Stark memories of Kristallnacht

[Kiwi]

Stark memories of Kristallnacht

Sharon Berger

A CAPACITY crowd attended the commemoration service for the 69th anniversary of Kristallnacht the night of broken glass at the Sydney Jewish Museum on Sunday night.

The evening was remembered on an intimate level by World War II survivor Gertie Jellinek.

And later the audience saw an intriguing interview with author Thomas Keneally and a partial re-enactment of his latest play, Either Or.

The predominantly older crowd recited kaddish and listened soberly to Jellinek, a volunteer at the museum, as she told how she was a 12-year-old girl living in Austria when German soldiers entered her family's apartment on Kristallnacht and took her father away for 10 days.

Her family had no idea of his welfare or whereabouts.

The evening was co-hosted by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, the Sydney Jewish Museum and the Australian Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors & Descendants.

The interview with Keneally, which illuminated the horrors of the time, was conducted by ABC journalist Dr Rachel Kohn.

Keneally, the well-known author of Schindler's Ark, a book that was later adapted by Steven Spielberg into the Oscar-winning movie Schindler's List, took another anti-hero as the centre of the story.

ABC radio national will broadcast Sunday's discussion on November 18 at 6:05pm on "The Spirit of Things".