Catholics, Jews gather on Marco to commemorate Kristallnacht

She and her family emigrated from Austria to the United States in May 1939, before the deadliest years of the Holocaust.

But she was in Austria on Nov. 9, 1938, during "Kristallnacht," the "Night of Broken Glass," when the Nazi regime sponsored riots throughout the German Reich, arresting tens of thousands of Jews and burning hundreds of Jewish synagogues. The pogrom marked a turning point in Nazi policy toward Jews and is now widely regarded as the beginning of the Holocaust.

About 300 people gathered at the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island on Nov. 9 for Collier County's first Catholic/ Jewish Convocation commemorating the 65th anniversary of Kristallnacht. The guest speaker for the service was the Most Rev. John J. Nevins, bishop of the Diocese of Venice, which supervises all Catholic churches in Collier, Lee, Sarasota and seven other Southwest Florida counties.

Greeting the audience in Hebrew with the "Shema," the Jewish affirmation of faith in one God, Nevins praised Jews for their perseverance throughout history and urged them to "always remember that you are the people to whom God spoke first."

"The Jewish people have suffered because of the hate and the prejudice of so many peo ple," said Nevins, who was 6 years old at the time of Kristallnacht. "But the spirit of the Jew is indomitable. It is alive and vibrant, even in the midst of all the travails they have experienced throughout history -- and are still experiencing."

Nevins also advised people to observe the commemoration "both as a memorial and as a warning."

"Don't let your guard down, dear people," he said. "Because I firmly believe that anti-Semitism is still alive in different parts of the world. ... We must teach and reteach, call and recall, to all Christians, as well as to men and women of good will, that anything close to Kristallnacht and the eventual Holocaust under Nazism must never occur again."

Jacobson, one of six survivors honored at the service, recalled the day after Kristallnacht, when three armed Nazis pounded on her family's door and demanded to know where her father was so they could take him away. Her father was in the hospital. So they made Jacobson's mother give them all of her jewelry, including her wedding band.

Her mother wasn't sure what was going on, said Jacobson, now retired from her job as a social worker with the United Way of America in Kansas City, Mo.

"In all innocence," she said, "my mother asked for a receipt to verify what they had confiscated, and when would she get it all back. They replied: 'Lady, you should be glad we didn't throw your children out the window.'"

Another survivor, Harold Baum, told the audience that after "a miracle happened" in 1941 when he left Germany for America, he joined the U.S.

Army in 1943 and later returned to Germany, where he helped capture a Nazi general.

The Catholic/Jewish Convocation, organized by the Diocese of Venice and the Jewish Federation of Collier County, was the fourth formal meeting combining Jewish and Catholic dialogue in Collier since March 2002.

The purpose of such dialogue, said Rabbi Howard R.

Greenstein of the Jewish Congregation of Marco Island, is to "engage Catholics and Jews in a reassessment of their long his tory and to advance the cause of mutual understanding and appreciation for our differences, as well as our commonalities.

And our local program thus far -- I think I may safely say in all humility -- has exceeded any ordinary expectations."

Greenstein joked in his opening remarks that "from the looks of this turnout, you'd think it was either Easter or Yom Kippur."

The organizers plan to make the Kristallnacht commemoration an annual event.

David E. Kay, rabbi of the Ma'ayan Conservative Synagogue in Naples, said that while the lives, communities and fam ilies shattered by the Holocaust can never be restored, he relies on God to provide the "thin, silent voice" that gives comfort "after the fire."

"We wait for comfort. We seek meaning. We long to make sense of it all," Kay said.

"And in the stillness of the darkest night, once again the words of the psalmists come to us: 'You are the healer of shattered hearts, the one who binds up their sorrow.' The shards of shattered glass can never be made whole, but the shards of our shattered hearts can be healed."