Leo Baeck Institute and New York and Berlin: 1938 Projekt: Posts from the Past by C&G Partners & New York

For the 80th anniversary of the terrifying events of Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, the Leo Baeck Institute worked with C&G Partners to develop '1938 Projekt: Posts from the Past', a captivating year-long web, social media and exhibition campaign presenting a daily stream of archival documents which tell the story of how German-speaking Jews perceived the events of that fateful year at the time.

Kristallnacht, or the 'Night of Broken Glass', on 9-10 November, 1938 was a widespread attack or “pogrom” carried out against Jews. It took the form of assaults, property destruction, burning of synagogues, forced incarceration and murder. It affected tens of thousands of innocent Jewish citizens and is viewed by many as the beginning of the Holocaust. Eighty years later, the Leo Baeck Institute’s '1938 Projekt: Posts from the Past' tells the story of how German-speaking Jews perceived the progressing situation of the year leading to Kristallnacht, using daily web and social media posts of actual archival documents from the same corresponding dates in 1938 to create a growing online calendar in real time. The 'projekt' also includes companion exhibitions and programs in the US and Germany.

'1938 Projekt' focuses on individual stories by presenting documents from LBI’s extensive archives and those of numerous partner institutions. Every day this year, a new document — a handwritten letter, a diary entry, a photo, a newspaper article — is posted to social media and the website reflecting the experiences and intimate impressions of its former owners as they grappled at the time with the gradual loss of their rights, livelihoods, homes and personal safety. The archived documents depict the disbelieving reaction to the gradual rise of an authoritarian regime in their own country, providing a benign suspense with subtle signs of change and the subsequent sense of denial or suspicion. The archival documents are gripping to read today, since they portray daily life in the buildup to what we now know will be the coming violence of Kristallnacht, after which all hope was lost.