clipped from: www.abc.net.au A special ceremony was held at the century-old red brick building in East Berlin, which narrowly avoided being destroyed in the Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when Adolf Hitler's followers torched Jewish homes, businesses and places of worship.
More than 1,000 guests, including elderly Holocaust survivors confined to wheelchairs
Leading the service was Rabbi Chaim Rozwaski, a native of Belarus who came to Berlin in 2000 as part of an influx of Jews from the former Soviet Union that still makes Germany one of the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the world.
He dedicated the reopening to the members of the Rykestrasse synagogue congregation, who were murdered in the Holocaust.
"As we remember the past, we must not forget all those from Rykestrasse who were killed in concentration camps, work camps, who died of hunger, gas or were shot,"