By Max Dickstein
The 8th Annual Egon J. Salmon and Family Commemoration of Kristallnacht and the St. Louis brought Wagner College students and Staten Island high schoolers together at a new location this year: the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park City.
At a museum where an exhibit warns of “what hate can do,” German Deputy Consul General Carsten Rüpke admonished the assembled students on Tuesday, Nov. 14, to “never forget.”
“The devastations that occurred on Nov. 9, 1938, marked another step on the way toward the organized murder of 6 million Jews,” Rüpke said. “Representing a free and democratic Germany, it is incredibly meaningful for me to commemorate Kristallnacht together with Egon J. Salmon’s family here at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, an invaluable institution that educates the next generations of New Yorkers and visitors from around the world.”
Salmon, a New Dorp High School and Wagner College alum who died last year, was born in Rheydt, Germany, in 1924. He was 9 years old when Hitler came to power. At Tuesday’s event, as Salmon’s 94-year-old widow, Marie, and his sons, Henry and John, looked on, Rüpke recalled advice Salmon often gave during presentations at schools and community centers.
“It is difficult to comprehend what human beings can do to each other,” Salmon would say, “but remember: It happened.”
“We will and shall never forget,” Rüpke said. “The foundation of a democratic Germany is the pledge of ‘never again’ — not just in words, but also through our actions. ‘Never again’ is now. We owe it to those who have died, suffered. We owe it to ourselves. And we owe it to you, the future generation.”
The event, organized by Professor Lori Weintrob, founding director of the Wagner College Holocaust Center, made a strong impression on the students who listened to the speakers and toured the museum.
“They have no frame of reference,” said Jennifer Russo, an 11th-grade English teacher at the Michael J. Petrides School, as she chaperoned a group of 10th-, 11th-, and 12th-grade Petrides students. “But some of our children feel persecuted in other ways. Persecution on this level really resonates with them. They understand the respect that needs to be paid.
“It’s hard to grasp, hard to see the visuals that this really happened,” Russo added, observing that her students’ attention was rapt within the exhibits. “But this place puts you right there.”
Amaia Murat, a senior at Petrides, described the contrast between learning facts at school compared to the pictures, artifacts and other evidence of the day-to-day lives of Holocaust victims.
“It just gives you more of a personal connection,” Murat said, “more of an emotional experience than just being in the classroom.”
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