November 9, 2018 admin

Service at Westminster Abbey on the 80th Anniversary of Kristallnacht

It was profoundly stirring to participate yesterday in the commemoration service at Westminster Abbey on the 80th year since Kristallnacht. Walking through the precincts, past the memorial of 60,000 poppies for those who died in the First World War was already deeply humbling.

Most moving was the testament of three ‘Kinder’ who recalled the terror of the Night of Broken Glass. They were no longer young; the silence as they slowly negotiated the steep wooden steps to the Abbey lectern drew their words even more deeply into the heart.

I had the privilege of giving the address (Part will be familiar to my own community):

On the 10th November, the morning after Kristallnacht, my grandfather was summoned by the Gestapo to the Hauptsynagoge in Frankfurt. Flames pierced the building, no one did or dared do anything to extinguish them. Yet, as he walked through the crowd of onlookers, he overheard them say that in his own Westendsynagoge, though the interior had been destroyed by rioting Nazis, the Eternal Light was still burning. They took this as a sign from God.

It struck me that my grandfather found himself between two kinds of flame, the fires of destruction, and the Ner Tammid, the calm, inextinguishable inner light which denotes the presence of God.

Through the 30s and 40s both those flames burnt fiercely.

The fire of devastation destroyed synagogues throughout Germany. It crossed the Channel in the Blitzkrieg burning whole districts of London and many British cities. It soared obscenely in the indescribable crematoria by the gas-chambers. Eventually it came back full circle to ravage the towns of Germany. When, after 11 years absence, my grandfather returned to his beloved Frankfurt, he wondered through ‘the unrecognisable streets and squares, while from the broken, hollow windows horror stared’.

Yet the light of God’s presence burnt also. Is glowed in the heart of the British Consul General, Robert Smallbones, through whose offices tens of thousands, my family included, received transit visas to Britain, and who wrote later of his shame for every hour when, overcome by sleep, he was not writing affidavits. It shone in Frank Foley in Berlin, who refused to let the powers that be prevent him from issuing visas for China, because Jews had the right to choose their own fate and ‘would rather die as free men in Shanghai, than as slaves in Dachau’.

It illumined the debate in Parliament, when Britain granted entry to an unlimited number of children. It illumined the words of the MP for Gower, David Rhys Grenfell, who testified to the queues of despairing people outside the passport offices of Germany and Austria, waiting as if before the tribunal which would decide between life and death. It burned in the actions of those British officials who endeavoured to process with courtesy their desperate applications. Indeed, my grandparents described the British consulate in Frankfurt as an island of humanity in a sea of violence and contempt.

It burnt in the hearts of Jewish leaders, Quakers, Christadelphians, churchmen and women, good people, who rescued children, taking them into their homes. It illumined the heart and home of the Bishop of Durham, who took in the ‘Kind’ John Rayner, subsequently Rabbi Dr John Rayner, my teacher, and in his Bishop’s residence ensured he received a Jewish education and celebrated his Bar Mitzvah.

Those same two fires burn today.

The searing flames of incitement rage in those who preach hatred of Jews for being Jews and Muslims for being Muslim, who fan the populist fires of resurgent racism and xenophobia. They burn in the murderous assault on the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, in every attack on congregations at prayer, or children at school, or people at Thousand Oaks outside LA, enjoying the simple pleasure of dancing.

But God’s Eternal Light also burns, in the actions of those who create foodbanks, shelter the homeless, share their homes with refugees, run drop-ins and havens for asylum-seekers, reach out a hand to those of different faiths, hoping that it will be taken in trust and fellowship. In shines in the work of Lord Alf Dubs, himself one of the Kinder, tireless in striving to bring lonely, helpless children to safety and the hope of a future in Britain.

But which of those kinds of fire is more powerful?

I imagine a conversation: ‘My grandfather, my Opa, as you stood then between those two flames, which did you think was the stronger?’

I picture him answering with the ancient rabbinic sentence, just four words in Hebrew: neiri beyadecha, veneirecha beyadi: “My light is your hands”, says God, “Your light is in mine”. ‘It’s up to you’, he would say, ‘Which of those flames is stronger lies in your grasp.

The fire of destruction or the flame of sacred light? The choice lies in our hands. Therefore, God, protect our light in Your hands, so that we can protect and nurture Your light entrusted into ours.

Get in touch...