Voices from the Past: Remembering Kristallnacht

Hanne Brenner Holsten, founding director of WJC’s Nursery School, shares her experience as a survivor of Kristallnacht

“My mission is to relate my story to whomever wants to hear it, because silence allows evil to progress,” said Hanne Brenner Holsten, founding director of WJC’s Nursery School and survivor of Kristallnacht, the twonight pogrom in the German city of Nuremberg in 1938.

Amid escalating violence and persecution that Jews were facing in Nazi Germany, Kristallnacht marked a shift from a policy of discrimination and exclusion to one of extermination.

Holsten and her family escaped, but not without difficulty. She shared her story with Voices in January 2023.

The youngest of three children, Holsten enjoyed a typical childhood in Nuremberg, where her parents, Elisabeth and Adolph, owned and operated a prosperous jewelry store. “We belonged to a synagogue, celebrated the Jewish holidays, and did nearly everything that you would do if you lived without fear,” she recalled.

Before Kristallnacht, changes became noticeable: “I asked a schoolmate if we could play together. She looked at me and said, ‘I can never play with you again because you are a dirty Jew.’” Confused, Holsten scanned herself from head to toe. “I thought maybe I had stepped in mud.”

Adolph Brenner had recognized that it was time to leave Europe. He had gone to Brooklyn to scout out a new life. “He came back to settle his affairs and get us out,” said Holsten. During his return home, Adolph was arrested and sent to Poland, where he and Elisabeth had been born. Concentration camps were not yet the tightly-surveilled killing centers they would become, and, still possessing his visa, he walked off the premises and went to Holland, where he reunited with extended family and organized a plan for his wife and children’s escape from Nuremberg.

On the first night of the pogrom, Elisabeth and her children hid in the attic of an old house. “We waited in the dark, listening to the thumps of boots and screaming outside,” Holsten remembered. When the Brenners were discovered, they were not immediately arrested; instead, they were allowed to return to the apartment.

“My mother wasn’t allowed to take anything from the store, but she had hidden some jewels in my dolls. She must have done this in secret—she never told me.” Holsten remembered the devastation: “Everything was demolished. Synagogues, businesses, homes,” including the family’s apartment and shop.

“Germany was not at war with Poland yet, but the Germans wanted to get rid of all the Polish Jews,” said Holsten. The family was loaded onto a wagon without windows, water, food, or commodes. Holsten recalled “hundreds of screaming children and terrified adults.” At the border, no one was allowed to disembark. Many thousands of people were already there, waiting in the cold rain. Poland refused entry to the Brenner’s train, which returned to Nuremberg.

Undeterred, Elisabeth and Adolph began planning another escape. “My mother sent me and my eleven-year-old brother Siegfried to Holland. My oldest sister stayed with my mother.” Elisabeth gave Hanne a beautiful doll to keep her entertained, while Siegfried received a toy-filled suitcase. Both gifts were filled with gems, unbeknownst to the children.

When the train reached the Dutch border, Hanne and Siegfried were again barred passage.

“In some ways, this was a blessing because had we disembarked, we would’ve probably been arrested with my aunt Eva and sent with her to Auschwitz [Eva miraculously made it out alive],” said Holsten. “Eva boarded the train to see us. She created a tale about how my doll needed to stay with her to rest, and gave me a new one. She did the same with my brother.” The clandestine transfer complete, the children were sent back to Nuremberg.

The family soon attempted a third escape, this time through Cologne. “My father hired a smuggler with funds from the jewels,” said Holsten. The Brenners waited in Cologne for nearly six weeks until they could cross the border. “We met smugglers at the entrance to a forest. One took pity on me and carried me on his shoulders.” Eventually, they came upon a furniture van equipped with a fake wall, with a carve-out where the Brenners sat in silence for hours as the driver transported them, finally, out of Germany and into Holland.

After crossing, another smuggler took Elisabeth and the children to a farmhouse, where they spent two long, cold weeks in another dark attic waiting to cross into Belgium, which had not yet been invaded by Germany.

WHAT WAS KRISTALLNACHT?

Also known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a violent anti-Jewish pogrom that took place in Nazi Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland in the former Czechoslovakia on November 9 and 10, 1938. It is considered a turning point in the history of the Holocaust, the systematic persecution and extermination of Jews by the Nazis.

The pogrom was instigated by the Nazi regime in response to the November 7 assassination in Paris of Ernst vom Rath, a low-level German diplomat, by Herschel Grynszpan, a seventeen-year-old Polish Jew. Grynszpan’s exact motives for the assassination remain unclear, but it is believed he sought revenge for his parents, who had been expelled from Germany to Poland earlier that year along with other Polish Jews and were stranded at the border after being denied entry into Poland.

The Nazi regime used the Rath assassination as the pretext for the pogrom. Chief Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels suggested that “World Jewry” was responsible for Rath’s death and declared that “demonstrations should not be prepared or organized by the Party, but insofar as they erupt spontaneously, they are not to be hampered.” Indeed, firefighters were instructed not to interfere unless blazes threatened non-Jewish establishments.

On the night of November 9, Nazi paramilitary forces and civilians carried out coordinated attacks on Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues. Thousands of Jewishowned businesses and homes were destroyed, over 1,000 synagogues torched, and though the official death toll was 91, modern scholars estimate that number to be much higher. Tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Many were eventually released on the condition that they not return to Germany. In fact, until October 1941, the official German policy was to encourage Jewish emigration.

Kristallnacht: Petrol being poured over the pews of a synagogue. Image from an album of unpublished photographs once “in the possession of a Jewish-American serviceman who was deployed to Germany during the second world war,” and subsequently donated to Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial by his descendants.

As for Grynszpan, he was arrested and extradited to Germany, where he was imprisoned. His fate remains unknown; he may have died in a concentration camp during World War II but was declared dead in absentia in 1960.

Following Kristallnacht, the Nazis declared that the Jewish community was responsible for the pogrom, confiscated all insurance payouts to Jewish homeowners and business owners, and fined the community a collective one billion Reichsmark in an “atonement tax.”

In the middle of a pitch-black night, the Brenners left the attic and found a hay wagon equipped with a false bottom waiting outside. “It could conceal four people without suffocating them. Sometimes I think it was my imagination, but it wasn’t.”

Covered by hay, the family hid in the false bottom of the wagon, which was soon stopped by soldiers. “They stuck in their pitchforks, but Hashem must have been watching us because they did not penetrate.”

A bridge guarded by armed soldiers separated Belgium and Germany, but the smugglers would not take them across—the Brenners had to walk alone. “I can only imagine what went through my mother’s head: We’re going to be arrested, tortured, or shot dead. Again, I attribute it to Hashem because the soldiers literally turned around and allowed us to cross.”

The Brenners waited in a roach-infested apartment in Belgium for five weeks until Adolph (who was by now waiting for them in London) procured tickets for passage to England. Now undocumented, the Brenners boarded the boat, but the captain got wind of their situation. “I remember the captain yelling for my mother, but she ignored him. Perhaps she figured he wouldn’t throw anyone overboard at sea.” Finally, the Brenners landed in the relative safety of the UK. They settled into a two-family home in Cardiff, Wales, where Adolph found work as a toolmaker. War arrived in England shortly after the Brenners did, and Cardiff was targeted by near-daily bombing. “We always had to carry gas masks. We never knew whether our house would be shelled. And yet, I don’t think that was an unhappy time for me. We were warm and had enough to eat. I made a friend. I liked school.” Most importantly, the family was reunited.

I’m 99% sure I opted to focus on early childhood education because that was my way of reliving my childhood, by creating a program where children were safe and happy and laughing and doing all the wonderful things that children should.

When their visa came through, the Brenners left Cardiff for Flatbush, Brooklyn, before eventually settling in the Bronx, where Adolph opened another jewelry store.

New York was a chance to start over, but Holsten could not recreate a lost childhood. “I’m 99% sure I opted to focus on early childhood education because that was my way of reliving my childhood, by creating a program where children were safe and happy and laughing and doing all the wonderful things that children should.” During her three decades directing WJC’s Nursery School, Holsten grew the program from four children to the robust institution that it is today.

Holsten still struggles to process the events and the people who perpetrated them. “For years, I questioned if there was a God. I hated the Germans. But eventually, my husband, who was Viennese, wanted to show his children where he was born. My feelings dissipated. I don’t harbor hate, but I cannot understand how people like Mengele existed and still, presumably, loved their own children. I haven’t answered those questions. This [Nazi Germany] was not a population of maniacs. These were ordinary people.”

I and Thou and Israel

Rabbi Arnowitz looks at our relationship with Israel as it turns 75

In May of 1998, Tami and I were living in Israel and had the privilege to attend the Pa’amonei HaYovel ceremony in Jerusalem, a special Yom Ha’atzmaut concert to celebrate Israel’s 50th “jubilee” birthday. It was a heady time. The Oslo Process was still proceeding with hope for a peaceful, two-state solution. And, believe it or not, the biggest controversy was around the allmale dance troupe that would perform in the nationally-sponsored concert, because they were planning on performing shirtless — such a scandal! As Israel neared the half-century mark, the words of Leviticus imprinted on the Liberty Bell seemed within reach for the Jewish State: “And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants.” Two states for two peoples. It sounded so simple.

Here we are today, with Israel’s 75th birthday fast-approaching, and the feelings are, well, anything but simple. “Complicated,” in fact, has become a favorite word for many of us when we describe the situation there. How did we get from proclaiming liberty throughout the land to where we find ourselves now? Is there still hope for a twostate solution? With this new government, will there be liberty, with equal rights and responsibilities for all the citizens of Israel, including Conservative and Reform Jews, not to mention for those who identify as LGBTQ+ and others? And what about Arab citizens of Israel? It’s all complicated. The trouble is, we live in a world that doesn’t really appreciate complexity. When something can’t be explained in a tweet, it is as easy to look away as it is to engage deeply.

And that is the dilemma facing American Jews today when it comes to Israel, for perhaps the first time in over a generation: Do we look away or do we engage more deeply and more passionately than ever before? Looking away is tempting, particularly when the Israeli government includes cabinet members with inexcusable views and infuriating rhetoric; when the Knesset ponders laws to weaken the legal system and threatens the basic tenets of liberty and democracy. And yet, if we look away, what does it say about our relationship with the place, and with its people? differences. We don’t need to necessarily approve of all of our partner’s actions or even their values, but we need to accept the other as they are, even while verbalizing disagreements and trying to influence where we can.

It is because our relationship with Israel is “I-You” that we must continue to engage, through trips and learning about Israel’s religious, cultural, and historical significance, as we work simultaneously toward a brighter, simpler, and freer future. Believe it or not, I am optimistic. (Yes, really!) Why? Because I am not only a student of philosophy, I am also a student of history.

In recently rereading philosopher Martin Buber’s I and Thou, the 1923 book in which he creates a theology based on relationships, I was reminded what having a real relationship entails. As Buber explains: treating the other as an object to be viewed only as it relates to you — your gain or loss — defines an “I-It” relationship, or mere objectification. Is that what our relationship with Israel is? Is Israel just a headline, a political entity to be evaluated in whatever way might best serve our perceived self-interest? Or is Israel worthy of more than that?

At a higher level than “I-It” is “I-You,” a relationship between true partners that demands respect and an attempt to understand, even if not always agreement. For many people, for many years, Israel was a source of pride in faith, security in place, and strength in identity. Now things may indeed be “complicated.” But an “I-You” relationship demands engagement, especially to bridge

Twenty-five years before Tami and I sat at the Pa’amonei HaYovel concert, Israel celebrated its 25th birthday. It was May 1973, and there was tremendous optimism at the time. Yet only a few months later, on Yom Kippur, Israel would experience its most vulnerable moment when Egypt and Syria attacked and caught the overconfident Israeli Defense Forces ill-prepared. Many thought Israel would not survive. Just five years later, Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat stood with U.S. President Jimmy Carter signing the Camp David Accords.

Things have had a way of changing quickly in Israel’s short history, and as the 17th century English theologian Thomas Fuller said, “...the darkest hour of the night comes just before the dawn.” I fervently pray that 25 years from now, as Israel’s next jubilee birthday approaches, we will once again be celebrating peace and “liberty for all its inhabitants.” What’s more, through engagement with Israel and her people as true partners, even when we disagree, I hope we as Jews can help that dawn come even faster. In the meantime, we will be sure not only to wrestle with the complications, but also to celebrate the miracles, like this 75th birthday.