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Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass

I write you from Cologne, Germany on the morning of November 9th, a day of mourning and somber remembrance most Americans refer to as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. All the Germans I know more pointedly call this day Reichspogromnacht (or Novemberpogrom) to underscore the continuing right-wing threat to democracy.

Friday, for the second year in a row, I attended a touching all-school assembly at Königin-Luise-Schule, the gymnasium my mother attended until her expulsion with the remaining Jewish girls at Easter 1938. They shared the results of students’ latest research into their former classmates’ lives, honored them with Yiddish songs, laid Stolpersteine in the school’s courtyard, and marched through downtown during the lunch hour with handmade signs the younger students carried with slogans against Nazis, fascism, and hatred. As privacy is a huge thing in Germany, I cannot share photos of any students, but I was deeply moved.

 The school recently reopened its original building after 5 long years of renovation. At the center is a wall of remembrance displaying photos of all the former students their research has touched. My mother’s photo is on the top row, second from the left. I nominated the history teacher who started this elective program for an Obermayer Award in 2023, which he won. Here’s a 6-min film about his extraordinary contribution that was shown at the ceremony at the Berlin Parliament on January 27, 2024, https://youtu.be/5hu6PB_M534

In a few hours I will give a presentation at the Jawne, the former Jewish school and now historical research and learning center where my mother was briefly a student before heading to boarding school in England in late September 1938. I will be thinking of the terror my grandparents, great-grandmother, and all German Jews endured 87 years ago as I hope to engage the audience in a program called The Unerasure Tour: Discovering Hidden Jewish Life in Köln planned for April 2026.

Tomorrow I also lay Stolpersteine for 3 more family members I learned not long ago had been murdered in the camps, my 18th, 19th, and 20th stones since first coming here in October 2022.

While standing in Auschwitz on a school field trip, history teacher Dirk Erkelenz envisioned a project in which students at his high school in Cologne, Germany, would research the fate of its Jewish students, the last of whom were expelled by the school during National Socialist rule.

Since 2015, more than 150 students at the Königin-Luise-Schule have taken Erkelenz’s yearlong Special History elective. The acclaimed project includes students reaching out to relatives of the Jewish girls they researched.

“What students are doing is meaningful — they have the feeling that they can do something themselves,” Erkelenz told The Times of Israel.

We’re thrilled to announce that Dirk Erkelenz, the remarkable history teacher and research scientist whose class assignment seeded The Unerasure Projekt, is one of seven 2024 recipients of the prestigious Obermayer Award, which acknowledges extraordinary German contributions to remembrance culture and anti-racism. Leading his nomination, I met many other descendants  whose lives were also touched by the research his students do into the lives and fates of Jewish girls who, like my mother, attended their school during the Nazi era. Register to watch a rebroadcast of the award ceremony on 29 January 2024 from the famed Rotes Rathaus, home of the Berlin Parliament.

Herr Dr. Erkelenz has asked The Unerasure Projekt to package, adapt, and widely share his pedagogy so as many students around the world as possible can make sense of their own histories through this hands-on experience. Our first experiential learning programs for students, government agencies, and business will launch in Germany this year.

With democracy under threat and hatred rising exponentially, your contributions are more timely than ever. We are now a Verein gemeinnützig in Germany and welcome your membership, donations, and volunteer support.

Tragically, erasure is a universal experience. Cultural genocide. Enslavement. Racial, ethnic, and sexual violence. Antisemitism. Islamophobia. Narcissistic oppression. The climate crisis. Corporate castes. Dementia. Trauma. Dissociation. Hatred. Self-hatred. Everyone everywhere has felt the sting of erasure, as targets and likely as perpetrators, as well. It takes many forms, some obvious, some hidden, and can leave scars with intention or ignorance, or both.

It’s clear that dialogue and learning make a real difference, though, so even in these very dark times, we have tremendous hope for the curious, engaged, and cooperative world our programs foster. We’re striking a chord in Germany and already hearing from educators in other countries interested in how Professor Erkelenz’s curriculum and The Unerasure Projekt’s experiential learning programs could help more deeply engage their students in making sense of, and shaping, the world they’ve inherited.

Though it may feel as if nothing you can do matters, your donation* will support a big-picture, long-term vision to reclaim hidden legacies that thwart too many individuals and institutions from contributing at the highest possible level for our shared benefit. Your partnership in this crucial work will literally make a world of difference.

*Donations are tax-deductible for US taxpayers to the extent allowed by law. German taxpayers, please see our Mitgliedsantrag for how you can support Freundeskreis The Unerasure Projekt e.V. now that we’re a tax-exempt Verein in Deutschland.