (WFJCSHD), Sunday, November 3, 2013

Seventy Five years ago this week, a series of pogroms took place in Germany, which by then included Austria. More than 1000 synagogues were burned, their pews destroyed, sacred Torah scrolls and holy books set aflame. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses were ransacked and 30,000 men age 16-60 were arrested and sent off to newly expanded German concentration camps, most especially, Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. These pogroms were given a fancy name Kristallnacht and it is by that name that they are best known.

Israel Gutman, Warsaw Ghetto Fighter and Historian, Dies at 90

Obituary

By Michael Berenbaum

Published October 03, 2013.

Israel Gutman, Israel’s most prominent survivor historian, died in Jerusalem on October 1.

A native of Warsaw, Gutman was only a teenager when the Germans invaded his Poland. His parents and his older sister died in the Warsaw ghetto; his younger sister was part of the famed Janusz Korczak orphanage, led by the charismatic pediatrician educator who was the Mister Rogers and Dr. Benjamin Spock of Poland. From Korczak, Gutman learned that courage took many forms in the ghetto; he never forgot that spiritual resistance was of great importance.

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