Historians Fritz Stern (FIVE GERMANYS I HAVE KNOWN) and Joyce Avrech Berkman (CONTEMPLATING EDITH STEIN) talk to us on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. and Joyce Berkman, CONTEMPLATING EDITH STEIN
Theme music: Dave Brubeck, "Cassandra"
Sixty eight years ago, on the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, terror was unleashed on German Jews by the Nazi regime. Jewish stores and homes were vandalized, synagogues were burned to the ground, and countless men and boys were hauled off to concentration camps. In post-war years, it came to be called Kristallnacht, for the broken glass that littered the streets. Fritz Stern escaped Nazi Germany with his family just five weeks before Kristallnacht. He was twelve years old. His new memoir, FIVE GERMANYS I HAVE KNOWN, recounts his complex history with the country of his birth and earlier childhood. Also, University of Massahusetts professor of history, Joyce Avrech Berkman, received accolades last year for editing a volume of essays about Edith Stein, the German Jew, turned Catholic nun who was canonized in 1998. Stein perished in Auschwitz in August, 1942. We talk with Berkman about Stein's feminism, faith and life.