Belgium: Kristallnacht Observance in Ghent Canceled Due to Fears of Incidents

In Ghent, Belgium this past week, the Jewish community decided to cancel their annual commemoration of the 1938 Night of the broken glass in Germany when Nazis attacked thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues in an orgy of violence. This year, the Ghent Jewish community decided to hold a scaled-down "mini" commemoration due to fears of violent incidents occurring in connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It's a sad day, indeed, when Jews in Belgium cannot even commemorate their Holocaust dead without fears of being violently disrupted by today's new Nazis, the people supporting Hamas.

The below article dated November 6 from the Dutch-language, Belgian Jewish news site, Joods Actueel is translated by Fousesquawk.

https://joodsactueel.be/2023/11/06/kristallnacht-herdenking-gent-afgelast-vanwege-vrees-incidenten/

Kristallnacht commemoration in Ghent canceled due to fear of incidents

November 5, 2023

Lieve Schacht

At the last minute, the Jewish community decided to hold a mini-commeoration on Sunday, November 5. Some 30 people came to lay a small stone on the monument after a short speech from the chairman of the Jewish community while El Malei Rachamin, a prayer for the dead, was played. A sober yet dignified ceremony.

The Kristallnacht (Night of the broken glass), which the Nazis organized on the night of November 9-10, 1938 was in fact, a well-prepared large pogrom against Jews all over Germany, but also in the German-annexed Sudentenland and Austria. Not only were thousands of Jewish shops and businesses plundered and destroyed, but also Jewish private residences, synagogues, schools, graves, and hospitals were attacked. Several hundred Jews were murdered on the streets while on November 10 about 30,000 Jewish men were locked up in concentration camps. It was the start of a policy that ended up in the mass murder of European Jews in Auschwitz.

In view of the horrific pogrom on Israeli soil on October 7, a reflection on the first pogrom on German soil on 9-10 November 1938 is certainly appropriate.