This year’s Kristallnacht event in Germany hosts a former German Jew, whose presence inherently connects the pogrom with his known opposition to a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and his blame of Israel for “promoting anti-Semitism globally.”
In what may signal a desire of Germans to leave the past further behind them, Germany hosted a French-German intellectual – in a church – who fled the Nazi regime in 1933 and did not experience the horrors of the Holocaust but now equates Gaza with a concentration gap.
Kristallnacht, or the “night of broken glass,” occurred on this day in 1938, when dozens of synagogues were burned and thousands of German Jews either killed or rounded up.
Alfred Grosser, a prominent intellectual and critic of Israel was invited by the mayor of Frankfurt to speak at the event in St. Paul’s Church, marking a change from the tradition of featuring guests whose political views are not inflammatory, especially against Israel..
“What does criticism of Israel have to do with the memory of the Holocaust?” Deidre Berger, director of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee, asked rhetorically. ““Because he was born Jewish, he flirts with his identity, and is used as a camouflage to mask criticisms others would like to make."
Jewish leaders who will attend the ceremony warned they walk out in the middle of Grosser’s speech if he uses the podium to attack Israel.
Non-traditional German Jewish intellectuals in the 1930s felt comfortable that no harm would come to them because they were "good Germans” who rejected Jewish laws and tradition. In what may be a frightening repetition of history, liberal Jews in Europe and the United States have rejected traditional Judaism but express their “Jewishness” by making Israel appear to be illegitimate by maintaining a presence in areas in Judea and Samaria, where Jews lived in Biblical times.
Despite Germany’s vow that it never again will fall under anti-Jewish domination, a recent survey revealed that 17 percent of Germans think “Jews have too much influence.”