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November 6, 2016 11:09 PM By Rick Folbaum
MIAMI (CBSMiami) — Community leaders gathered at a Miami synagogue Sunday during a special night remembering the victims of the Holocaust.
“I lost my parents and it’s very important for me to attend the functions, which are remembering the Holocaust,” said Fred Mulbauer.
Temple Israel of Greater Miami hosted Kristallnacht — the spark that ignited the Holocaust, when Hitler’s Germany began its systematic persecution of Europe’s Jewish population.
“We need to tell the history of Kristallnacht because it could easily happen again,” said Wendy Reuss Rithfield. “Because there’s so much tyranny and abuse and bullying out there.”
November 9th and 10th in 1938, Jewish schools, synagogues and businesses were burned. 91 Jews were killed and 30,000 more were put into concentration camps.
“It was a harbinger of worse to come,” said Rithfield. “Because after Kristallnacht and the burning and the defamation of property and people, it was the beginning of the Holocaust. We didn’t know it then, but we now know when we look at history. This was the beginning. This was the opening volley.”
And so we remember each year so that it never happens again.
“For us to remember something like this is important because I think we can easily say that we have the ability to keep on doing things like that to each other,” said Amy Dean of the Greater Miami Jewish Foundation. “And perhaps it’s time for us to stop.”