close
close

Association-anemone

Bite-sized brilliance in every update

    • A survivor kept the key to a synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht
    asane

    A survivor kept the key to a synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht

    Online Niel Posted on

    Singer Jennifer Bern-Vogel was used to hearing her mother tell the story.

    On the evening of November 9, 1938, her mother, then Marianne Katzenstein, who was 16 at the time, was in her family synagogue in Bielefeld, Germanyexercising the organ. She finished, used a key to lock the building, and returned home. Later that night, the synagogue was burned to the ground by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht pogrom.

    Only two objects survived the fire: a Torah scroll and Katzenstein’s key.

    “I just remember her talking about it, her voice changed and she was slower, softer and very nostalgic when she talked about the whole story,” Bern-Vogel, 67, said in an interview. “Whenever he would tell the story and then hold the key, people always — and I’ve experienced it myself — there was always this kind of gasp.”

    Bern-Vogel, who has been a cantor at Congregation Emanu El in Redlands, Calif., since 2009, said the story of the key was “legendary” in her family.

    Left, the new building for the Beit Tikvah Synagogue in Bielefeld, Germany, which was inaugurated in 2008. (Wikimedia Commons.) Right, a newspaper clipping showing the original Bielefeld Synagogue building. (credit: courtesy of Jennifer Bern-Vogel)

    And on Saturday, 86 years after Kristallnacht, the key returned home.

    Bern-Vogel spent last week in Germany, where she lived for more than a decade when she was younger, reconnecting with friends, family and the Jewish community in Bielefeld, where the synagogue was re-established shortly after the Holocaust. It was her first trip to Bielefeld with her husband and daughter, and her brother and niece, as well as a cousin from Denmark, also flew in for the occasion.

    On Friday evening, Bern-Vogel and the cantor of the Bielefeld Synagogue led Shabbat services together. Bern-Vogel sang a song that was adapted from a poem written by her grandfather, with music composed by a longtime friend from Germany.

    And after Havdalah on Saturday, the city held a ceremony that began at the site of the destroyed synagogue before moving to City Hall, where the official handover was made. The key has been added to the collection of the city’s history museum and will be displayed at the current synagogue building.

    According to Irith Michelsohn, president of the city’s Jewish community and the progressive Jewish movement in Germany, Bielefeld’s Jewish community has 450 members. The synagogue that the community now uses was renovated from an old Protestant church and was inaugurated in 2008.

    Before the Holocaust, Bielefeld was home to nearly 1,000 Jews, Michelsohn said. The community has been revitalized since Michelsohn took the helm on Jan. 1, 2000, when she said there were only 35 members.

    Stay up to date with the latest news!

    Subscribe to The Jerusalem Post newsletter

    Michelsohn said the turn of the key is extremely meaningful to the community.

    “I was so excited, because we only have one Torah scroll, and now the key, that’s all we have from our old synagogue,” Michelsohn said. “And now the key has turned. It’s so great, you can’t imagine.”

    Michelsohn said the key is especially important as a vehicle to educate the current community about its past. She explained that, like many German Jewish communities, Bielefeld’s Jews are almost all originally from the former Soviet Union.

    “You don’t have many people who are originally from Germany,” she said. “Some of them converted to Judaismsome immigrated from Israel or other countries or work in Bielefeld with a university, but the majority of members in all 120 Jewish communities in Germany are from the former Soviet Union.”

    The key, Michelsohn said, is an opportunity to “learn something about history, about the past, about what we’ve lost.”

    It also returns a physical reminder of the old synagogue building, which had been built in 1905 and was commissioned by the Katzenstein family. Bern-Vogel’s maternal grandfather had been the head of the Jewish community and helped hundreds of families flee Germany.

    “It symbolizes a connection to the old and very, very beautiful building that we had,” Michelsohn said, adding that the destroyed synagogue was “such a wonderful building.”

    Like the key she kept, Bern-Vogel’s mother’s remarkable story did not end in 1938. The following year, she and her younger sister escaped to England on the Kindertransport. Years later, he was at a Shabbat dinner in Israel when he met Julian Bernstein (later shortened to Bern), Bern-Vogel’s father, who also survived the Holocaust.

    Julian was one of six children in a Lithuanian family, but only he and a brother survived the Holocaust. That brother, Leon Bernstein, and Bern-Vogel’s mother both worked for World Jewish Congress; Leon hosted the Shabbat dinner where Julian and Marianne met.

    The two were engaged within a week and eventually settled in Iowa, where Bern-Vogel and her brother grew up.

    In the last years of her mother’s life, Bern-Vogel said there were efforts to bring the key to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. But a contact her mother had at the museum died, and in 2017, so did she, aged 94.

    “It had a very deep connection,” Bern-Vogel said, referring to the key, a copy of which he still has. “I don’t think I thought, when we were growing up, that the key would be anywhere but with us. It belonged to us in a way.”

    But as her mother ages, Bern-Vogel said her family wanted to determine where the key should go to be best cared for and make the most sense. After several recent trips to Germany, Bern-Vogel said the answer crystallized.

    “It became clearer over the last couple of years, and especially after being there last summer to meet with them at the synagogue and at the museum, that it would really mean the most to everyone and to future generations to be there.” she said.

    Bern-Vogel said that although her mother had a difficult relationship with Germany because of how her family’s time there ended, Bielefeld will always be their home. And she knows her mother would appreciate knowing that the key is back.

    “I think she would be incredibly excited about the reception the key will have and the people who are involved in the city,” Bern-Vogel said. “I think she’s going to be very honored and happy and I think she’s going to be grateful.”



    Online Niel
    View all posts

    You Might Also Like