In the morning, the office revealed a grim scene – windows smashed, computers and furniture wrecked, and red paint poured across the entire space. The pavement outside was defaced with the spray-painted words "Drop Elbit," seemingly referencing the Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems, a defense industry leader.

KRISTELNACHT

welcome to the Jewish neighbourhood in Stamford hill where jews are not allowed to own a business... because Israel is with war with Gaza..

Police are doing f*** all. pic.twitter.com/heBkv6rRFO

— Charlie Ztuker (@CharlieZtuker) May 29, 2025

Rabbi Hershel Gluck, president of the Shomrim organization and a local resident, stated, "This must be treated as an undeniably antisemitic incident. The owners are Jewish, but they have no connection to Israel."

A Jewish-owned business in north London was targeted in a "traumatic antisemitic" attack overnight. Windows smashed, red paint daubed and 'Drop Elbit' graffiti stamped on the pavement. The property company in Stamford Hill has no known connection to Israel. pic.twitter.com/qvMceMqInF

— Jane (@janeprinsley) May 29, 2025

Local footage shared on social media likened the attack to the Holocaust-era attacks on Jews under Nazi rule. "Kristallnacht. Welcome to the Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill, where Jews are not allowed to own businesses because Israel is at war with Gaza," one user wrote.

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As Europe grapples with a surge in antisemitism, one of Germany's most prominent Jewish leaders draws haunting parallels between current events and the infamous Night of Broken Glass. Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, who witnessed Kristallnacht as a six-year-old child, warns that public indifference today echoes the silence that preceded one of history's darkest chapters.

"I can still see the crowds, smell the burning synagogue, feel the heat of the flames," recalls Dr. Knobloch, her voice steady despite the weight of the memory. "We crept through back alleys and forests, desperately trying to hide my father – a well-known Munich attorney and senator. The next day's destruction is seared into my memory. The Nazis, I believe, orchestrated this chaos to gauge public reaction. The German people's silence spoke volumes."

Dr. Knobloch, who last week celebrated her 92nd birthday, serves as president of Munich's Jewish Community and stands as one of Germany's most influential Jewish voices. On that fateful night in 1938, her father, Fritz Neuland, received an anonymous phone call warning of imminent danger. He quickly gathered his family – all except his mother, who refused to leave – and attempted to reach his law office nearby, which he shared with the later Bavarian Prime Minister Wilhelm Hoegner.

A cautionary call to his office revealed the gravity of their situation. When an unfamiliar voice answered, Neuland, disguising his identity, inquired about his own whereabouts. The response – "We're also searching for Fritz Neuland" – confirmed his worst fears. That night, the Neuland family wandered Munich's darkened streets seeking sanctuary. Their attempt to warn a family friend ended in horror as they witnessed him being dragged from his home, bloodied, and beaten. This friend would later perish in Dachau after a brief release from an initial concentration camp internment.

"For a child, the terror was incomprehensible," Dr. Knobloch reflects, her gaze distant. "I couldn't understand why firefighters ignored the burning buildings. SS troops smashed windows and kicked down doors, dragging people into the street. Though I already knew Jews were unwelcome in Germany, watching this violence unfold – feeling the cold, sensing the panic – overwhelmed me. When I began to cry, my father held me close, warning that my tears could betray us. The mob didn't yet know we were Jewish, but discovery meant certain death in that atmosphere of hatred."

By nightfall, the family found refuge with a non-Jewish friend in Munich's outskirts. The violence of November 9-10, 1938, left hundreds of Jews dead, thousands arrested, and countless more deported to concentration camps. Synagogues across Germany burned while Jewish-owned businesses and property faced wholesale destruction. The Nazi-sanctioned "popular uprising" raged unchecked by law enforcement until dawn.

After the Holocaust claimed several family members, Dr. Knobloch married and contemplated leaving Munich. Circumstances kept her in Germany, where her father joined approximately 60 Jewish survivors in rebuilding Munich's devastated Jewish community.

Decades of relative calm followed, but recent years have brought disturbing changes. The rise of populist parties, particularly the far-right Alternative for Germany – some of whose members express Nazi sympathies – along with anti-Israel demonstrations at universities and growing fear among German Jews about wearing religious symbols in public, deeply trouble Dr. Knobloch.

"Today's Germany eerily echoes the 1920s," she observes. "Hitler's rise wasn't supernatural – he was democratically elected. While Jewish life here has evolved significantly since the 1930s and 40s, and antisemitism plagues the entire world, not just Germany, the crucial question remains: How does the public respond? Will people remain indifferent? Education and accurate historical information are our strongest weapons against hate."

In response to these concerns, Dr. Knobloch has partnered with the Claims Conference to launch an innovative virtual reality experience. The project, "Inside View of Kristallnacht," developed in collaboration with Meta, UNESCO, and USC Shoah, allows young people to witness the events through a child's eyes – her eyes. This educational initiative, designed for schools and institutions, harnesses cutting-edge technology to illustrate the dangers of antisemitism and xenophobia while highlighting hate speech's devastating consequences.

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In November 1938, the world witnessed the beginning of the Holocaust with Kristallnacht, a horrific pogrom of extreme violence against Jews. Last night, 86 years after that horrific event, Amsterdam experienced another pogrom that felt like history repeating itself.

The shocking scenes from Amsterdam – a coordinated and planned attack against Israeli soccer fans – should not only send shockwaves through Europe but serve as a painful reminder of Europe's and the world's long, unresolved struggle with rising antisemitism.

The brutal attack, led by Islamic extremists targeting Jewish people in the streets, differs in many ways from Kristallnacht. Today, Jews have a strong state of their own, there are authorities to manage such incidents, and the scale of violence is different. We no longer need to wait for the world to act and rescue us – we can and do act ourselves.

Still, the horrifying situation faced by fans who simply wanted to watch a soccer match drew chilling parallels to Kristallnacht, proving that we are witnessing the ideological heirs of the Nazis today – Islamic extremists operating with similar hatred and violence, seeking to spill Jewish blood.

"I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too," Anne Frank wrote weeks before she was discovered in hiding with her family. What we witnessed in Amsterdam was not random; it was part of a larger, premeditated campaign of intimidation and hatred directed at Jews, and represents the peak of global antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023.

The world must understand: that Jews have lost their sense of personal security. Throughout history, there have been many instances where Jews were forced to leave countries where they felt less secure, and now they are asking themselves the same question: how safe are we in Europe? If law enforcement authorities do not proactively tackle antisemitism, violence, and terrorism with a firm hand, Jews will leave and return to Israel, leaving Europe to face alone the extremism that is reaching new heights and will no longer target only Jews.

The question isn't just about the safety of Jewish communities; it's about Europe's ability or willingness to confront the growing extremism within its borders. For years, authorities were late to recognize the dangerous rise of radical Islam, and even when they did, efforts to curb it were often insufficiently effective.

From anti-Israel demonstrations turning violent to acts of vandalism and physical attacks on anyone and anything they view as enemies, Europe has repeatedly hesitated to repel hate speech and violent extremism in ways that would effectively protect both its Jewish population and the general public.

To prevent another catastrophe, Europe must confront reality and acknowledge that it has become a haven for extremist ideologies seeking to destroy Jewish life, as well as core aspects of European life. This is not a problem that can be minimized or ignored. The rise of violent antisemitism is not just a Jewish issue; it's a European issue, threatening the foundations of European freedom, democracy, and civil rights.

The time to act is now. Europe must begin taking concrete steps to ensure the safety of its Jewish citizens by addressing sources of radicalization, cracking down on violent hate groups, and ending tolerance for antisemitism in any form.

Jews should not fear for their lives simply because of who they are, and Europe must make clear it will not tolerate hatred in its streets for even a moment. The lessons of history are clear: hatred, once allowed to exist and grow, can easily spill over into violence and terror.

Europe must act before it's too late, and Jews need to know their security will no longer be subject to political convenience or denial. If Europe fails to act decisively, it will be left to deal with the consequences of its inaction, just as it did after the horrors of the Holocaust.

Sacha Roytman-Dratwa is the CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM).

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Protesters waved Israeli flags Sunday at the Roger Waters concert in Frankfurt. Footage that circulated on social media showed one of the demonstrators rush the stage, evading security, and reaching the upper deck.

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Ahead of the concert, several Jewish groups, politicians and an alliance of civil society groups gathered for a memorial ceremony and a protest rally against the event.

The Pink Floyd co-founder has been accused of antisemitism and drew ire for his support of the BDS movement, which calls for boycotts and sanctions against Israel.

Frankfurt authorities had initially tried to prevent the concert taking place, but Waters successfully challenged the move in a local court. The concert took place in the city's Festhalle, where in November 1938 more than 3,000 Jews were rounded up by the Nazis, beaten and abused, and later deported to concentration camps.

"Against this historical background, the concert should not have taken place under any circumstances," said Sacha Stawski, a member of the Frankfurt Jewish community and head of the group Honestly Concerned, that helped organize the protests.

"It's very frustrating" that the concert is going ahead as scheduled even though Frankfurt officials and many others tried to prevent it, Elio Adler, the head of the Jewish group WerteInitiative which supports the protest, told The Associated Press. "His words and imagery spread Jew-hatred and are part of a trend: to normalize Israel-hatred under the protection of freedom of speech or art."

Last week, police in Berlin said they had opened an investigation of Waters on suspicion of incitement over a costume he wore when he performed in the German capital earlier this month. Images on social media showed Waters firing an imitation machine gun while dressed in a long black coat with a red armband. Police confirmed that an investigation was opened over suspicions that the context of the costume could constitute a glorification, justification or approval of Nazi rule and therefore a disturbance of the public peace.

Waters rejected those accusations in a statement on Facebook and Instagram, saying that "the elements of my performance that have been questioned are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice, and bigotry in all its forms."

He claimed that "attempts to portray those elements as something else are disingenuous and politically motivated."

During Sunday's ceremony and protests, which took place in front of the Frankfurt concert venue before Waters' concert was set to begin, protesters read out loud the names of 600 Jews who were rounded up at the Festhalle on November 9, 1939, the so-called Kristallnacht – the "Night of Broken Glass" – when Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria.

The organizers also held a joint Jewish-Christian prayer for the victims of the Nazi terror in Frankfurt. The city's mayor as well as the head of the local Jewish community spoke at the protest.

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"Hatred of Jews is to be condemned everywhere in our city," Frankfurt Mayor Mike Josef said, according to German news agency dpa. "There is no reason to hate, insult and attack a person because of his religion."

Before the performance began, around 400 protesters handed out flyers to concertgoers and waved Israeli flags. Others held up banners with slogans such as "Israel, we stand with you" or "Roger Waters, wish you were not here" in reference to Pink Floyd's famous song "Wish You Were Were," dpa reported.

Protesters in Munich rallied against a concert by Waters earlier this month, after the city council said it had explored possibilities of banning the performance but concluded that it wasn't legally possible to cancel a contract with the organizer.

Last year, the Polish city of Krakow canceled gigs by Waters because of his sympathetic stance toward Russia in its war against Ukraine.

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More than half of all people in the United Kingdom did not know that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during World War II, according to the findings of a new survey published Wednesday.

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A majority, 52%, of UK respondents were unaware of the most cited death toll from the Nazi German genocide of Europe's Jews, and 22% of Brits thought that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed, the survey found.

The survey, conducted, by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York-based group that seeks compensation and restitution for Holocaust survivors and their families, was released to coincide with the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass pogrom that targeted Jews in a series of attacks throughout Germany and Austria on the night of November 9, 1938.

"We are very concerned to see the profound gaps in knowledge of the Holocaust in this and previous studies, including about events connected to the UK," said Claims Conference President Gideon Taylor said.

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The vast majority of respondents - 88% - said that it was important to continue to teach people about the genocide of Europe's Jews, in part so that it never happens again. Seventy-one percent said the government should support Holocaust education.

Fifty-six percent of respondents said they thought something like the Holocaust could happen again.

This article was first published by i24NEWS.

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Thousands of synagogues in Israel and across the globe on Tuesday night will keep their lights on to commemorate the 83rd anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a pogrom that targeted Jews in a series of horrific attacks throughout Germany and Austria on the night of November 9, 1938.

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During the pogrom, synagogues were heavily damaged and thousands of Jewish-owned businesses were destroyed. At least 400 Jews were murdered.

To commemorate Kristallnacht, International March of the Living, a Holocaust education program, launched an initiative known as Let There Be Light.

The movement encourages people and places of worship to leave their lights on during the night of November 9 to show solidarity with victims of hate.

"Over the last year we have witnessed a frightening rise of global antisemitic rhetoric and events," International March of the Living President Phyllis Greenberg Heideman explained on the movement's website.

"As the torchbearer of memory, the March of the Living's mission is to remind the world what happens when antisemitism is left unchecked," she said.

"The 'Let There Be Light' initiative unites the world, if even for a single moment, against antisemitism, hatred, and racism in all its forms. Our educational mission is today more necessary than ever," said Greenberg Heideman.

Last year, former president Reuven Rivlin held an event marking the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht at the presidential residence, with Germany's President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Austria's President Alexander Van der Bellen in attendance.

The president's synagogue was illuminated to commemorate the occasion.

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CNN veteran anchorwoman Christiane Amanpour apologized during her Monday show for comments equating the events of Kristallnacht with US President Donald Trump's presidency.

Her exposition caused a storm of controversy, including a demand from Israel to issue a retraction.

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"I observed the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, as I often do. It is the event that began the horrors of the Holocaust. I also noted President Trump's attacks on history, facts, knowledge, and truth," Amanpour explained.

"I should not have juxtaposed the two thoughts. Hitler and his evil stand alone, of course, in history," she added. "I regret any pain my statement may have caused."

She added: "My point was to say how democracy can potentially slip away, and how we must always zealously guard our democratic values."

In the opening segment of her regular daily affairs program on Thursday, Amanpour spoke of the anniversary of Kristallnacht – the pogrom attack on Jews in Germany and Austria in early November 1938 – and how the Nazis upended human civilization, which led to genocide.

She warned that Trump's criticism of the media and his legal efforts to contest the recent election was similar to the Nazi attacks on intellectuals and Jews during that event in 1938.

"This week 82 years ago, Kristallnacht happened," Amanpour said in the Thursday monologue. "It was the Nazis' warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity, and in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and truth. After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth."

Amanpour was heavily criticized for drawing this comparison, leading to calls for her removal by both Jews and non-Jews who were shocked at the ease at which one would compare Nazi Germany to what has been widely considered to be a very pro-Israel administration in Washington.

Diaspora Affairs Minister Omer Yankelevich sent a letter to CNN president Jeffrey Zucker on Sunday, demanding Amanpour issue an "immediate and public apology" for the "unacceptable comparison."

"We find hereby the false equivalence made between the actions of a sitting US president and the atrocities of the Kristallnacht pogroms which were carried out by the Nazis 82 years ago belittling of the immense tragedy of the Holocaust," Yankelevich wrote.

Following the anchorwoman's comments, Ben Habib, a former European Parliament member for the Brexit Party in Britain, said on Twitter: "This is @camanpour on @CNN comparing Trump's tenure to Nazi Germany. How the hell is this sort of prejudice tolerated on mainstream media? Third-rate rubbish."

The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, an organization that defends Jewish interests wrote on  Twitter: "Despicable. @camanpour compares verbal fact-checking of a POTUS to a Nazi pogrom in which dozens of Jews were murdered," the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council, a small group representing Haredi Jewish interests, wrote on Twitter.

CNN has clashed with the Trump administration repeatedly over the past four years due to the latter's criticism that the network's coverage is biased against him.

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Thousands of people took part in the digital commemoration of Kristallnacht – Night of Broken Glass – to mark the 82nd anniversary of the pogroms by creating commemorative signs through a website set up especially for the project.

The messages and prayers were projected on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem on the night of Nov. 9, thanks to the support of the Jerusalem Municipality and the Coventry Cathedral in England.

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In addition, hundreds of houses of worship of all religions in over 50 countries pledged to keep a candle lit overnight as a tribute to more than 1,400 synagogues burned in Germany and Austria during the 1938 pogrom.

The Westend Synagogue in Frankfurt, one of the few that remained undamaged in the wake of Kristallnacht, was the first to light a candle and was followed by hundreds of houses of worship, including synagogues in Kyiv, churches in Japan, USA and UK, Hampton Synagogue in New York, and synagogues in Bahrain and Dubai.

Among the prominent leaders that took part in the commemoration were President Reuven Rivlin, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Beni Gantz, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Israel Prize winner Miriam Peretz, Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog, Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy Chairman Natan Sharansky, formerly head of the Jewish Agency, to name a few.

"As we mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht, I commend March of the Living for uniting us with their rally cry, 'let there be light.' That night of broken glass led to humanity's darkest moments. Today, we unite against antisemitism, hatred, and intolerance. We will never let the light go out," Johnson wrote.

Netanyahu wrote, "On the 82nd anniversary of Kristallnacht, we remember the night that marked the beginning of the Holocaust. We vow that the Jewish people will never again be defenseless against the forces that seek our destruction."

The March of the Living is one of the most significant events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Some 10,000 participants take part in the march annually. Jewish and non-Jewish youth from all over the world march alongside Holocaust survivors, heads of state, ministers, religious and cultural figures, and more. To date, more than 300,000 participants from 52 countries have marched on the 3.2 kilometer-long (2 mile-long) railway tracks from Auschwitz to Birkenau as a tribute to the greatest loss in the history of the Jewish people and humanity.

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"Since nobody is born to hate, intolerance can be prevented and unlearned," he told a gathering at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, marking the 81st anniversary of the Kristallnacht – the violent attack in Germany and Austria against Jews and their homes, synagogues, and businesses in 1938.

Scores of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues were destroyed during "the Night of Broken Glass" on Nov. 9-10, 1938.

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Israeli Ambassador Danny Danon and dozens of ambassadors and foreign dignitaries attended the event.

In a speech underlining his continued fight to stamp out anti-Semitism, racism and other forms of hatred, Guterres recognized the need for continued vigilance.

"Decades after the Holocaust, the world's oldest hatred is still with us," he remarked, before listing recent incidents across the world targeting Jews, ranging from the vandalizing of Jewish graves and Holocaust memorial, to the mass shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh last year - the worst anti-Semitic attack in United States history.

"At the same time, other forms of intolerance are also taking a deadly toll," he noted, citing examples such as church bombings, massacres at mosques, and assaults on migrants and refugees.

"Hatred kills. But hatred also works in insidious ways to undermine relations between people and the foundations of society," he said.

The secretary general called for urgent action by parents, teachers and political leaders "before underground hatred becomes an overt and alarming new normal."

He further highlighted efforts by the global community to counter these threats, such as UN action plans to address hate speech and to ensure the safety of houses of worship.

"Education must be a key part of this preventive approach, and I am announcing today that I intend to convene a conference on the role of education in addressing and building resilience against hate speech," he revealed.

"We are also focusing on the protection of religious sites in the wake of deadly attacks on mosques in New Zealand, the Easter church bombings in Sri Lanka and other assaults. Just last month in Germany, a gunman killed two people while trying to storm a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar."

Next year, the UN marks its 75th anniversary and Guterres said the focus will be on equality and human dignity.

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Ronald Lauder told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper this week that other countries, including Britain, the United States and Austria had a far better track record in documenting art that had been confiscated by the Nazi regime and in returning looted pieces to their rightful owners.

The United States has extended the federal statute of limitations for seeking restitution of such art to six years from the time of "actual discovery" of an owner's identity and whereabouts. Britain has put its entire collection of paintings online at Art U.K., and is adding items daily, he said in an interview with the newspaper.

Germany, by contrast, is moving too slowly to digitize art collections and locate original owners, Lauder said.

"One country that has done too little is Germany. Germany has a historic responsibility to do the right thing. We all know that the Holocaust had its origins there and spread from there," he said.

Germany's commissioner for culture, Monika Gruetters, told an audience in Israel last month that she had tripled the funding for research into the ownership of so-called "lost art," citing what she called major progress in understanding and addressing Nazi art theft.

Lauder, meanwhile, said he was troubled by neo-Nazi marches and anti-Semitic slogans that had cropped up in the eastern German city of Chemnitz and the western city of Dortmund.

"When we as Jews see these marches and hear the anti-Semitic slogans and 'Heil Hitler' calls, it reminds us of what happened on Kristallnacht [Night of Broken Glass] in 1938," he said, referring to the infamous pogrom throughout Nazi Germany in November of that year.

"It's all connected. ... If Germany allows this, it sends a signal to the rest of the world that Germany is not living up to its responsibilities," he added.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel this month marked the 80th anniversary of the Nazi campaign of attacks on Jews and said Germany had a "moral duty" to fight anti-Semitism.

Lauder said there were four federal museums in Germany and over 5,000 other public cultural institutions that had not provided complete information about the art in their collections, and he suspected many pieces remained hidden.

When his organization pressed for answers, government officials often cited procedural issues. "Too often, those responsible in Germany hide behind the bureaucracy," he said.

Lauder plans to address his concerns in a speech in Berlin on Nov. 26, marking the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art, on the restitution of art confiscated by the Nazi regime in Germany before and during World War II.

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