AJN STAFF

MORE than 400 people turned out to mark the 71th anniversary of the Nazi’s Kristallnacht anti-Semitic pogrom at Emanuel School recently.

Among the guest speakers were Holocaust survivor Fred Stein and Kevin Russell, the great grandson of William Cooper, an Aboriginal man who protested outside the German Consulate against the persecution of German Jews in 1939.

Cooper’s demonstration came just weeks after Kristallnacht, when about 1400 synagogues were set ablaze and hundreds of Jews killed.

NSW Jewish Board of Deputies president Robin Margo said:  “It takes one’s breath away that people who had suffered, were suffering, so much themselves, who were not yet even counted as people in the Australian census, found it in their hearts to express such solidarity and compassion for another people, our people, subject to persecution in a country thousands of miles from Australia.”

Russell said he was “humbled and moved” by how his great grandfather is revered by the Jewish community.

Also present at the ceremony was Consul General of the Federal Republic of German, Hans Gunter Gnodtke.