San Antonio Jewish community members were joined city and local legislative leaders at a North Side community center Nov. 9 to commemorate a bloody, violent event that took place in 1938 and marked a turning point in the Nazis’ campaign against European Jews.

The Jewish Federation of San Antonio, Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio and Jewish Community Relations Council-San Antonio organized the event—held at Barshop Jewish Community Center—to observe Kristallnacht, also known as "Night of Broken Glass."

Between Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, the Nazi regime coordinated a wave of antisemitic violence across Germany, Austria and Czechoslavakia's Sudetenland territory, resulting in the vandalism and damaging or destruction of thousands of Jewish businesses, synagogues and cemeteries, the officially recorded deaths of nearly 100 Jews, and the arrest and imprisonment of more than 30,000 Jewish men.

According to organizers of the local Nov. 9 event, historians see Kristallnacht as a milestone on the Nazis’ path toward the Holocaust, where some 6 million Jews were killed between 1941-45.

“It’s the first time that many of us see the Holocaust in terms of an organized effort to target the Jewish community, and some even think of it as the informal beginning of the Holocaust,” museum director Leslie Davis Met said. “Obviously, that’s not true, but the ideologies started years before that, but it really was the first large effort made among Nazis and their supporters in hitting Jewish communities, businesses, buildings and synagogues.”

With members of different faiths present for the Kristallnacht observance, Met said it was important for the diverse group to demonstrate a united San Antonio community.

One event speaker, District 26 state Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, authored Senate Bill 1828 during the 2019 Texas Legislative session. The bill, which passed, requires the Holocaust to be included in Texas public school curriculum.

The law enabled the state to designate a week of Holocaust remembrance in Texas during the same week as International Holocaust Remembrance, Jan. 27-31. Menendez commended members of the local Jewish community who helped to assemble the piece of legislation.

Menendez said it is important for everyone, especially younger individuals, to realize the level to which one group of people would try and exterminate another group.

According to Menendez, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany surveyed millennials and Gen Z members nationwide on their knowledge of the Holocaust.

The survey showed 63% of respondents do not know about the killing of 6 million Jews, and that 36% of respondents thought 2 million or fewer Jews died during the Holocaust. The survey also showed that 48% of respondents cannot name a single concentration camp or European ghetto where Jews and other minorities suffered a range of atrocities.

“We must do everything we can to prevent future atrocities and future genocides,” Menendez said. “We have to teach our youth compassion, empathy, cultural competency and to encourage them to uphold human value.”

Menendez and other speakers said there are efforts by some individuals around the country to fan the flames of hatred based on prejudice against others for their race, religion or other reasons.

“There’s a rise of antisemitism and civil unrest. This is a concern that we cannot ignore. We cannot be silent in the face of hatred as it allows itself to spread like a virus and it makes every one of us a victim,” Menendez said.

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus spoke at the Kristallnacht observance, recalling his time as an assistant police chief in Washington, D.C. in the late 1990s when the local police chief requiring his officers, starting with commanders, to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

McManus said his time spent at the Holocaust museum in D.C. pulls no punches and teaches the consequences of organized, unfettered hate and government-sanctioned attempts at destroying an entire group. There, McManus said, he and fellow D.C. police commanders heard stories from Holocaust survivors and their loved ones.

“You leave there with a heavy burden,” McManus said.

He said that experience inspired him to later partner with San Antonio Jewish community leaders on an ongoing program requiring SAPD cadets to visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum of San Antonio, located inside the Barshop Jewish Community Center.

McManus said, this way, he and his fellow law enforcement colleagues can learn to better work hand-in-hand with local populations of different races and spiritual beliefs and to ensure those communities are protected.

“The lesson learned there is—what was the role of police during the Holocaust and what did they do to assist the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews around Europe? They were an arm of a government meant to protect people. We have seen what happens, on the extreme end, when representative arms of a government take it upon themselves and try and kill a race of people,” McManus said.

Two local religious leaders—Rabbi Mara Nathan of Temple Beth-El and Antioch Missionary Baptist Church pastor Kenneth Kemp—offered an interfaith reading during the Nov. 9 event, saying that regardless of race or faith, it is vital for all community members to collectively emphasize the value of love and understanding and to counter messages of hate.

“It is all of our responsibility to bear witness, testify and stand together. We know silence in the face of evil is itself evil—not to speak is to speak, and not to act is to act,” Kemp said.

Nathan said that while some individuals of one race could be prejudiced against another group, it is important to acknowledge and lift the voices of those who are anti-racist and for social harmony.

“Today, we know there are Jews who are racist just as we know there are Jews who are anti-racist, and we know there are Black people who are antisemitic just as we know there are Black people with deep connections and commitments to the Jewish people,” Nathan said.

JFSA President and CEO Nammie Ichilov reflected on acts of antisemitism aimed at the local Jewish community this past summer and last fall around the 2021 Kristallnacht observance.

Ichilov also recalled violence threats against synagogues around Texas and other antisemitic incidents in recent years. Ichilov said it is crucial for governments and educational institutions to firmly and consistently denounce and combat acts of hatred and understand how hate is nurtured over time within society.

“How we respond to hate is equally critical,” he said.

San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, speaking at the Nov. 9 ceremony, recalled his visit to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem.

Nirenberg said visitors touring the center can find, among other things, how communal hate toward Jews in Nazi Germany began with the Nazi government and others vilifying primarily Jewish immigrants and a lack of understanding with such individuals.

“You can see that fester over time and become policies that exclude people and what ultimately becomes ‘other-izing’ entire groups of people and then what we know as the horrors of the Holocaust,” he said.

Nirenberg said resources such as SB 1828 and the local Holocaust museum can help to remind today’s people and future generations of what led up to the Holocaust and that everyone has the power to make sure such a calamity never happens again.

“The blessings of being people of free will is that we get to choose a different path, and have been encouraged to do so, and there are so many ways we can do it. Everyday, we encounter opportunities to be a people of compassion, acceptance and to be able to pick a different path,” Nirenberg said.