Germany, Austria, Israel vow to fight hatred, 82 years after pogrom

Tel Aviv (dpa) – The presidents of Austria, Germany and Israel published a joint video message on Monday vowing to stand together against hatred and anti-Semitism as they commemorated the 82nd anniversary of the November 1938 Pogrom.

The event is also known as Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, as streets in Nazi Germany were covered with the debris from the shattered windows of Jewish properties that were attacked.

“Eighty-two years since Kristallnacht and the dark shadows of the past have not disappeared from our streets,” according to the joint video message by Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen.

“We will stand against hatred. We will stand against anti-Semitism. We will stand together in Vienna, in Jerusalem, in Berlin. Never again means never again,” the message continues.

The video clip was published on social media as part of a global event which will see the illumination of houses of worship around the world later on Monday.

The walls of the Old City of Jerusalem will also be lit up with messages of hope from world leaders, religious figures, and Kristallnacht and Holocaust survivors as part of the “#LetThereBeLight” campaign launched by the March of the Living organization.

Hundreds of synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were looted and set on fire, tens of thousands of Jews publicly humiliated and deported, and at least 100, but possibly as many as 1,300, murdered in the pogrom that started on November 9, 1938.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel called November 9 – also the anniversary of the 1989 fall of the Berlin wall – a reminder of “the worst and the best in our history.”

She called the Nazi pogrom a source of “shame” for the country.

Her government’s commissioner for anti-Semitism said Germany had failed to keep the memory of victims alive.

“The general indifference and subservience towards discrimination which also took place in Germany is a failure which we must address in order to come to correct conclusions,” Felix Klein told the rbb radio broadcaster.

“We have unfortunately not overcome anti-Semitism, not even after 1945,” he said, urging the victims of modern-day anti-Semitism to come forward.