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( JTA ) — Cantor Jennifer Bern-Vogel was used to hearing her mother tell the story.
On the evening of Nov. 9, 1938, her mother, then Marianne Katzenstein, who was 16 at the time, was in her family’s synagogue in Bielefeld, Germany, practicing the organ. She finished up, used a key to lock the building and returned home. Later that night, the synagogue was burned to the ground by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht pogrom.
Only two items survived the fire: a Torah scroll and Katzenstein’s key.
“I just remember her talking about it, her voice would change and she was just kind of slower and softer and very nostalgic when she talked about the whole story,” Bern-Vogel, 67, said in an interview. “Whenever she told the story and then held up the key, people always — and I experienced it myself — there was always this kind of gasp.”
Bern-Vogel, who has been the cantor at Congregation Emanu El in Redlands, Calif., since 2009, said the story of the key was “legendary” in her family.