Light Up The Church

July 2023: Kristallnacht News Update

Thank you again for signing the Kristallnacht declaration. The first week of every month we send a few stories about Kristallnacht and the Holocaust that made the news in the previous month. Towards November 2023 we will share information about Light Up The Church 2023.

 

  • Neo-Nazi charged with defacing Michigan synagogue

    A white supremacist was arrested and indicted on Thursday for vandalizing synagogues in Michigan with Nazis symbols in a plan he and co-conspirators called “Operation Kristallnacht.”

  • The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter wasn’t acting alone

    When the shooter — who was convicted on all counts on June 16 — walked into the Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018, he wasn’t acting alone. He was part of a larger cycle of right-wing extremism in which each attack inspires the next, fueled by the same bigotry that claimed the lives of my grandparents’ families and millions of others. Motivated by age-old hate, this violent, antisemitic white supremacist massacred 11 Jews on a Shabbat morning because he believed that their congregation was helping immigrants “invade” the country and “replace” white people.

  • Ruins of Munich synagogue destroyed by the Nazis

    In June of 1938, Munich’s main synagogue was demolished following an order from Adolf Hitler. The rubble was then stored until 1956, when it, along with the remains of other destroyed buildings, was dumped into the river, where it has rested ever since.

  • The Problem with Holocaust Education

    Award-winning author, essayist, and professor of literature Dara Horn talks to JFN President and CEO Andres Spokoiny about her recent essay in the Atlantic, Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse? They speak about this hallmark of Jewish education, and education about Jews, that has been so prevalent for the last 50 years. Dara talks about what she found in her research for the piece, her thoughts about identity, antisemitism, Jewish culture, and much, much more.

  • Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-semitism Worse?

    The recent rise in American anti-Semitism is well documented. I could fill pages with FBI hate-crime statistics, or with a list of violent attacks from the past six years or even the past six months, or with the growing gallery of American public figures saying vile things about Jews. Or I could share stories you probably haven’t heard, such as one about a threatened attack on a Jewish school in Ohio in March 2022—where the would-be perpetrator was the school’s own security guard. But none of that would capture the vague sense of dread one encounters these days in the Jewish community, a dread unprecedented in my lifetime.

  • Mystery of Holocaust escape girls solved after 84 years Published

    The picture of three Jewish girls fleeing Nazi Germany became an iconic image appearing in museums, exhibitions and publications. It was taken at London's Liverpool Street station, but for more than 80 years the girls' identities were a mystery. Until now.

  • Memorial to Holocaust victims, WWII resistance defaced during riots in France

    A memorial to Holocaust victims and members of the French resistance was defaced with graffiti on Thursday during widespread rioting after police fatally shot a teenager in a Paris suburb.

  • ‘Jews in the Garden’ uproots Poland’s homegrown Holocaust perpetrators

    When investigative journalist Judy Rakowsky located the mass grave of five relatives murdered in the Holocaust, she and her cousin decided not to mark the site for fear of attracting vandals, grave-robbers, and irate townspeople. Instead, she wrote a book about them — and their probable murderers.