Actor Leonard Nimoy was the narrator of the concert, titled Shining Through Broken Glass, in Providence’s Veterans Memorial Auditorium last night.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE –– They filled the auditorium to remember what was lost and to celebrate what wasn’t.

Nearly 2,000 people gathered in Veterans Memorial Auditorium last night, 70 years to the day after Nazis across Germany and Austria waged a coordinated campaign of violence known as Kristallnacht, setting the stage for what would become the Holocaust.

Albert Silverstein was among those who attended the sold-out show Shining Through Broken Glass. He was also in Graz, Austria, on Nov. 9, 1938, the night the sky was lit by burning Jewish homes and businesses.

“I remember the yelling mob, the breaking glass,” said Silverstein, a retired University of Rhode Island professor who lives in Pawtucket. “It’s a very potent anniversary. Every Nov. 9 is very emotional.”

More than 200 synagogues were burned, 92 people murdered and countless more beaten. “Kristallnacht” means “night of broken glass.”

At the center of last night’s musical performance was actor Leonard Nimoy, who served as the narrator. Star Trek’s Mr. Spock came from California to participate in the one-night event.

“We cannot literally see the past, but we can hear its sounds,” Nimoy said to the packed house, just before the orchestra and chorus behind him launched into another piece celebrating the Jewish arts and culture that survived the Nazis.

An estimated 30,000 Jewish men between 18 and 60 were arrested in Germany and Austria on Kristallnacht. Silverstein’s father was arrested the next day.

At just 3 years old, Silverstein would escape the violence on a “Kindertransport” train packed with Jewish children. He made the trip alone. He would live with a foster family in England for 1½ years before his family reunited and escaped to the United States.

“Families were separated,” said Elisa Heath, Silverstein’s daughter and a project manager for last night’s show. “Men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps that would become death camps.”

Many in the audience had personal connections to Kristallnacht and the Holocaust. But many did not.

“We’re here because we never want to see it happen again,” said Joanne Forman, of Providence, whose Jewish ancestors came to the United States in the early 1900s. “That’s why I came tonight. I hope it’s a better world now; I think it is.”

Susette Rabinowitz, a former director of the Cranston Department of Senior Services, shared Forman’s optimism.

“[The performance] shows we’re here and we’re better than ever,” she said.

Indeed, hope was the theme of the night. Several audience members noted the recent election of the country’s first black president and the prominent role of women in the campaigns.

“We’re going to be sitting there: Jew, non-Jew, straight, gay, remembering those who died in Holocaust, but also remembering the ideal in a world based on justice, trust and harmony,” Heath said before the show. “Those are the lessons to be learned from Kristallnacht.”

The performance included a cast of more than 300, including 280 singers, 50 instrumentalists and 4 cantorial soloists. There were 8 adult choirs, including a Catholic choir from Providence College and the Providence Gay Men’s Chorus, chosen in part, according to organizers, as a reminder that both groups were also targets of Nazi persecution.

The concert, produced by Providence Temple Emanu-El and the Holocaust Education and Resource Center of Rhode Island, also included youth choirs from the Moses Brown School, The Wheeler School and The Lincoln School.

“We will never know how that culture might have evolved into our time if the Nazi regime had not unleashed a pogrom of epic proportions throughout Germany and Austria, and which led to the deaths of six million of our people,” Brian J. Mayer, the Temple Emanu-El cantor, wrote in the event program. “Tonight, we celebrate the fact that the Nazis failed in their quest to reduce Jewish life, culture, and art to a museum in Prague … We bring to life the great culture that was Ashkenazi Jewry, we recall the events of 70 years ago, and we honor the new realities of our world, a world in which Jewish culture shines through the broken glass of Kristallnacht.”

speoples@projo.com