Rabbi returns to Russian town to commemorate Kristallnacht

MOSCOW, Nov. 18 (JTA) — A rabbi returned to his home city to help it commemorate the anniversary of Kristallnacht. Rabbi Zvi Dunner, now 86 and a rabbi in London, was beaten and arrested in Konigsberg on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938, when a Nazi- organized pogrom attacked Jews, Jewish property and synagogues across Germany. Released by the Gestapo several weeks later, Dunner, the last chief rabbi of Konigsberg, fled to England. The region, sandwiched between modern-day Poland and Lithuania, was part of Germany until after World War II, when it joined the Soviet Union. It is now part of Russia. The commemorative service took place amid widespread ignorance and apathy in the city of 350,000, which is now known as Kaliningrad. During Kristallnacht, the Jewish community in the city lost its biggest synagogue. Today, a circus stands on the site, and virtually no one remembers the synagogue — which was one of the biggest in Germany. And according to Viktor Shapiro, the head of Kaliningrad’s Jewish community of 2,000, this year’s commemoration was not supported by local authorities. The Kristallnacht commemoration coincided with a visit from a delegation of 20 rabbis from the United States, Britain and Israel. The group’s visit was connected with the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad, which, among other activities, helps preserve Jewish cemeteries and burial sites in Eastern Europe. In Kaliningrad, the group met with city officials to negotiate how to preserve the sites of former Jewish cemeteries located there. The city has two abandoned cemeteries that have not been used since World War II. One of the cemeteries contains the tomb of Rabbi Israel Salanter, the famous 19th-century Jewish thinker who founded the Musar movement to combat the secularizing tendencies of the Jewish Enlightenment. Next year, the Jewish community plans to host a conference on the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht.