SPANISH FORT, Ala.— It has been 70 years  this week since “Kristallnacht”—in German, “kristall” means “the breaking of glass” and “nacht” means “night”—commonly known as the “Night of Broken Glass” where more than 6 million Jewish men, women and children lost their lives to Nazi terrorism Nov. 9, 1938.

The 70th anniversary will be commemorated at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Tensaw Theater at Five Rivers Delta Resource Center—at 30945 Five Rivers Blvd. on the causeway in Spanish Fort—with free admission, however, voluntary food bank donations will be accepted, a news release said.

Donations will benefit the Fairhope Ecumenical Ministries Inc., food bank. Rice, beans, canned soup and more are welcomed, the release said.

The commemoration will feature “Ninth November Night,” a 23-minute documentary by Austrian artist Gottfried Helmwein, a German Catholic, and co-stars Sean Penn, Maxmillian Schell and Jason Lee.

The film premiered in Germany in 2004, the release said. 

“We’re going to have a little background and a little history,” Carol Zimmerman, organizer, said. “It’s more of what happened but it’s not a historical-type thing.

“It’s showing the feelings of people and it deals more with feelings than actual events.”

Kristallnacht acquired the name “Night of Broken Glass” because of the many shattered store and synagogue windows broken out by the Nazis, according to www.ushmm.org, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Web site. 

“One of the things that was significant was the people that were supposed to be protecting the public were participating in the crimes,” Zimmerman said referring to the police officers. “There was no structure.

 “It’s unimaginable, and it happened.”

The wave of anti-Jewish “pogroms”—which means “to wreak havoc or destroy violently”—destroyed thousands of Jewish businesses, homes and synagogues in just a few hours, the site said.

Adolf Hitler’s takeover of the government initiated an anti-Jewish coup, according to Paul Filben, co-chair of the Gulf Coast Center of Holocaust and Human Rights in Mobile.

The violent acts also stemmed from the Nov. 7, 1938 assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath, in a German embassy in Paris, by teenager Herschel Grynszpan, the site said. 

“A lot of … hate rhetoric took place,” Filben said. “Many historians say it’s the precursor for the Holocaust.”

Jerry Darring, of Our Savior Catholic Church in Mobile, will be the keynote speaker for the  commemoration. Other participants include Rabbi Steven Silberman of Ahavas Chesed Synagogue and Rabbi Donald Kunstadt of Spring hill Avenue Temple, the release said.

The commemoration is sponsored by the Mobile Christian-Jewish  Dialogue, the Gulf Coast Center of Holocaust and Human Rights Education, Ahavas Chese Synagogue in Mobile, Springhill Avenue Temple, Mobile and the Eastern Shore Jewish Study Group, according to a news release.

For more information contact Mary Lou Malcolm at 621-9864 or Carol Zimmerman at 990-3060.