A Crystal Bowl’s Legacy After Nazis and Northridge Quake

(Editor’s note: Karpel, a Northridge resident, was one of hundreds of people who submitted letters to The Times looking back on the first anniversary of the Northridge quake. The tale she told was among the most moving.)

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All I can remember screaming on the morning of Jan. 17, 1994, is to “get Mutti’s crystal bowl.” This was no ordinary crystal punch bowl. This bowl was a wedding present to my grandmother in 1917, a one-of-a-kind, turn-of-the-century crystal piece, hand-cut by an apprentice in Germany.

This piece sat on a buffet as my mother grew up in Krefeld, Germany, until the night of Nov. 8, 1938. Just as the earth shook and shattered so many of our lives last year, the Jews of Germany witnessed the destruction of all the synagogues on “Kristallnacht,” the “Night of Broken Glass.”

Before my mother, who was 17 at the time, and her family fled their home to avoid arrest, she decided to take the punch bowl and hide it. She hid it in a small attic closet hidden on the fourth floor of their home behind a door, under a stairway. She never dreamed that the Nazis would, in fact, destroy their entire home.

Fortunately, my grandparents, mother and aunt escaped and the cherished crystal bowl traveled first to England, then Chicago and finally came to rest on the very same buffet here in California. My beloved Mutti died a few years ago at the age of 92 and I became the caretaker of this beautiful piece.

I say “caretaker” because I always felt it belonged to my mother, aunt, two brothers and their families, as well as my children. So when the bowl shattered into a thousand pieces on that tragic Monday morning, I felt personally responsible. How could I ever share the memories and a piece of history with my family?

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And then one day, four months later, I had a dream. I went to an artist friend of mine, Richard Matzkin, and asked him if he could do a sculpture of Mutti. He studied photographs, a video and listened to stories. The result was an incredible likeness of this kind, gentle woman holding a piece of glass in her lap.

We cast 14 of these sculptures in bronze and each holds a different piece of cut polished glass that was once the precious crystal bowl. Two daughters, three grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren all now share in a piece that was rightfully theirs.

I am finally at peace knowing that even out of destruction, a thing of beauty can be created. All of us have inherited a legacy for generations to come.