“The November pogrom against the Jewish population in 1938 should have been the first major warning to the democratic states of Europe and their political representatives about what might happen next. We know what happens in the end. This event is often described as the beginning of the Holocaust. Even more surprising is the reaction we have seen in recent days regarding the Palestinian aggression that occurred on October 7 in Israel. We must always condemn such things and oppose them. The fact that we have valid reasons for this is confirmed not only by history, but also by some of the reactions and open manifestations of anti-Semitism that we have observed again in recent days. Crime seems to be making a comeback after 85 years.” said the Mayor of Liberec, Jaroslav Zámečník.

The commemoration was organized by the Jewish Community of Liberec in cooperation with the Liberec Region, the legal city of Liberec and the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic. The event was attended by dozens of guests, in addition to representatives of the organizing institutions, high-ranking constitutional officials, ambassadors of the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland, representatives of the Jewish community and other institutions – for example the Endowment Fund for Holocaust Victims. , the Terezín Initiative Institute, the Jewish Museum in Prague, representatives of the Technical University of Liberec and prominent citizens of the city.

Kristallnacht is the name for the anti-Jewish pogrom that occurred on the night of 9-10 November 1938 in Germany, Austria and the annexed Sudetenland. The immediate cause of the pogrom was the murder of Ernst vom Rath, secretary of the German embassy in Paris, by the Jew Herschel Grynszpan, which also occurred after the Beer Hall Putsch anniversary celebrations in Munich. Kristallnacht got its adopted name from fragments of Jewish shop windows. Dozens of synagogues were burned, including around fifty synagogues on the Czech border in territories that had been annexed to the Empire through the Munich Agreement a few weeks earlier, for example in Liberec.

In 1930, 1,392 people of Jewish origin were registered in Liberec. However, the Second World War had a fatal impact on the life of Liberec’s Jewish community, many of its members died in ghettos and extermination camps. After the war, 1,211 Jews were registered in Liberec, of whom only 37 were old settlers who had survived the concentration camps, and 182 of them were foreign soldiers.

A Jewish religious association was founded in Liberec in 1863 and a Jewish religious community in 1877. The prayer hall with 208 seats was moved to Frýdlantská street no. 11 now. In 1887 – 89, a synagogue was built on Na Skřivanech Street (now Rumjancevova Street), which was burned down by the Nazis in 1938. The Neo-Renaissance synagogue in Liberec, known to locals as Stará, stood to the north of the town hall and theater . The synagogue fell victim to anti-Semitic hysteria when Germans from Liberec burned it to the ground during Kristallnacht. Today, the Liberec library and the New Synagogue stand in its place.