Eighty-seven years on from the horrors of Kristallnacht, a 101-year-old Holocaust survivor has expressed grave concerns, drawing parallels between the current global climate and the atmosphere of Nazi Germany in 1938.

At the time of this infamous event, Walter Bingham was just 14 years old. He witnessed firsthand the brutal assaults carried out by Nazis and other Germans on Jewish businesses, homes, and places of worship.

Known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” Kristallnacht saw more than 1,400 synagogues set ablaze, countless Jewish-owned businesses vandalized, and Jewish homes violently invaded. Sacred Jewish items were desecrated, as documented by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

In the wake of these attacks, approximately 26,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

A haunting image from that period shows a Jewish-owned shop defaced with antisemitic graffiti following the Nazi onslaught in 1938. (Credit: Pictures From History/Universal Images Group/Getty)

Bingham, 101, told The Associated Press that the current climate against Jews and the rising instances of antisemitism in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war are reminiscent of those dark times.

“We live in an era equivalent to 1938, where synagogues are burned, and people in the street are attacked,” he said.

Holocaust survivor Walter Bingham, 101, poses at the Jerusalem Great Synagogue on Nov. 5, 2025, ahead of the 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht. (Leo Correa/AP)

A synagogue in Manchester was the target of a deadly terrorist attack on Yom Kippur in October when a man rammed a car into worshippers and stabbed victims outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, killing two Jewish men.

A synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, was also set ablaze last year in an act that was condemned as an antisemitic attack by the country’s prime minister.

In 2024, the Anti-Defamation League reported 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the United States — a 5% increase from 2023, a 344% increase over the past five years, and an 893% increase over the past decade.

Protesters wrapped in Israeli flags rally outside Downing Street in Westminster on Oct. 9, 2025, during a Campaign Against Antisemitism demonstration marking one week since the Manchester synagogue attack. (Lucy North/PA Images/Getty)

“Antisemitism, I don’t think, will ever fully disappear because it’s the panacea for all ills of the world,” Bingham told The Associated Press.

He said living in today’s climate feels eerily similar to Germany before the war, but he sees one important distinction.

“In those days, the Jewish mentality was apologetic,” Bingham explained. “Please don’t do anything to me, I won’t do anything to you.”

Israeli soldiers watch the northern Gaza Strip from southern Israel, July 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

“Today, we have, thank God, the state of Israel, a very strong state,” he said. “And whereas antisemitism is still on the increase, the one thing that will not happen would be a Holocaust, because the state will see to it” that doesn’t happen.