She was nine years old and her father wanted to show her what had taken place on the "night of broken glass", despite being a Jewish man and in serious danger of being captured by the Gestapo.

Kristallnacht was a series of attacks by the Nazis on Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues. More than 7000 Jewish businesses were destroyed and more than 90 Jews were murdered.

On Wednesday Mrs Landau will speak at a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Kristallnacht at the Wesley Uniting Church in Forrest.

The event will be a chance for Canberrans of all religious and cultural backgrounds to come together and remember the events of November 9 and 10, 1938 and all those lost in the Holocaust.

Looking back, Mrs Landau said it was the culmination of a frightening time for her family in their native Germany.

"The Germans had, for six years, been putting in more and more draconian laws targeting Jews," Mrs Landau said.

"Kristallnacht was the sort of crescendo which said 'ok bugger all this, forget about the law, we can do what we like'.

"It was orchestrated, it wasn’t isolated. The fire brigades had been told not to come unless it was a non-Jewish building that was on fire."

Mrs Landau's father had been staying overnight in different homes to avoid the Gestapo who had been making regular visits to Jewish homes and taking the men away.

But on the morning after Kristallnacht he returned home to show his daughter the horrors that had been committed.

"I remember it was very quiet and the glass was crunching and my father said, 'I want you to see this'," Mrs Landau recalled.

"Even though he was in some danger himself still, he said 'I want you to see this and don’t you forget it'.

"And I haven't."

On New Year's Eve of 1938 Mrs Landau and her parents left Germany bound for Australia after a six-year wait for a permit. All but one of her relatives perished in the Holocaust.

She said she has been very disturbed in the interim 80 years seeing others persecuted and imprisoned by authoritarian regimes.

The 80th anniversary commemoration occurs at a time of heightened tensions with the recent Pittsburgh synagogue shootings in the United States an example of prejudicial attacks committed on certain groups.

Also speaking at Wednesday's event will be Peter Witting, another Canberran who witnessed Kristallnacht and managed to escape the Holocaust.

He similarly recalls wandering the streets the following day and witnessing the shattered glass and anti-semitic graffiti that covered buildings.

Wednesday's event will begin at 5.30pm with a peace walk beginning at the National Jewish Memorial Centre in Forrest and ending at the Wesley Uniting Church for the commemoration service.

Yorta Yorta elder Uncle 'Boydie' Turner will be attending as a tribute to his grandfather, activist William Cooper, who led an Aboriginal delegation in 1933 protesting the treatment of the Jewish people.

Australian composer Elena Kats-Chernin will debut her new work To Mend Broken Crystals as a tribute to the events of 80 years ago.