Cypriot delegation visits Auschwitz to mark Kristallnacht anniversary

A Cypriot delegation led by Diko president Nicholas Papadopoulos and US Ambassador John Breslow visited Auschwitz on Wednesday as part of the European Jewish Association’s annual trip marking the anniversary of Kristallnacht. According to Israel’s ambassador to Cyprus, Shuli Davidovich, the trip was intended to confront rising antisemitism in Europe and to strengthen Holocaust education and remembrance. Davidovich said antisemitic attacks had surged across Europe and beyond since October 7, leaving Jewish communities “increasingly threatened”. She called this “a worrying reality” that demanded a clear political response, at a time when “even the memory of the Holocaust was being distorted and weaponised”. “Honouring the past and safeguarding the future is a shared obligation,” she said. The trip included the education ministry’s permanent secretary Marios Panayides, and Yaron Zeloof, president of the Jewish Community of Cyprus. Kristallnacht, also known as the ‘Night of Broken Glass’, took place during November 1938, when Nazis and their supporters attacked Jewish establishments and synagogues across Germany and Austria. Dozens of Jews were killed during the pogrom, and some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Historians regard the violence as a turning point in Nazi policy that led to the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany and its collaborators murdered six million Jews. Auschwitz, in then occupied Poland, became the largest of the camps, and more than one million people were killed there, most of them Jews. The European Jewish Association organises the visit every year.