An Austrian shul gutted by the Nazis is finally restored
Kristallnacht. The Night of the Broken Glass. Nearly 300 shuls attacked, many burned down to the ground. Hundreds of Jews beaten, arrested, murdered.
On that night of destruction, a shul in Kobersdorf, a small market town in Austria, was also attacked. Its stained glass windows were shattered, its interior destroyed. Only the walls survived.
Glass is the most fragile of materials. It can be easily broken, smashed into tiny fragments. But at the same time, it is the most enduring of materials: It can never be fully destroyed.
And like glass shards ground into the dirt but never completely obliterated, the small shul in Kobersdorf, which survived that most terrifying of nights, has, after more than 80 years lying desolate and desecrated, come back to life.
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