Apparently, 88 years after Kristallnacht, smashing the windows of Jewish businesses is still in fashion. And this time, it’s happening in Montreal.
In the early hours of Monday, November 9, someone hurled a heavy rock through the window of Pizza Pita, one of the city’s best-known kosher restaurants. The attack came just five days after fire destroyed another kosher business, Mimimelon, in Ville Saint-Laurent. The date could hardly be more chilling: the anniversary of the Nazi pogrom that became known as the Night of Broken Glass.
Whether the timing was deliberate remains unknown, but Montreal now finds itself in the grotesque position of commemorating the destruction of Jewish storefronts in 1938 while a Jewish business in its own city is cleaning up shattered glass in 2026. The irony would be almost laughable if the circumstances weren’t so disturbing.
Pizza Pita, located at 5345 Vézina Street near Décarie Square, has been a fixture of Montreal’s Jewish community for decades. The restaurant, now owned by Uri Peretz, has served generations of families and has become one of the city’s most recognizable kosher establishments. This is not the first time it has been attacked.
On December 1, 2018, Pizza Pita’s former location near Plamondon Avenue was targeted in a suspected arson. Its front window was smashed and a fire was started inside, triggering the sprinkler system. Reports at the time indicated that a Molotov cocktail may have been thrown through the window. The restaurant reopened that evening, but the incident was part of a series of arson attacks against Montreal pizzerias.
Monday’s attack follows the destruction of Mimimelon, a kosher bakery on Saint-Louis Street in Ville Saint-Laurent, which suffered two fires within approximately 25 hours last week. The second fire, on November 4, devastated the business and left 22 employees facing an uncertain future.
As Montreal Jewish News previously documented, the Saint-Louis Street shopping complex has a history of violence and vandalism. In June 2021, Chez Benny Express and Montreal Kosher Bakery were targeted in separate attempted arsons fifteen days apart. Earlier this year, swastikas were spray-painted on Gourmetti Pizza and neighbouring storefronts. In September, Mimimelon co-owner Jennie Volfson reported that a masked individual entered her bakery and shouted, “All the Jews will burn,” before fleeing.
There is no established connection between the damage at Pizza Pita and the recent fires at Mimimelon, and the motive behind Monday’s incident remains unknown. Whether the date was deliberately chosen has also not been determined.
But the significance of November 9 is impossible to ignore.
On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi-organized mobs attacked Jewish communities throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland. More than 1,000 synagogues were destroyed or damaged, thousands of Jewish businesses were vandalized, at least 91 Jews were murdered during the immediate violence, and approximately 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The streets littered with shattered glass gave the pogrom its name, the Night of Broken Glass.
Kristallnacht marked a dramatic escalation in the Nazi campaign against Jews. The destruction of Jewish-owned businesses was part of an organized effort to remove Jews from economic and public life, carried out openly while much of the world watched.
Montreal today is not Nazi Germany in 1938. But on a day that is supposed to remind the world of the consequences of allowing hatred against Jews to flourish, the sight of a smashed Jewish storefront in Montreal is particularly disturbing.
Every year, politicians and community leaders commemorate Kristallnacht with speeches about the dangers of hatred and promises that the lessons of history will never be forgotten. Yet Jewish Montrealers continue to face threats to institutions and businesses that have served their community for generations.
The commemorations have become predictable. So, increasingly, have the incidents that make those commemorations necessary.
On the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Montreal’s Jewish community does not need another speech about the Night of Broken Glass.
It needs people to stop breaking its windows.
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