Better things

In the Bible Belt, the 70th anniversary this week of Kristallnacht didn't get a great deal of attention. Veterans Day is the holiday we focus on in early November.

I don't think I ever heard of Kristallnacht until I was an adult. Growing up in the Ozarks over yonder, this was not a part of history I was taught. My wife, growing up in a small town in west-central Missouri, was exposed to the vast German heritage of that area, but she didn't know much about the pogroms of the 1930s.

That all changed when we -- a couple of wide-eyed, Sunday-school-trained Midwesterners -- moved to New York City in 1969.

Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, is an important part of world history. It is the name given to the events of Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, when Nazi forces coordinated attacks on Jews, their homes, their shops and their synagogues throughout Germany and other Nazi-controlled areas. The "broken glass" refers to the shattering of windows during those brutal hours.

We celebrate Veterans Day so close to the Kristallnacht anniversary by happenstance. The armistice to end World War I was signed on Nov. 11, leading to the establishment of that date as a federal holiday to honor all U.S. veterans in all wars.

The number of Jews who are still alive to remember the horrifying events and sounds of Kristallnacht is dwindling. It is up to their descendants, historians, museums and memorials to keep alive those memories so they are never repeated.

That's where our move to New York in 1969 comes in.

We landed in an apartment building on Staten Island just up the hill from the ferry terminal. I never tired of my commute to and from the skyline of Manhattan (the twin towers of the World Trade Center were just going up) and the twice-a-day swing by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Our apartment building was six floors of apartments. Each floor was separated by the main elevator, with four apartments down the hall one way and four apartments down the hall the other way.

On our end of the fourth floor were four young married couples. Next to us was the Italian couple from New Jersey. Across the hall were the Irish couple (he from Brooklyn Irish and she from Ireland) and the Chinese couple (both from Hong Kong). Within a few months, the four couples all had additions, three daughters and our son.

Elevator trips were occasions to meet many other interesting people in our building: the principal French horn player from the New York Philharmonic, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, an editor for Life magazine who sequestered Svetlana Stalin after her defection to the U.S. And there was an older, smiling couple who walked with their arms interlocked. She always said hello and asked, with an accent, if we were in good health. He smiled broadly but never said a word.

One day, during the heat of summer, we got on the elevator with the couple we assumed were from Germany. We exchanged our customary pleasantries. And we saw, on the bare skin of the man's forearm, the stenciled numbers. The woman saw us looking and placed her hand over her husband's arm. "Let us remember better things," she said.

The next spring, before Easter, our doorbell rang. It was the smiling German woman with her arms wrapped around a large cardboard box. "With a new baby," she said, "perhaps you could use this food?"

It was chametz -- the uneaten bread, grain and leavened food from her Jewish kitchen -- which had to be disposed of before Passover.

We gladly accepted her gift and took the opportunity to make a delicate inquiry about her husband's tattoos. "Dachau," she said, "after Kristallnacht."

And, she added, "Let us remember better things."

We remember. And we remember our veterans paid a dear price for the victory that led to the liberation of the concentration camps.

We should never forget. We should remember better things, too.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editorial page editor of the Southeast Missourian. E-mail: jsullivan@semissourian.com.