85 years since Kristallnacht
The theme for this year's commemorative event was Antisemitism: What it really is, why it thrives, and how we can stop it.
Hundreds attended the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies’ 2023 Kristallnacht commemoration ceremony at Moriah College on November 9, featuring keynote speaker Dr Dave Rich, the UK’s leading expert on antisemitism, and the author of The Left’s Jewish Problem and Everyday Hate.
Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass – marked the onset of the Holocaust, when from November 9 to 10, 1938, Nazi-endorsed pogroms resulted in vandalism, burning and destruction of more than 200 synagogues, damage to 7000 Jewish-owned business, the arrest of 30,000 Jews and the murder of 91 Jews in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.
The theme for this year’s commemorative event was Antisemitism: What it really is, why it thrives, and how we can stop it.
Others speakers included JBD president David Ossip, Youth HEAR’s Kara Borecki, chair of JBD’s Shoah Committee Dane Stern, and Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-CEO Peter Wertheim.
Event partners included the Sydney Jewish Museum, Courage to Care NSW, JCA and Youth HEAR.
Among the audience were former prime minister Scott Morrison – fresh from a visit to Israel – NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman, and Michael McDonogh – a great-great-grandson of William Cooper, an Aboriginal man who led one of the world’s only known private protests against Nazi Germany, following Kristallnacht.
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