On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI expression his revulsion over Nazi Germany’s “Kristallnacht,” which took place 70 years ago on Nov. 9-10, 1938.

On those two nights, mobs emboldened and encouraged by Adolf Hitler’s official policy of anti-Semitism went on a rampage across Germany, smashing the windows of Jewish businesses (hence the “Crystal Night” nickname), burning synagogues and looting and terrorizing Jewish families. Almost a hundred Jews are known to have been killed in the violence.

At the same time, Nazi authorities arrested thousands and deported them to concentration camps.

The Kristallnacht pogrom marked the onset of the vicious Nazi persecution of Jews that culminated ultimately in the killing of millions of innocent people in the death camps of the Holocaust.

“I still feel pain for what happened in that tragic circumstance whose memory must serve to ensure that similar horrors are never repeated again and that we commit ourselves, at every level, to fighting anti-Semitism and discrimination, especially by educating the younger generations in respect and mutual tacceptance,” the Pope said Nov. 9 about Kristallnacht during his midday remarks at the Sunday Angelus prayers at St. Peter’s Square.

At the time Kristallnacht occurred, the future Pope was an 11-year-old boy in the German state of Bavaria.

Benedict asked Catholics to pray for the victims of the Nazi precaution and “to join me in showing deep solidarity with the Jewish world.”

Another manifestation of Jewish-Catholic solidarity occurred this week in Israel when the new Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Fouad Twal, met the Chief Rabbi of Efrat, Israel. It was the first time the two men had met since Patriarch Twal was elevated to his new position in June.

According to a Nov. 11 press release from The Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding & Cooperation, “Rabbi Riskin congratulated the Latin Patriarch on his new appointment and expressed the Jewish community’s willingness to work with Catholic Church to foster better relations between the faiths to ‘promote a religion of peace.’”

The meeting between Patriarch Twal and Rabbi Riskin was coordinated by Gary Krupp, the Jewish president of the New York-based Pave the Way Foundation.

The Pave the Way Foundation also organized a recent conference in Rome to defend the reputation of Pope Pius XII against historically unfounded claims that the wartime Pope ignored the plight of Jews.

Krupp said this about the meeting of Patriarch Twal and Rabbi Riskin: “We are witnessing historic moments in faith history, where it was unheard of an Orthodox rabbi to sit down with an Archbishop a century ago are now finding ways to work together.”

— Tom McFeely