Confirmation candidates in Bad Dürkheim commemorate the Kristallnacht pogrom

Confirmation candidates in Bad Dürkheim commemorate the Kristallnacht pogrom

On Friday evening, November 8th, 2025, an impressive memorial event for Kristallnacht took place in the Bad Dürkheim Castle Church. Around 30 confirmation candidates from Bad Dürkheim and the surrounding area took part. Under the motto “Experience History” the dark events of November 9, 1938 were brought to awareness, when the first open persecution of the Jewish population in National Socialist Germany began.

The event was organized by the Evangelical Youth Center Bad Dürkheim in close cooperation with the Evangelical church community. This culture of remembrance has lost none of its significance, especially in view of the terrible consequences that Kristallnacht brought with it. More than 1,400 synagogues were set on fire and over 7,500 Jewish shops were looted. The violence carried out that night by SA and SS units as well as parts of the civilian population led to hundreds of deaths and tens of thousands of arrests, as the Federal Agency for Civic Education documented in detail.

A dark chapter in history

The reason for this brutal violence was the assassination attempt on the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on November 7, 1938. The young Jewish refugee Herschel Grynszpan took this desperate step to draw attention to the catastrophic living conditions of his family in Germany. The Nazi Party leadership used the assassination attempt to unleash a wave of violence against Jewish people that went down in history as the “Night the Synagogues Burned.” These brutal attacks, which attracted both national and international attention, marked a turning point in the Nazi regime's Jewish policy and the transition from discrimination to systematic persecution.

The events that unfolded from November 9th to 10th, 1938 left a deep trauma in the collective memory of Germans and are part of a remembrance that remains continually relevant. Helmut Schmidt was the first Federal Chancellor to publicly address these cruel acts in 1978, and today's memorial event is part of a long tradition of remembrance.

Lasting effects

Kristallnacht was not only an attack on Jewish shrines and Jewish life, it also served as a turning point. From this point on, the exclusion and persecution of the Jewish population became increasingly systematic and brutal. Jewish children were excluded from attending German schools and many families were forced to flee Germany. However, many of them were unable to do this for financial reasons, which increased the number of Jewish refugees - from 40,000 in 1938 to almost 80,000 in 1939.

The memorial event in Bad Dürkheim is not only a reminder of the terrible acts of that time, but also a sign of remembrance that must never be forgotten. With their participation, the confirmation candidates showed that the young generation also wants to face history. As Südwestdeutscher Rundfunk reports, the Evangelical Youth strives to make the historical dimension tangible and to integrate commemoration into everyday life. This commitment is of great importance in order to keep history alive and to bring the lessons from it into our society.