Middle, High School Students Commemorate Kristallnacht

by Abby Marcus, SSLI '29

This morning, middle and high school students gathered to commemorate Kristallnacht, the “Night of Broken Glass.” Members of the HEAR (Holocaust Education And Remembrance) Club led the service with special insertions to honor the 87th anniversary of one of the major pogroms preceding the Holocaust.

On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazis led antisemitic pogroms throughout Nazi Germany, which are today referred to as Kristallnacht. On that night, the Nazi Party instigated the riots, targeting the homes and businesses of Jews in German cities. Nazis, and those who joined them, destroyed synagogues and vandalized Jewish homes, schools, and storefronts. On Kristallnacht, over one hundred Jews were murdered areas in cities throughout Germany were destroyed.

Sam Levenson, a junior, volunteered to lead the service. Levenson said, “I wanted to lead during the ceremony because I thought it was important to mark the occasion and to participate in the community.”Levenson added, “Kristallnacht shows something that we see similar aspects of in our time, and it’s important to look deeply into what happened so that we can be more thoughtful and to learn from what has happened.”

Alina Meir, junior and president of HEAR Club, said, “Kristallnacht makes me think about all the anger and hate towards Jews at that point in history.” Meir added, “It all makes me wonder with all the antisemitism in the world today… how close we are to what happened 87 years ago.”

Alina Meir speaks about the importance of commemorating Kristallnacht each year. (M. Resnick)

Eric Wurtzel, a freshman, took part in the service by opening the Ark (Peticha). Wurtzel expressed ideas about preventing a similar historical event from happening again today. He said, “Our community can put more security guards in front of temples to prevent this from happening.” Looking back, Wurtzel feels “grateful that nothing in [his] life has happened like this to [him].

Commemorating this important historical event, according to Meir, reminds us that not very long ago, antisemitism produced a real-life tragedy. “To prevent something like this from happening again,” Meir said, “we must stand up against antisemitism, prejudice, and discrimination. We must continue to teach the world and ourselves about the atrocities that happened on Kristallnacht and during the Holocaust.”

Abby Marcus is a writer for Paw Print Now and has been published on the site since October 2025. Abby is currently a freshman at Schechter School of Long Island and can be reached at the following email address: amarcus29@schechterli.org.