Kristallnacht survivors agree: "It could happen again."

On the 87th anniversary of the pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany, three gentlemen believe the world is no safer for Jews today than it was during the Holocaust. Here's what they said.

On the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Holocaust survivors who lived through the 1938 pogrom as children have issued a joint warning about the rise in global antisemitism.

Walter Bingham (101), George Shefi (94), and Paul Alexander (90) were all children in Germany during Kristallnacht and believe the world today is no safer for Jews than it was 87 years ago.

L-R: Kristallnacht survivor Walter Bingham, CEO of March of the Living Israel, Revital Yakin Krakovsky, and Kristallnacht survivors Paul Alexander and George Shefi, at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem, October 29, 2025.

“With today’s antisemitic atmosphere, pogroms against Jews can happen again,” said Bingham, who witnessed Hitler’s rise to power and experienced growing antisemitism as a young boy in Nazi Germany.

Alexander, who was an infant at the time, saw his father arrested that night and sent to Buchenwald. He agrees: “The images of the past two years remind us of the darkest days of the 1930s in Nazi Germany.”

Shefi remembers waking up to shattered glass outside a Jewish-owned store and finding his nearby school and synagogue burned.

To mark the anniversary, the three survivors released a joint statement with the International March of the Living, addressing the alarming surge in global antisemitism:

“We, Holocaust survivors, lived through the Kristallnacht pogrom as children in Germany.
We saw with our own eyes how hatred turned to flames, how indifference became complicity, and how the world stayed silent as Jews were attacked.

Today, 87 years later, we look around us and say with deep pain: the world has learned nothing.
Once again, Jews are murdered for being Jews. Once again, synagogues are attacked. Once again, universities remain silent in the face of incitement.