‘From Kristallnacht to Kindertransport’

A deeply moving Kristallnacht commemoration event took place on Sunday evening against the backdrop of a sickening neo-Nazi protest that was allowed to continue outside of NSW Parliament.

‘The Night of Broken Glass’, on November 9-10 in 1938, when Nazi forces destroyed over 200 synagogues, vandalised 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses, arrested 30,000 Jews, and murdered 91 Jews across Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland, marked the onset of the Holocaust.

During his speech at the event, which was attended by 900 people, NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president David Ossip acknowledged the “warning signs” that we are seeing at the moment and what they might pertain for the future.

“As we meet this evening we reflect on the gathering of emboldened neo-Nazis outside NSW parliament, where they proudly and in carefully coded language called for the abolition of the so called ‘Jewish lobby’ – a legally convenient way of making their intentions about the Jewish community as a whole known,” Ossip said.

“They were brazen in a way that would have been unthinkable until very recently.”

With a number of politicians, community leaders and beloved Holocaust survivors in attendance, this year’s theme was ‘From Kristallnacht to Kindertransport’.

The keynote speaker was Emile Sherman, winner of the Best Picture Oscar for ‘The King’s Speech’ and Producer of the film ‘One Life’, a biographical drama based on the true story of British humanitarian Sir Nicholas Winton and his rescue of 669 children on the Kindertransport.

Sherman said the screening of ‘One Life’ in London, just two days after October 7, 2023, was the most emotional he had ever experienced.

“In the audience were 20 actual Kinder from the trains that he’d saved and 200 descendants,” he said while in conversation with Michaela Kalowski.

“We were obviously worried that people were not going to care that much about this story and Jewish kids, but the film did incredibly well at the box office.”

The program also featured remarkable stories of community members rescued on the Kindertransport, with several Australian-based Kinder, or their descendants, lighting memorial candles. Among them, Helen Geedrick shared her father’s experience and her own emotional meeting with the person who saved his life, Sir Winton.

Musical performances were be led by Ben Adler and Paul Khodor, accompanied by Ezry Israel and a combined primary school children’s choir, and there was a beautiful tribute to the late Yvonne Engelman by her granddaughter.