About a month before the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, sparking World War II, a desperate Jewish father in Germany penned a letter in broken English to a friend in England, Mrs. Wolf.

 “I beg to inform you that we have got a refuse from the Aid Committee in London, owing to our high waiting number for America. … We are very discouraged by this answer and are now forced to get out our children as quick as possible.”

Alfons Lasker, an attorney in Breslau, was on a mission to get his two daughters – Anita and Renate – out of Germany. He did not succeed.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research is proud to announce the publication of a new book entitled New Perspectives on Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, the Nazi Pogrom in Global Comparison, edited by Wolf Gruner and Steve Ross.

The event hosted by USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research appears to have been the only international academic conference to mark the 80th anniversary of this fateful event of November 1938, during which Nazis and ordinary Germans murdered more than 100 Jews and destroyed thousands of synagogues, Jewish institutions, stores and homes across Germany.

The Kristallnacht pogrom was a critical turning point on the path to genocide, and all of our #IWitnessChat participants agreed that using testimony is a meaningful way for students to understand and connect with the event. Hearing survivors’ detailed accounts of this night makes it much more accessible to students.

IWitness has published a new activity about Kristallnacht just in time for its 77th anniversary this November.