George Shefi was six years old when his mother kept him home for three days after November 9, 1938. When he returned, he found his Berlin synagogue school burned down, a Jewish hat shop looted and a stationery store's windows smashed, AP reported.
He recalled that the shop's Jewish owner "was trying to clean this thing up, and there were, I don't know, a lot of people, 30, 40, 50, or something, jeering and yelling and saying nasty things,"
Shefi, now aged 94, was describing Kristallnacht – the "Night of Broken Glass" – when Nazis and many ordinary Germans terrorized Jews across Germany and Austria. Yad Vashem counts at least 91 dead, 7,500 vandalized Jewish businesses and over 1,400 synagogues targeted by arsonists.
He returned to Berlin 88 years later to share his memories as one of Kristallnacht's last living witnesses, amid rising antisemitism in Germany and elsewhere.
In a nearby park once off limits to him as a Jewish child, he said he preserves those memories to prevent a repeat. "I used to be like a regular Holocaust survivor, I hated the Germans and so forth, but about 10 years ago I came to the conclusion how those kids that I speak to, how can they be to blame for what happened 80 years ago," Shefi said.
He now shares his life's lessons with school groups and other Germans. "You have to learn and study it because you aren't responsible for what was, but you'll be responsible in five, 10 years of what's going to happen," Shefi said. "And for that, if you don't know the history of the Holocaust, you can't prevent it anymore."
Kristallnacht sharply escalated Nazi persecution. Years on, the Nazis adopted their "Final Solution," moving from boycotts, laws and expulsions to mass murder that killed six million European Jews.
In July 1939, Shefi's mother, Marie Spiegelglas, put the 7-year-old on a Kindertransport to England with 300 other Jewish children. He never saw her again; she was deported to Auschwitz and murdered in 1943. Shefi lived with several foster families, survived the German bombing of London in World War II, immigrated to the United States, then settled in Jerusalem, where he raised a family, ran a tool shop and volunteered as a police officer.
Before Monday's 88th anniversary of the pogroms, Shefi told police officers visiting Berlin his story, to deepen their grasp of the Holocaust and duty to protect Jewish communities. He joined Jochen Kopelke, chairman of the German Police Union, who prioritizes educating officers about Jewish life.
"We have noticed with many police officers in Germany that they do not know anything about Jewish life," said Kopelke, adding that officers guard synagogues but must also grasp modern Jewish life and the police's Third Reich role.
"The police in the Nazi era actively took part in the Shoah, participated, guarded concentration camps, deported people," he said. "All policemen have to know the history of the police. And that's why today you have to bring policemen to the real world in addition to the historical process."
Phyllis Greenberg Heideman, president of the International March of the Living, which holds an annual Auschwitz event, said Holocaust education is essential to combating rising antisemitism. "It's daunting, it's difficult, and it's the most important act any one of us can do," Heideman said, "to fight and to combat antisemitism as well as all forms of hatred facing the world today."
Speaking about his Nazi-era childhood has grown more urgent for Shefi. "My generation is the last generation that can tell what happened without anybody saying that's not true."
