On the evening of 9 November 1938, SA men burst into the home of the Zack family in Neidenburg in Eastern Prussia, Germany. The father of the family, Aron, who was standing at the entrance of the house, was stabbed in the stomach, and jumped out of the window. His wife Minna heard the tumult, came to the door and was stabbed in the neck. Minna hemorrhaged heavily, and did not survive the night. That same night, the city's synagogue was demolished. After recuperating, Aron managed to leave Germany together with his five children. On 12 May 1939, they left Hamburg on a ship bound for Argentina. In one of the pages of the passport Aron used to flee Germany, Minna's record is deleted with the handwritten note: "Aron Zack's wife died on 10 November 1938."
The story of Minna Zack is highlighted in a new online exhibition uploaded in October 2018 to the Yad Vashem website marking 80 years since the Kristallnacht pogrom. Using photographs, documents, personal letters, Pages of Testimony, films, testimony excerpts, artifacts and works of art from Yad Vashem's collections, the exhibition depicts the brutal blow suffered by the Jews during Kristallnacht: the physical violence, the humiliation, the property damage, the synagogue desecration and destruction, and the horrifying sight of holy books and Torah scrolls in flames.
"That was the heart of the problem of German Jewry: It was so much a part of German society that the Nazi blow hit it from within. Until 1938, my parents never thought of leaving Germany." So wrote Holocaust survivor and historian Prof. Zvi Bacharach z"l, when describing his experiences as a child during the Kristallnacht pogrom in Hanau, Germany.
During the pogrom, 91 Jews were murdered, more than 1,400 synagogues across Germany and Austria were torched, and Jewish-owned shops and businesses were plundered and destroyed. In addition, the Jews were forced to pay “compensation” for the damage that had been caused and approximately 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This exhibition brings the personal account of what happened that night – a story that dry statistics cannot possibly relay in full. Some of the stories displayed here are being told for the first time online.
A few days after that terrible night, Aharon-Arnold Rosenfeld from Vienna wrote to his son Haim (Robert) in Haifa:
"The blessed house [synagogue] was attacked, all the windows were shattered, the pews were smashed, the curtain of the Ark was torn into pieces and a Torah scroll was thrown outside…The black memorial plaques on the walls were smashed."
Aharon was later murdered in Terezin.
Aharon's letter is part of an album preserved in Yad Vashem's Archives. The album also contains photographs documenting the destruction wrought by the rioters in Vienna that night. The photos depict burned and desecrated synagogues, as well as the vandalized hall of the Jewish cemetery.
The exhibition also includes, among other accounts, the story of Lore Stern, from Kassel, Germany, who was a toddler when Kristallnacht took place. Lore's father Markus was arrested and sent to the Buchenwald camp. The neighbors offered to hide his wife Kaetchen and their young daughter in their house, to protect them from the rioters who were breaking into and vandalizing Jewish homes. Lore, already in pajamas, hid with her mother at the neighbors' until the pogrom was over. When they returned home, they found that the place had been torn apart, and was not fit for habitation.
After six weeks' internment, thanks to the US visa in his possession, Markus was released on condition that he leave Germany immediately. Eighteen months after reaching the US, Markus succeeded in obtaining visas for his wife and daughter. Lore took Inge, the doll she had received for her birthday from her beloved grandmother Lena who was murdered in the Holocaust, with her on her voyage. She dressed Inge in the pajamas she had worn the night of Kristallnacht.
In 2018, Lore donated Inge to Yad Vashem, and the doll is displayed in the exhibition:
"Inge was very meaningful to me, for the simple reason it was given to me as a gift from a grandparent… and of course the fact that I brought it from Germany with me. After I married and had children, I didn't allow them to play with her… The pajamas she always wore – that was my memory of Kristallnacht."
This online exhibition is generously supported by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 87.
![Online Exhibition "The Kristallnacht Pogrom. It Came from Within"](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/styles/main_image_1block/public/13_57.jpg?itok=th7Ra3r3 "Online Exhibition "The Kristallnacht Pogrom. It Came from Within"")
![Online Exhibition "The Kristallnacht Pogrom. It Came from Within"](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/13_57.jpg "Online Exhibition "The Kristallnacht Pogrom. It Came from Within"")
