When Shawn Brokos speaks Monday at Seton Hill University’s Kristallnacht Remembrance Interfaith Service, she plans to discuss antisemitic incidents in the region.

“We have seen a consistent increase in antisemitic activity since 2020,” she said.

In 2024, nearly 300 antisemitic incidents were reported in Pittsburgh, Brokos said. In 2018, it was less than one-tenth of that total.

This year, she said, the number of incidents is on track to surpass the 300 mark.

The incidents — such as defacing signs with painted swastikas and distributing antisemitic flyers — have an extreme precedent in the 1938 violent persecution of Jewish populations in Germany and Austria.

Still, Brokos, who is director of community security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, wants to leave those attending the Greensburg service with a message of hope.

“We’ve seen time and time again that the community will get tighter and work together to help combat antisemitism,” she said. “It really speaks to the power of the relationships we have in Pittsburgh.

“There are incredible relationships that we have with our faith-based partners, law enforcement agencies and community leaders.”

As evidence of those relationships, she pointed to kind gestures such as the Muslim community’s fundraising efforts on behalf of mass shooting victims at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

Brokos is a retired FBI supervisory special agent who oversaw the investigation into the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue that claimed the lives of 11 people on Oct. 27, 2018, in the city’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

James Paharik, director of Seton Hill’s National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education, said support of peace and tolerance among people of differing faiths is one of the main thrusts of the Kristallnacht service the center has held — in conjunction with the Office of Campus Ministry — each November since the center’s founding in 1987.

The 7 p.m. service, which is open to the public, includes prayer and hymns in both English and Hebrew. It typically attracts Seton Hill students and faculty as well as members of the Sisters of Charity faith community that founded the university and area residents of Jewish and other faiths, Paharik said.

“It’s always an uplifting event to be with these people, to pray together and to remember we’re people of peace and we want to create a more peaceful and tolerant world,” he said.

The Seton Hill service marks the anniversary of a Nov. 9-10, 1938, riot instigated by Nazi officials in German-held territory. It resulted in the deaths of at least 91 Jewish people, the looting and damage of thousands of Jewish-owned businesses, the burning of more than 1,400 synagogues and the imprisonment of about 26,000 Jewish men in concentration camps, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Kristallnacht, translated as “the night of broken glass,” refers to shards of window panes that filled the streets following the vandalism.

Pittsburgh-area survivors of the resulting Holocaust — the Nazi genocide of an estimated 6 million Jewish people — have spoken at past Kristallnacht services in Greensburg.

Because of their advancing age and dwindling numbers, Paharik isn’t expecting any of the survivors to attend this year. He said the Holocaust Education Center was able to capture interviews with eight survivors on video and is repeating the process with survivors’ children.

In recent years, the Kristallnacht service has been held in Seton Hill’s Cecilian Hall auditorium, to accommodate audiovisual programs. This year, Paharik said, it will return to Saint Joseph Chapel in the university’s administration building.

“It’s nice to have it in a sacred space,” he said. “It’s where we started in 1987.”

He said the university wanted Brokos as a guest speaker because of her knowledge of efforts in Pittsburgh to “build communities where people respect each other.”

In the past, Brokos said, most antisemitic threats in the region could be traced to white supremacist groups and their followers. That has changed since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and the resulting war in Gaza.

“The threat before was more predictable,” she said. “Now it’s coming from a variety of different angles. It’s much more dynamic and much more complex.

“Now we’re seeing threats from a very broad landscape. It’s much more tied to the Middle East and it’s more political. There’s an incredible amount of disinformation shared on social media, largely with a younger generation.”

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