History is not a ruler

Kristallnacht is a date that has been burned into my memory. Seared into my DNA; a building block of my sense of where I come from and what my people have been through.

When I was small, my Oma used to tell my sister and me stories about that horrible day and night- the 9th and 10th of November. Even into my adulthood, I've had nightmares about broken glass and the smell of smoke, br*tal men, the barking of dogs, and the h*rror of it all. Her stories laced our childhood with something darker, as small children, we saw the p*grom unfold from her eyes, when she was only 9-year-old.

For us, that story settled into our bones and shaped the way we grew up; sensitive to the heat of antisemitism, anticipating the fire, a sense of impending d*nger, or at least the assurance that it would come.

This week I spent a lot of time watching her Shoah Foundation videos with my father, Eric Lankin, who is a Holocaust educator and was preparing for a presentation for last night. I've watched her videos many times over the years; the more time passes since her passing, the harder it is to watch.

The more desperate I am to hear the cadence of her voice, the pauses in her speech. I miss her refinement and storytelling, and sweetness. I wish this long video I have was not only telling sad stories, her eyes are so haunted and heavy. Her voice thick with remembering. But certainly it is the memory I need most now.

My father always tells me that he is uncomfortable with Holocaust comparisons. When people say, "It's the same now as it was then!" Trying to extrapolate certainty from one event 80 years ago, to future cast for our current timeline. Last night he presented twice, and both times he was asked, "What does Kristallnacht tell us about what is going to happen next to Jews around the world since the rise of antisemitism again?"

Both times he answered, "The past does not dictate the future."

And yet, we both assessed that listening to my grandmother's stories is eerie.

Antisemitism has risen and fallen over the centuries; it takes different shapes and forms; different monsters with new heads, old faces remade anew.

But often there are patterns.

The dehumanization of Jews.

The insistence that we are not entitled to safety.

The vilifying of our existence.

The ease with which people look away when harm is done to us.

The silence of neighbors who decide it is “not their business.”

The way v*olence against us is justified, excused, minimized, reframed, or simply not believed.

History doesn’t repeat itself in identical form.

But it echoes.

When she told us those stories, she was not teaching us to fear.

She was teaching us to recognize, to pay attention to the temperature of a room, to notice when the air shifts.

And I think a lot about that now.

On college campuses.

On streets and subways.

In offices and schools.

On social media.

In cities where Jews are told to hide signs of who we are.

In conversations where people feel emboldened to deny October 7, or call for the eradication of the Jewish state, or insist that Jewish pain is not real unless it is politically convenient.

I hear my grandmother’s voice in those moments.

Not saying “It is the same.”

But saying, "Pay attention."

Remember what you come from.

Remember who you are responsible for.

Remember that your safety cannot be taken for granted — and neither can your voice.

I am her granddaughter.

She taught me to feel the temperature change.

The winds are howling.

Storms are brewing.

I know that safety cannot be weighed by past tr*gedies in exacting measures.

History is not a ruler.

It’s a pulse.

We don’t measure danger only by matching it to what came before.

We measure it by what we know in our bones.

By how easily people speak about Jewish lives as expendable.

By how quickly our mourning is questioned, minimized, mocked.

By how loudly the world shouts that our d*ad do not count

—and how silent they stay when we bl*ed.

This is not about predicting the future.

This is about refusing to be caught unaware.

It is about presence.

Memory.

Responsibility.

Not to compare.

Not to catastrophize.

But to remember — and to pay attention.

Last night, my daughter held the candle that we lit.

A flame passed from hand to hand.

From the girl my grandmother once was,

to the girl my daughter is now.

This is how we survive:

not in the stories alone, but how we hold them.

One generation to the next.