On Monday, November 6, The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (Catholic Law) commemorated the eighty-fifth anniversary of the November pogroms initiated by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitaries—a horrendous event greater known in German as Kristallnacht (literally, “Crystal Night”) and in English as the “Night of Broken Glass,” in reference to the shards of broken glass that littered the streets after Jewish-owned businesses were raided and destroyed.

Following an opening prayer by the Rev. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., the event began with remarks from Stuart E. Eizenstat, Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling LLP and chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, who spoke in his personal capacity.

This remembrance’s central presentation was a showing of Filmmakers for the Prosecution, a 2021 film that retraces the hunt for the films used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials but which the State Department intentionally buried once American priorities shifted to combating communism in light of the Cold War. The hour-long movie was followed by a panel discussion, with filmmaker Sandra Schulberg; Eli Rosenbaum, Counsel for War Crimes and Accountability at the Department of Justice; and the Hon. Andreas Michaelis, German ambassador to the United States, as guest speakers.

This event closed with the recitation of El Malei Rachamim—a Jewish prayer of memorial and remembrance of the dead—and a reception in the Louise H. Keelty and James Keelty, Jr. Atrium.