75 Years On, Washington Heights Jewish Community Remembers Kristallnacht

Amid sounds of shattering glass and roaring fires, a confused 14-year-old Hannah Eisner struggled to read a book in her parents’ apartment in Offenbach, Germany. It was Nov. 9, 1938 – the Night of Broken Glass. Stores were vandalized, synagogues burned, Jews were killed or rounded up and sent to concentration camps, but the Eisners were spared the worst because their superintendent owed Hannah’s father a favor.

(Featured photo of Holocaust survivors and YM & YWHA staff courtesy of the Y)

The following year, the family of three fled to the United States and settled in Washington Heights, a haven for a great number of refugees from Germany at the time. So many German Jews emigrated to the neighborhood that it was soon dubbed “Frankfurt on the Hudson.”

After almost 75 years, the memories of Crystal Night — “Kristallnacht,” in German — endure. Eisner, now 88 and a member of the Washington Heights’ Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation, has willingly recounted her past so that her congregation can preserve her story, along with those of other Holocaust survivors, to commemorate Kristallnacht, a night that left shards of glass on German streets.

The stories of Eisner, Charles and Lilli Friedman, Pearl Rosenzveig, Fredy Seidel and Ruth Wertheimer, will be highlighted in a two-month exhibit at the Hebrew Tabernacle titled, “Experiencing a Time of War and Beyond: Portraits of Spirited Holocaust Survivors,” that opens Nov. 8.

Social worker Halley Goldberg, a program supervisor of the UJA-Federation of New York’s “Partners in Caring” program, conducted all six interviews from July to September. Goldberg, who works with four synagogues in Washington Heights, says the process began out of a need to pass down the stories of those who witnessed the evils of the war.

“As the Holocaust-surviving population shrinks, I think it’s important to capture everything that they have to say, to continue their legacy to our children, our grandchildren for as many years as possible,” Goldberg said.

The six were chosen because they were unique, Goldberg said. “Part of what we were looking for was someone with a different story,” she said. “We wanted people who were present at Kristallnacht and experienced the events firsthand and also someone who didn’t survive in the typical fashion.”

That project includes the story of Fredy Seidel, 72, who was born in Shanghai, China, after his parents had escaped Germany. Seidel slept in barracks with other Jewish refugees, most of whom couldn’t find jobs; they all ate in a communal kitchen.

The exhibit features the survivors’ photographs and sculptures, and its opening will begin with a Sabbath service in memory of the 75th Anniversary of Kristallnacht.

“When we observe Kristallnacht, we’re doing so in the context of Jewish service” with special prayers and music, said Rabbi Jeffrey Gale of the Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation. The rabbi, who has led the congregation for four years, said the act of remembrance itself has a religious quality , as in the commemoration of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt.

“Kristallnacht was the beginning of the end for German Jewry,” he said. This is not the first attempt to document stories of survivors, Gale added, but there is a greater sense of urgency because the congregation is “losing” them.

“Last year, I celebrated the funerals of six Holocaust survivors and that’s a lot” for our congregation, he said. A Reform congregation, the Hebrew Tabernacle has been in the Heights since 1973 and has long been home to German Jews who survived the Holocaust.

The rabbi selected the six for the exhibition. “We chose people who speak freely about their experiences,” he said. “Not every Holocaust survivor is willing to share their experience.”

Funding for the exhibit came from a grant from the UJA-Federation – a human services group that seeks to strengthen Jewish communities – through its Partners in Caring program. UJA places social workers, such as Goldberg, at centers and synagogues throughout the city to assist Jewish communities. A graduate of Yeshiva University, Goldberg works from the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood.

Deborah Katznelson, chief social services officer at the Y, said the Medical Center Neighborhood Fund also helped underwrite the event. The Columbia University Medical Center, New York-Presbyterian and New York State Psychiatric Institute created the fund to support local nonprofits in Washington Heights and Inwood.

After the exhibit, the Y and synagogues intend to turn the knowledge into a community project, Goldberg said. They hope the Kristallnacht stories will reach others in the community, not just Jews.

One artist involved in the project, Peter Bulow, sees his work at the exhibition as a labor of love. Bulow, whose mother is also a Holocaust survivor, says her experience had an impact on him. “I became very aware of having been lucky,” he said.

With a grant from the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance, Bulow has been making bronze busts of Holocaust survivors for the past three years. He considers his work a novel way to commemorate them. “There have been videos and pictures … but I don’t think anybody has made sculptures of Holocaust survivors,” he said.

Like Bulow, Goldberg found working with the survivors intriguing but challenging.

A challenge was “trying to get the information without seeming so intrusive,” she said. “It’s hard to ask people about their lives, especially when you know how much they’ve suffered.”

She recalls a striking incident with Eisner – her fourth interviewee. Despite being embarrassed that “everyone else’s father was dragged away,” Eisner boldly declared: “Hitler made me proud to be Jewish.”

(First published on The Uptowner)