Kristallnacht concert at Temple Sinai set for Sunday afternoon

Temple Sinai Cantor Rebecca Garfein and Cantor Emeritus Joel Colman will be featured performers with the New Orleans Chamber Orchestra and the Loyola Chorale at a special concert to commemorate the anniversary of Kristallnacht,  “the Night of Broken Glass,” generally considered by scholars as the first organized Nazi efforts in what is known today as the Holocaust. The concert is slated to be held at Temple Sinai, 6237 St. Charles Avenue, at 400 p.m. Doors will open at 3:30 p.m.

A German synagogue erupts in flames on Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass” on November 9, 1938.

The concert will be held on Sunday, November 8, the day before November 9, which was the start of the hostilities against Jewish communities across Germany and Austria in 1938. Kristallnacht began on the night of November 9 and continued past midnight into the early morning hours of November 10.

The orchestra will be led by conductors Mazim Samarov and Phillip Larroque while Meg Frazier, Ph.D., will direct the chorus. Other featured performers will be Touro Synaogue cantorial soloist Alix Paige Loomis and Trey Pratt.

Among the works being played will ber “Ani Maamin,” a selection known as “The Song of the Camps.” It was sung by Jewish occupants of the concentration camps and arranged by Max Helfman in response to the Holocaust many years later.

“Vos Iz Gevorn Fun Mayn Shtetele” (“What Became of My Little Town”) is a Yiddish song that speaks to the destruction of one of many Jewish communities in Eastern Europe during the Shoah.

Kurt Weill’s “Kiddush,” a piece he composed in 1946 as a commission for a New York synaogogue, will also be performed. Weill was one of the more noted Jewish composers and artists who fled Nazi Germany soon after the election of Adolf Hitler to the position of chancellor.

The concert is free and open to the public. However, registration is required prior to arrival.