Beyond the broken glass: The human cost of the 1938 November Pogrom

More than 87 years later, Rabbi Schneier told a UN panel in New York that the memory has never left him.

It shaped a lifelong conviction, he said in a video recording: an attack on a community’s house of worship strikes at the very heart of its faith. His message was one of mutual respect and acceptance, and a call for everyone to learn from the past.

The panel was held this week ahead of the 88th anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, when years of State-sponsored antisemitism erupted into orchestrated violence against Jewish communities across Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.

Speakers set out to look past the familiar images of shattered shop windows to the fear, grief and loss lived by Jewish children, parents and neighbours.

© Courtesy of Rabbi Arthur Schneier Rabbi Arthur Schneier as a young boy.

State-sanctioned terror

On the night of 9–10 November 1938, synagogues were set alight, Jewish homes and businesses were…