Israeli Survivors Mark 87th Kristallnacht as Global Antisemitism Rises After Israel‑Hamas War

Survivors remember the "Night of Broken Glass" and warn of rising threats

Walter Bingham was 14 when Nazi mobs looted Jewish shops and torched synagogues across Germany and Austria during the Nov. 9, 1938 attacks known as Kristallnacht, or the “Night of Broken Glass.” Now 101, Bingham joined two other survivors in Jerusalem to mark the 87th anniversary and to warn that antisemitism remains a dangerous and persistent force.

The Nov. 9–10, 1938 pogrom was a decisive escalation in the persecution that culminated in the Holocaust, during which roughly 6 million European Jews were murdered. According to Israel’s Yad Vashem, the riots killed at least 91 people, vandalized about 7,500 Jewish businesses and set fire to more than 1,400 synagogues; up to 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and many were sent to concentration camps such as Dachau and Buchenwald.

Eyewitness memory: synagogues smoldering, children sent to safety

Speaking in Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue, where sunlight poured through stained glass, the survivors described scenes of devastation and the wrenching separations that followed. Bingham said he found the synagogue where he attended classes in Mannheim a smoldering ruin the morning after Kristallnacht. Firefighters, he recalled, protected neighboring buildings while allowing the house of worship itself to burn.

Months later Bingham was sent to England on a Kindertransport — one of nearly 10,000 children rescued from Nazi‑controlled Europe in 1938–39. His father was deported to Poland and died in the Warsaw Ghetto; he never saw his mother again. Bingham went on to serve in the British military and later worked as a journalist; he still contributes to Israeli media and holds a Guinness World Record as the oldest working journalist.

Passing testimony to younger generations

George Shefi, 94, has spoken to more than 12,000 students about the early steps of antisemitic policy and the chaos of Kristallnacht. As a child in Berlin he described segregated benches and being confined to his home for days during the riots; soon after, he traveled alone on a Kindertransport. Shefi’s mother later perished at Auschwitz. He tells students that modern Germans are not responsible for their grandparents’ crimes but are responsible to ensure such violence never returns.

Paul Alexander, 87, was an infant during Kristallnacht and was sent to England weeks later on a Kindertransport. He spent time in a children’s home and was one of the relatively few children later reunited with his parents.

Concerns about today's antisemitism

The survivors said recent attacks on Jewish symbols around the world — from synagogues in Australia to assaults on Israeli sports teams in Europe — feel painfully familiar. An annual report on global antisemitism from Tel Aviv University found that incidents surged after the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, though they eased slightly last year from the immediate post‑Oct. 7 peak.

“Antisemitism, I don’t think, will ever fully disappear because it’s the panacea for all ills of the world,” Bingham said. “But education and action can help. Today we have, thank God, the state of Israel — a strong state that helps ensure that what happened in the 1940s will not be repeated.”

There are roughly 200,000 Holocaust survivors still alive; experts estimate about 70% will die within the next decade. That makes firsthand testimony increasingly scarce and heightens the urgency of preserving survivors’ memories and teaching younger generations to recognize and confront antisemitism.

Survivors’ message: educate, remember and act. As Bingham put it bluntly: “What we have to do ... in addition to education, is to actually, literally, fight. If we see it, we have to hit back.”