Dara Horn at Kristallnacht: Pick freedom over safety

Jews are always going to be hunted, according to Dara Horn, author of the 2021 book “People Love Dead Jews.”

“We’re never really going to be safe,” she told JNS at a Nov. 8 event in Manhattan marking 88 years since Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” pogrom of November 1938 that foreshadowed the Holocaust.

“What I think is important about that is that the opposite of safety isn’t just danger,” Horn said. “The opposite of safety is freedom.”

Horn said the event, which the Yad Vashem USA Foundation held at the New-York Historical Society and which drew 450 people, was particularly moving because Holocaust survivors were there to share their experiences and their views of current events.

She had spoken with some of them before the program and was struck by their courage and by their concerns about what is happening today, she said.

Jewish life has increasingly come to revolve around security, the author said: US and Israeli institutions operate under guard, and communities weigh the costs of self-defense.

Jewish tradition makes individuals responsible for their choices, accountable for their actions and charged with rebuilding after disaster, Horn said. Rather than raise children in a protective bubble, she said, Jews should empower young people to shape their own lives.

“What we are trying to build is a Jewish life where our children have the freedom and agency to decide their own future,” she said.

In her remarks to the audience, Horn described Jewish history as the story of Jews choosing to live their lives and honor their traditions despite the horrors they faced.

“The State of Israel exists in spite of the Holocaust,” she said. “Not because of it.”

She praised an installation at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, that she said tells the story of the Shoah through the structure of the Passover Haggadah and carries an uplifting message. The display shows how Jews have drawn courage from their religious tradition even when others sought to kill them, she said.

Dani Dayan, chairman of Yad Vashem, joined Horn in a conversation moderated by Adam Kuperstein, an anchor at NBC 4 New York.

“If I have to define why Yad Vashem should exist in one sentence, the sentence will be this,” said Dayan, a former Israeli consul general in New York. “Six million Jews murdered in the Shoah deserve an institution that is exclusively dedicated to them.”

Dayan said an exhibit at Yad Vashem includes a 1981 painting by Ruth Schloss that depicts Anne Frank — known worldwide as a young diarist — at Bergen-Belsen, her head shaved, in a striped concentration-camp uniform.

Frank should be remembered not only as a gifted writer but also as one of the 6 million European Jews murdered in the Holocaust, Dayan said. The painting restores the reality of her fate to the public image of her life, he told attendees.

Dayan said that “never again” must come with action.

“If this leader has an implemented plan, a program to fight modern antisemitism, then he’s entitled to say ‘never again’,” Dayan said. “If he hasn’t, that’s just a shallow cliché.”

Holding the event in New York was particularly important to him.

“New York is very personal for me,” he said. “I spent four years here representing the State of Israel, so everything that happens in Jewish New York is very personal for me.”

“To bring the message of Yad Vashem to New York, to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel, of course, is especially significant,” he added.

Kuperstein told attendees that he is the “proud grandson of four Holocaust survivors.”

“I am proud and publicly a Jew,” he said.

The news anchor recalled growing up hearing survivors’ stories of atrocities, resilience and joy. His father, a historian who worked with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, devoted much of his life to Holocaust education, inspiring Kuperstein’s commitment to ensuring that younger generations understand what happened.

The commemoration, Kuperstein said, was a chance to remember Kristallnacht as a warning of how quickly hatred and words can turn into violence.

Lillian Feintuch, a Holocaust survivor, told JNS that “we are all here to show that we are still alive, and the world should always know about the Holocaust.”

Feintuch grew up in Hungary, where she saw Jewish men beaten in the streets. Authorities came to her family’s home and ordered them to “pack up a few things and come to the ghetto,” she said.

She survived the Holocaust along with her parents and three brothers — “a miracle,” she said. “Nothing ever should happen like that.”

She urged that the Holocaust be taught widely. “They should give lessons in the schools, not only Jewish schools,” she said, “so that children will learn what happened to the Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis.”

Rabbi Eric Greenberg, a former director of interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, told JNS that “we need to both battle antisemitism and educate our neighbors about what Jews are.”

The program included a musical tribute by Steven Skybell, star of the Yiddish-language “Fiddler on the Roof,” and Azi Schwartz, cantor of Park Avenue Synagogue, a Conservative congregation on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Conductor and pianist Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, accompanied them.

The musicians performed traditional Jewish music using arrangements from the “Mannheim Siddur,” a choir book that survived the burning of the Mannheim synagogue on Kristallnacht.

Holocaust survivors also took part in a candle-lighting ceremony, then joined the performers onstage as the audience sang “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem.

Horn closed by returning to the idea of freedom as the legacy of Jewish history, telling the audience that the Jewish people can share with the world its commitment to continuing its story.

“Our children are not going to be safe. Our grandchildren are not going to be safe. Instead, they’re going to be free,” she said. “This freedom is the legacy that we carry throughout the world as Jews and that we can offer to everyone — that sense of freedom and responsibility of choosing life.” —JNS