One of the great resources we have here in Central Florida is the Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education
Center in Maitland. On Sunday, November 4th at 4PM they are once again hosting an event that both attempts to capture the horrors of the past while causing the visitor the reflect upon where we should go from here. The program, being held in the auditorium of the Jewish
Community Center, 851 N. Maitland Avenue is the annual commemoration
Kristallnacht, “the Night of Broken Glass”.
The
program this year features the premiere of a new play, Witness, that is
drawn entirely from the words of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders
on that terrible night. During the production, enlarged archival
photographs of the people and events of that night will be projected onto the
stage.
Kristallnacht
commemorates the night of November 9 and 10, 1938, when Nazi soldiers,
police officers and citizens began a pogrom of looting, burning, arrests
and death. According to Pam Kancher, Executive Director of the
Holocaust Center, the importance of Kristallnacht is not just the
destruction of property and loss of lives. It was, she said, the time
“when the whole world could see what was happening, and chose to turn
away.”
“We
can never forget the toll on humanity caused by hatred and
indifference,“ she said. “It is our obligation to remember, to educate,
and to stand up for the targets of intolerance.”
In the two days of the assault that the Kristallnacht event remembers 91 Jews were murdered, and 30,000 Jewish men—a quarter of all
Jewish men in Germany—were taken to concentration camps. During that
assault, 1,668 synagogues were ransacked, and 267 set on fire. In Vienna
alone 95 synagogues or houses of prayer were destroyed.
No admission is charged to attend the program. Reservations are recommended but not required. More information is available at holocaustedu.org or by calling 407-628-0555.
