That We Never Forget

Kristallnacht (“crystal night,” for the shattered windows) began shortly before midnight, November 9, 1938. On orders of Joseph Goebbels, sledgehammer-wielding SS and SA troops systematically destroyed Jewish businesses and property. More than 1,000 synagogues were vandalized and hundreds set on fire. In just two days, 30,000 Jewish men — a quarter of all Jewish men in Germany — were sent to concentration camps. In commemoration, the Midwest Center
for Holocaust Education and UMKC’s
Conservatory of Music present a performance of Steve Reich’s Different Trains, a work that contrasts the trains of Reich’s American childhood in the 1940s with the trains carrying European Jews during that time to death camps. Readings from first-person accounts of Nazi Germany and a discussion precede the free event, which starts at 7:30 p.m. at the White Theatre (5801 West 115th Street in Overland Park). See mchekc.org.— Grace Suh

Tue., Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m., 2010