Technology allows for timeless lessons to be learned
by Lea Kahn, Packet Media Group
Walter Israel should have been celebrating his bar mitzvah — the religious ceremony that marks a Jewish boy’s entry into adulthood — on Nov. 9, 1938.
Instead, Walter and his family — along with thousands of other Jews across Germany and Austria — were most likely taunted and terrorized by the Nazis and their sympathizers that day. Their synagogue was torched and the dry goods store they owned was vandalized, its windows broken.
The two-day event has since become known as “Kristallnacht” — the night of broken glass — for the riots that began Nov. 9 and spilled over into Nov. 10. In restrospect, it is commonly accepted that Kristallnacht marked the beginning of what would become known as the Holocaust.
Sunday afternoon, residents of the German city of Lautertal — where Theodor and Minna Israel and their son, Walter, lived — were joined via Skype with a mostly Jewish audience at Rider University to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. The event was co-sponsored by Rider and the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education.
Philip Kirschner, the chairman of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education, told the German and American audiences that he is the only son of Holocaust survivors. His father lost his entire family, and his mother and her sister are the only survivors of their family, he said.
Mr. Kirschner said that “75 years is a long time ago. Who will tell the story 75 years from now? What we do now will answer the question (of remembrance of Kristallnacht) in the future. In New Jersey, we reach out to survivors — not just the second generation, but also the third generation. They want people to remember what happened to them.”
In the audience at Rider were Ryan Stark Lilienthal and Simone Oppenheimer — both of whom are related to the Israel family, and who participated in the Sunday afternoon event.
Mr. Lilienthal, who lives in Princeton, is a great-great-nephew of Theodor Israel. Ms. Oppenheimer, who lives in Lawrence, is a great-niece of Minna Oppenheimer Israel.
Mr. Lilienthal took to the stage at the Bart Luedeke Student Center’s auditorium and told the American and German audiences that the Israel family — “my family” — is the bridge between Lawrence and Lautertal. The Israel family were among the millions of Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps.
Walter Israel was born on Nov. 9, 1925, but instead of celebrating his 13th birthday on Nov. 9, 1938, the boy and his parents suffered through the trauma of Kristallnacht, Mr. Lilienthal said.
Trying to find out whether Walter had celebrated his bar mitzvah and to learn more about the Israel family, he discovered Lautertal’s website — which has a page devoted to its Jewish community.
That website page led him to Frank Maus, who spoke to the Americans Sunday afternoon through an interpreter. The German audience, which included children and adults, had gathered in a church that was built in 1748, on the same site as an earlier church that was built there, the interpreter said.
Through the interpreter, Mr. Maus said that since Mr. Lilienthal visited Lautertal in June 2012, “a special relationship has developed between us.” Mr. Maus, who is a history teacher, said he became interested in the history of Lautertal’s Jewish community while he was writing a thesis for graduate school.
Mr. Maus said he found extensive documentation of the Israel family and the traumatic experiences they suffered under the Nazis. Sensing trouble, the majority of the Jewish families left the small villages that later became part of Lautertal, but not the Israel family, he said. Minna Israel did not want to leave her “beloved village,” he said.
Looking through the file on the Israel family, Mr. Maus said he discovered Mr. Israel “felt what could be waiting for them” and tried to immigrate, but those efforts were stymied by the Nazis. The family needed permission to immigrate. The Nazis confiscated Mr. Israel’s identity papers and then claimed they did not have them, he said.
”Sitting in the reading room, I was browsing through the Nazi files. I found his passport that he wanted returned to him. I gazed at his well-preserved face (in the passport photograph). I was holding in my hands the document (that would have allowed the family to leave). I can’t describe the thoughts that raced through my mind,” he said.
”In 1942, the family was collected with the few remaining Jews in Lautertal and taken by train to Poland (to a Nazi concentration camp). They were a long way from home, and death was waiting for them,” Mr. Maus said.
Several 9th-grade students from Lautertal also spoke of their research to the Americans. Through the interpreter, one student said the Oppenheimer family had a good reputation and that they felt more German than Jewish. The Jews lived “in a sense of serenity” and could not believe that their neighbors could be Nazis. But it was the hysteria, she said.
Heinz Eichhorn, a Lautertal municipal administrator, said through the interpreter that Germany planned to be a democracy, but when the National Socialist German Workers’ Party rose to power in 1933, the intent was “to prevent anything to do with a democracy.”
Opponents were persecuted in concentration camps, and that’s how the Nazis managed to sow fear among those who did not vote for them.
By 1938, there were virtually no protests because people feared for their lives and their families’ lives, Mr. Eichhorn said. It made the population virtually silent. “It brought darkness” over their Jewish neighbors and over Germany, he said.
”Today, after 75 years, we would like to take one step further and promote a new friendship. Hence, we are lighting a torch (candle) to dispel the darkness,” Mr. Eichhorn said, as four candles were lighted in memory of Walter Israel and his parents — as well as all of the Nazis’ victims — in the German church.
The candles were set on top of bricks that were saved from the Israel family’s house by Mr. Maus, the Lautertal history teacher, as it was being demolished about a dozen years ago.
Mr. Lilienthal responded that “we are embracing the light you are sending us.” Turning to the audience at Rider, he asked for the Holocaust survivors and their children to stand up. About 50 people rose to their feet.
Simone Oppenheimer and her daughter, Ariana Colner, went up on the stage to light candles — also set on top of a brick from the Israel family’s demolished home — and send the light back to Lautertal. They also lighted a menorah, which is a candelabra used during the Jewish holiday of Hanukah, that was saved from the destruction of Kristallnacht.
Then, Pastor Thomas Bloecher of the Protestant church in Latertal “received the light” from the Americans and led the German audience in lighting candles before they embarked on a procession to the former Jewish synagogue building nearby.