Holocaust survivor Engelina Billauer honored at Kristallnacht service

Engelina Billauer, a Holocaust survivor and firsthand witness of Kristallnacht, attended the event and spoke to The Panther about speaking up to defend those who are treated poorly. Photo by Bonnie Cash

Nearly two weeks after 12 Jewish people were shot and killed as they worshipped in the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Chapman’s Fish Interfaith Center held its annual service in memory of the anniversary of Kristallnacht, known as “the night of the broken glass.” Engelina Billauer, a Holocaust survivor and firsthand witness of Kristallnacht, attended as the honorary guest of the night.

During anti-Jewish riots that occurred throughout Germany on Nov. 9-10 in 1938, Jewish synagogues, homes, businesses and schools were burned, looted and destroyed. Jewish people were taken from their homes, and nearly 100 people were killed. The name “Kristallnacht,” a German phrase, references the scattered broken glass left on the streets after the riots.

Of the four Holocaust survivors who attended the Kristallnacht memorial event Chapman held five years ago, Billauer, 91, is the last survivor and Kristallnacht witness still alive.

“People don’t realize how bad we were treated. We were not treated like human beings,” Billauer told The Panther. “(I want people) to remember the history … the recent history and what can happen to people when nobody spoke up. Speak up when you see something wrong.”

An audience of about 250 people filled the seats of the Interfaith center Nov. 8, facing a platform decorated with brightly colored flowers and a Torah.

Gail Stearns, the dean of the All-Faiths Chapel, and Marilyn Harran, director of the Rodgers Center for Holocaust Education, spoke at the event.

Iman Khosrowpour, a violinist and the director and conductor of the Irvine Valley College Symphony orchestra, played music from the 1930s and 40s, as well as other compositions like the theme from Schindler’s List.

Persecution of Jewish people had already begun in 1933 when the Nazis came into power and began enforcing anti-Semitic regulations, Harran said. The vast majority of Germans chose to remain silent at the time, thinking that the new rules were temporary.

“Most of us here have only experienced the events of November 1938 … through black and white photographs, newsreels, documentaries and brief paragraphs in history textbooks,” Harran said. “Eighty years ago, the Jews of Germany and Austria were assaulted by an unprecedented wave of violence and destruction. Kristallnacht left in its wake shattered windows, burnt synagogues and desecrated Torahs.”

Kristallnacht is an example of how the Germans had planned the attack on Jews in advance, waiting for the right moment to strike, Harran said.

“Kristallnacht was the first really orchestrated violence that swept across all of Germany and Austria,” Harran told The Panther. “(The Germans) tried to make it look like it was all spontaneous, but it wasn’t.”

Chapman’s Kristallnacht commemoration may be the only one of its kind in the nation, Stearns and Harran said. But this service is more unique, Harran said, because it marks the first year that both a rabbi and Muslim spiritual leader will take part.

“It reinforces the idea that’s really important to me, the center and Chapman, that we share humanity and when one of us doesn’t stand up for someone else who is being persecuted or abused, it damages all of us,” Harran said. “We have to speak up for our shared humanity.”

Will Jones, a first-year graduate student studying war and society, said he chose to attend in order to reflect on the present while learning about the past.

“It’s very important to learn from the past in order to make a better future,” Jones said.