JERUSALEM (AP) — Walter Bingham was 14 years old when Nazis plundered Jewish businesses and places of worship across Germany and Austria in what became known as Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass.”
Bingham is among a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors marking the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht Sunday, at a time when antisemitism is on the rise, especially in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war.
The Nov. 9, 1938, attack was a stark turning point in the escalating persecution that led to the killing of 6 million European Jews by the Nazis and their supporters during the Holocaust.
The recent attacks against Jewish symbols across the world, including synagogues in Australia and Israeli sports teams in Europe,among others, worry the survivors.
“We live in an era equivalent to 1938, where synagogues are burned, and people in the street are attacked,” said Bingham, now 101.
During the Kristallnacht riots, the Nazis killed at least 91 people, vandalized 7,500 Jewish businesses and set fire to more than 1,400 synagogues, according to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
Up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many taken to concentration camps such as Dachau or Buchenwald. Hundreds more died from mistreatment or killed themselves in the camps, years before official mass deportations began.
Synagogues smoldering, violent crowds in the streets
Bingham and two other Kristallnacht survivors shared memories of the destruction during an Associated Press interview last week in Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue, where light streamed through stained-glass windows at one of Israel’s most ornate synagogues. The survivors, who often give testimony at the annual March of the Living at the site of Auschwitz, considered the location symbolic of the flourishing of Jewish houses of worship despite the Holocaust.
Though his memory sometimes fails as a centenarian, Bingham said he can remember every detail of the aftermath of the Kristallnacht attack 87 years ago.
He was walking to school in Mannheim, south of Frankfurt, the morning after the riots, he said. When he got to the synagogue where his classes were held, it was a smoldering wreck. He watched as …