Chort introduction
The commemorative event on 9 November took place in Dresden at the Old Leipzig Railway Station and was organised by Herz statt Hetze e.V.. Statements from the Jewish communities and prayers were spoken there. Afterwards, the Dresden-Neustadt synagogue opened its doors to commemorate the date, the people and their significance for us today. At the same time, we celebrated the fact that we are stronger and more alive today than ever because of the involuntary sacrifices of our ancestors. Before the musical contributions and personal dialogue, Andrè Lang, who was responsible for the event at Herz statt Hetze and is also a member of our community, welcomed us with the following speech.
Honoured guests, dear friends, dear Albrecht Pallas Vice-President of the Saxon State Parliament,
Today, on the 9th of November, I would like to welcome you to the rooms of the Jewish Community of Dresden for the second part of our commemorative event on the occasion of the pogrom in 1938.
Before we turn our attention to the participating artists, please allow me to say a few personal introductory words on this day:
In the course of the anti-Semitic riots in Germany, which began on 9 November 1938, around 1,400 synagogues, 10,000 shops and businesses as well as countless homes, schools and cemeteries were vandalised throughout the territory of the Reich at the time. However, the largest publicly staged pogrom on German soil to date did not only result in the destruction of Jewish cultural and material assets. In a wave of arrests that lasted until 16 November, around 31,000 Jews were deported to concentration camps. In addition, more than 1,000 Jews lost their lives through murder, manslaughter, suicide or as a result of mistreatment and imprisonment.
Two weeks earlier, on 23 October 1938, the so-called ‘Polenaktion’ was the ‘dress rehearsal’, so to speak, for 9 November. 17,000 Polish Jews who had been living in Germany for many years were forcibly deported and deported to Poland. Among them were Polish Jews living in Dresden at the time. A travelling exhibition currently on display in the blue factory (Eisenbahner. 1, 01097 Dresden) until the beginning of December illustrates this human tragedy very impressively.
In Saxony, too, the NSDAP, SA and SS organised violent mobs from the evening of 9 November, which were unleashed on shops, surgeries, companies and factories run by Jews. In many places, as in Dresden, synagogues were destroyed. However, violence was not only used against property here either - massive physical attacks and humiliations occurred again and again in the course of the pogroms.
And - this is also part of the truth about those terrible events 86 years ago: The majority of people - including in our city - watched these terrible goings-on in silence - sometimes applauding - and abandoned their fellow Jews to the terror of the Nazis. Only a few resisted at the time. My father Max Lang was one of them. As a young communist, he was imprisoned for two years by the Nazis for his resistance against fascism.
After his release, he managed to escape to Manchester, where he met my Jewish mother Ruth Weisz, who had made it into exile in England with her parents and siblings. My parents married and my sister Barbara and I were born there. Dresden, then a stronghold of the National Socialists in Saxony and a city of perpetrators, was still my father's home town. And so we returned here - to the great incomprehension of the surviving members of my mother's Jewish family - to help build a Germany liberated from fascism.
What would my parents say today if they had to witness the rise of right-wing extremism and anti-Semitism? Recent events - and again in Saxony - show this. Just a few days ago, a terrorist group known as the ‘Saxon Separatists’ (short for SS!) was dismantled and arrested by the police. Among them were several AfD members and elected representatives.
And - let's be honest: we don't need to point the finger at the voting behaviour of Americans. Here, in the land of the perpetrators, almost 30% voted for the AfD and a further 5% for the Free Saxons and other far-right parties in the state elections in Saxony just a few weeks ago.
As a Jewish anti-fascist who has learnt from my family's history, I would like to say quite clearly to the Saxon Minister President today: you don't sit down at the same table with fascists and right-wing extremists - no, you fight them with all the means that the rule of law and our constitution have made available to us. And that's what my family's history tells me: we have to resist.
15 years ago, I took to the streets together with many young people and ‘Dresden Nazifrei’, and for almost 10 years we stood up with
‘Herz statt Hetze’ against Pegida and Co. As a 78-year-old, despite all the existing problems, it makes me happy that many young people have been and continue to be at the forefront of the movement against right-wing extremism, racism and anti-Semitism. My personal thanks go to them for this.
And there is something else that is important for me to say: our remembrance this year coincides with the terrible presence of the attack on Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah with the support of Iran. I tell you quite honestly: I am no friend of Netanyahu and - if I were an Israeli citizen (which I am not) - I would not vote for him either. I also want peace for the Israelis and the Palestinians. But I oppose the slanderous reversal from victims to perpetrators that can be found today. It was not the Israelis who cruelly murdered 1,300 people and abducted 300 hostages on one day, 7 October 2023, just because they thought they were Jewish, but Hamas committed this atrocious act.
For me as a Jew, the reaction of the German majority society - including in our city - to the events of 7 October was more than disappointing. There were not hundreds of thousands of Germans who took to the streets in solidarity with the murdered Jews - no, on the contrary: there were demonstrations on German streets under the flag of Palestine applauding the terrorists of 7 October. Once again, the majority of society remained silent.
The threatening situation for us Jews is not limited to the Middle East - and this also needs to be recognised: All over the world, anti-Semitic demonstrations and attacks are on the rise. On today's 9 November, it is therefore all the more important to recall the atrocities of the November pogroms of 1938 and derive from them a resolute commitment to the often proclaimed ‘never again’ in the here and now.
These are all things that move me as a Jew on this special day of remembrance.
I am now very pleased that the following artists from the Offbeat Cooperative and the Dresden Chamber Choir have declared their willingness to make this day a special day of remembrance for us with their music. We invite you to join us afterwards for an individual exchange of ideas. I would like to thank everyone who has helped us to prepare and organise today's event. Thank you to my friends from the Jewish Community for your hospitality and support, thank you to the technical team and many thanks to the Offbeat Cooperative and the Dresden Chamber Choir for your impressive and moving programme.
Thank you all for being with us today!
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