Preparations are taking shape as Bournemouth Reform Synagogue (BRS) embarks on a major programme of events throughout November.

This year marks the centenary of the end of the First World War on November 11 and the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, a couple of days earlier.

Both events will be commemorated at a special Shabbat Service next Saturday. Invited guests will join members of the Synagogue for a programme of words and music relevant to those occasions.

On the night of November 9 1938, throughout Germany, the Nazi Party destroyed synagogues, other institutions and shops owned by Jews.

In total 195 synagogues were burnt to the ground, 800 shops were destroyed, 7,500 shops were looted and 20,000 Jews were taken to detention camps in Dachau, Buchenwald and Sachsenhausen.

Rabbi Maurice Michaels said: “There is just so much happening this month, nationally and internationally, that we felt we had to participate as fully as possible. Anniversaries and other special days and weeks warranted an involvement and before we knew it, November became almost as busy as September, with all the Jewish Festivals.”

The morning after the Shabbat, members of the Synagogue will join hundreds of others for the Armistice Day Service at Bournemouth War Memorial, during which Rabbi Michaels will read the 23rd Psalm in Hebrew.

The reading alternates each year between Rabbi Adrian Jesner, of Bournemouth Hebrew Congregation and Rabbi Michaels.

In the afternoon, there will be a showing of a documentary directed by Professor Kerstin Stutterheim of Bournemouth University, ‘Myth, Might and Murder’.

The film demonstrates that the world view of several Nazi leaders, especially Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler as well as the material politics of the Third Reich, was not only influenced by political and economic developments but also by occult esoteric doctrines.

Within this framework it was considered that the Aryan German race was predestined to become the rulers of the world. Rabbi Michaels said Mr Stutterheim, a member of the Synagogue, will be at the showing and answering questions.

Two other events during the month are Interfaith Week and Mitzvah Day. The former enables Rabbi Michaels, who is honorary treasurer of the Interfaith Network in the UK which arranges the week, to involve himself with an area that has played a big part in his rabbinate and in which he has taken several initiatives at the national level. This year he has been invited by Rev Ian Terry to be guest preacher at St Peter’s Church on November 18. “There has been a regular practice of reciprocal invitations between the Church and the Synagogue for a number of years, but the occasion of Interfaith Week makes it all the more special,” Rabbi Michaels said.

The final activity of the month at the Synagogue is the AGM on November 25.