On Monday, November 6, The Catholic University of America Columbus School of Law (Catholic Law) will commemorate 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. The event will begin with remarks from Stuart E. Eizenstat, Senior Counsel at Covington & Burling LLP and chair of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, who will be speaking in his personal capacity.

This solemn remembrance will feature as its central presentation 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 will be followed by a panel discussion, with such guest speakers as 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. The event will close with the recitation of the 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.