Munich – 70 Years After Kristallnacht, New York Jews Make Germany Home

Munich, Germany – No one needs to explain the horrors of Kristallnacht to Lauren Rid.

A Woodmere native, Rid lives near the Munich meeting hall where a speech by Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels sparked “the night of broken glass” beginning on Nov. 9, 1938, during which synagogues and Jewish homes and businesses were destroyed in a wave of violence that foreshadowed the Holocaust. Some 100 Jews were murdered that night, and, subsequently, 30,000 more were sent to concentration camps.

Now, in a nation once synonymous with anti-Jewish terror, Rid is among a growing number of American Jews who are leading a resurgence of Jewish life.

“When I pass by that spot, and I pass by it quite often, you know what happened here,” said Rid, 45, who moved to Munich with her husband in 1992, and who is raising their three school-aged children here. “But the reality today is a very different reality.”

There is one reform synagogue, Temple Beth Shalom with 300 members, made up in large measure by American expatriates who wanted their children to have a Jewish religious and cultural life while living in predominantly Catholic Munich. And there is a larger synagogue in Munich that catered to the more orthodox practices of its Russian immigrant majority.

Today some 260,000 Jews live in Germany, according to German government figures.

Germany’s Jewish population has more than tripled since 1990 – Germany is now home to Europe’s third-largest Jewish population, behind France and England.

The country’s Jewish population today is less than half of the 600,000 Jews who were living in Germany when Adolf Hitler became chancellor in 1933. In all, 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust; 12,000 remained alive in Germany by the end of the war in 1945.

Since war’s end, just three rabbis have been ordained in Germany. One of them is Tom Kucera, a Czech-born rabbinical student who today is the rabbi at Beth Shalom.

“I want to contribute to the continuation of Jewish civilization,” said Kucera. “And I specifically use the word ‘civilization,’ because Judaism is not only a religion, it’s much more. We have a lot of Jews who are nonreligious who are still good Jews.

“I think it is much more welcoming here than in other countries of Europe because of the government’s sensitivity to history,” he said.

Over the weekend, Germany marked the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht with solemn ceremonies nationwide, Chancellor Angela Merkel told Jewish leaders gathered Sunday at the Rykestrasse Synagogue in Berlin, Germany’s largest temple. “We must ensure that anti-Semitism, racism and anti-foreigner feeling can never again take root,” she said.

But the re-emergence of a tiny extremist fringe in Germany still leaves some Jews here uneasy.
A police cruiser is stationed in front of the residential building where Beth Shalom’s members pray in a basement sanctuary. “We don’t discourage it,” Rid said. “We’re happy they see a responsibility to protect Jewish life.”

But she says she feels very much a part of Germany, a nation that incubated many of the cultural traditions that shaped her identity as a Jewish woman on Long Island.

“I feel very comfortable being Jewish here,” said Rid, who left Woodmere at 19 to study philosophy at Union College in upstate Schenectady.
“Maybe that’s because I’m a New Yorker and say people have to take me for who I am.”