Harry Warschauer is invited to travel from Flackwell Heath to his East German birthplace to remember Kristallnacht.

NOVEMBER 1938, 60 years ago, was when the German Nazis held their first dress rehearsal for the Holocaust -- their attempt to wipe out all the Jews of Europe. They had not yet invented the gas chambers, so they just killed victims retail, not wholesale. They imprisoned them in concentration camps (they had started those); they burned down the synagogues and smashed the shop windows of Jewish businesses.

It happened all over Germany. In my own home town of Forst, in Eastern Germany, it happened too, though a day late. Elsewhere it was on November 9. Here, the Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), took place on the birthday of Martin Luther, which happens to be my birthday as well.

Our synagogue was close to other, non-Jewish premises. The local fire chief, either very brave or very conscientious, argued with the local Nazi bosses that it was too dangerous to burn down the Forst synagogue, and won the day.

The Nazis confined themselves to plundering prayer books, prayer shawls, altar hangings, cloths and Bibles. These were publicly burned on Linden Square (at that time called Square of Storm Troopers). This was done officially, not by a mob of skinheads.

Earlier this year I received a letter from a local pastor, Ingolf Kschenka, with whom I had previously been in touch. Together with other leading, local citizens, he was planning to set up a memorial on the site of the former synagogue. One of the objects was to refresh people's memory of what had been done in their home town. What did I think of the plan? And he invited me, as one of the survivors, to attend the ceremony.

So, more than 60 years after, I returned to my birthplace as a guest of honour. I was full of trepidation, for various reasons.

I was supposed to make a speech in German, which I had never done before. I had been a sergeant in the British army and fought against the Germans. Many of the younger people there had probably never seen a live Jewish person before. And would the local neoNazis riot against the memorial and me?

I need not have worried.

My German returned from the deep recesses of my memory; as in the TV comedy catchphrase, we never mentioned the War; and I was assured the skinhead Nazis were too cowardly to do more than try to damage memorials in the dead of night.

What also returned from my deep-down memories was a series of snapshots from my childhood. Though some 85 per cent of the town had been destroyed towards the end of the war, I recognised my old first school; a house where we had lived still existed, virtually unchanged. There was the caf near the railway crossing where I had been treated to strawberries and cream.

My memories of the actual synagogue were vague, but what stuck in my mind was my father, as one of the synagogue officials, sitting behind the rabbi -- and the fascinating top-hat he wore. It was of the collapsible kind, known as a chapeau-claque, which you could flatten and open out to its fully glory with a satisfying "clonk" (or claque!).

I had been searching for an example of this imposing headgear all my adult life in England, but without success.

The day after my arrival, Pastor Kschenka drove me to the nearby town of Guben, where my grandparents had lived. We met the local pastor, who could read Hebrew and who lived in the house of the former Jewish cemetery gardener.

He told me he had made a discovery -- and led me to one of the gravestones. The inscription had weathered, but I could make out the name "Rosalie Warschauer".

It was the grave of my grandmother, which I had never ever seen before. For the first time, I was able to say a prayer and leave a small pebble on her grave in the Jewish tradition.

In the evening, there was an ecumenical service in the town centre church of Forst, with moving sermons by Pastor Kschenka and the local Catholic priest.

The musical accompaniment included a Israeli song in Hebrew and German. To my surprise, it was included in the church hymn book.

The next day started with several surprises. After I had been interviewed by a local journalist, Pastor Kschenka arrived -- and produced a real, live chapeau-claque as my birthday present! Heaven knows where he had found that. He then produced a tray of Windbeutel -- my favourite cream puffs, which I must have mentioned at some stage.

Then came the highlight of my visit. In the town centre, a black rock had been placed with the plain inscription "Synagogue Forst" and a Star of David. An appreciable crowd had assembled to witness the unveiling, and hear the addresses of the mayor, the Catholic priest and the pastor. I was proud that Herr Kschenka quoted my favourite saying of Edmund Burke: Evil will triumph when good men do nothing.

Here at Forst I had witnessed good men do something of permanent value.

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