Cleaning of the Azderbal’s Stolpersteine, 16.30, Monday 10th November at Nordstrasse 41, 04105
Pogroms – violent riots and attacks targeting minority religious and ethnic groups – remain a feature of our global community. While the word is usually associated with anti-Semitic attacks, it has also been used to describe anti-Muslim violence in India, against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, ethnic persecution against Serbs in Kosovo, the Roma in Ukraine, among others. It is a sad fact that in our world there continue to be moments when multiple, tension-building factors come together to result in the violent and devastating breakdown of our sense of shared humanity.
Kristallnacht, or the November Pogrom, took place throughout Nazi-governed Germany on 9th and 10th November 1938. It was a state-sponsored pogrom, fuelled by years of a relentless ‘them and us’ narrative and the apartheiding of minority ethnic and religious groups.
Every year, a group from Leipzig International School commemorates Kristallnacht by cleaning the Stolpersteine (the commemorative stones) of the Azderbal family, whose Stolpersteine were sponsored through the work of former LIS history teacher, Gary Bell. The Azderbal’s story can be found here.
We warmly invite you to join us this year on Monday 10th November at 16.30 at Nordstrasse 41 for the cleaning of the Azderbal’s Stolpersteine. As in previous years, we will clean the stones, light candles, read their story and recite the Kaddish (Jewish Prayer of Mourning). We do this in remembrance of the Azderbals, in remembrance of the minority cultures who suffered under the Nazi Regime, and in remembrance of all people who suffer persecution. And as an act of hope for a kinder, more inclusive future for the human race.