Survivors Remember Kristallnacht

My family, mother and father, both felt very much that they were Germans. They were not Jewish. They were German first, German second, German third, and then they were of Jewish religion.

The sudden change from a so-called democracy, the Weimar Republic, to a dictatorship was extremely difficult. And I kept asking my mother, “Mom, what will happen now?” And she said, “I don’t know. All I know is the man who hates us is now the person who can lead and direct what is going to happen in Germany.”

My mother received a phone call, from whom I never found out, which she said, “Don’t let Robert go out on the street tonight. Keep him in the house. Don’t let him go out.” To this day, I don’t know who called her, but she listened. And so, all I experienced on Crystal Night... I was at home. Nothing happened to me at home. Except the next day, I had to go to work. I was terrified. When I saw all the things, there were stores along the street, some of them owned by Jews, they were smashed in. I saw the merchandise ripped out and some were still on the street. People everywhere, people everywhere on the streets looking at, gawking and so forth. And that was about the extent of it. The destruction was most all in West Berlin. I have been listening to the radio and the radio, if I remember that correctly today, was the mixture of music and then the announcer saying that the people in Nuremberg have eradicated all traces of Judaism and so forth. So it was weird. It was very, very weird. My biological father was arrested on the night of 10 November and brought to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Somehow my aunt got him a visa. She bribed the consul. I think it was the one from... I don’t know... San Salvador, one of those countries. But he got on the ship and got out and then he went to America. I think in 1940 or 1941, he went to America and he got on the quota. And tragically, he died while I was on the ship to see him. When the war was over in ’47, I got on the ship, on the 11th of February of ’47 and he died on the 12th.

In 1938, we were kicked out of our apartment. We received a letter. I think it was November of 1938, and these guys had the nerve to write that the Aryan renters in this apartment building can no longer accept the fact that they have to live with the Jew under the same roof. And please leave as soon as you can, you got 14 days to find another place. Now, that affects you personally, you know. I mean there is no way out about it. We had paid always our rent on time and never done any reason, but then the Aryan renters, who probably knew nothing about it because it was written by the association who owned the building, but those are things which hit you personally.

Kristallnacht to me was difficult for me to associate with the type of Germans my parents talked about it. Here is a story. One day I was standing at the street corner. I was trying to cross the street. There was a red light, so I waited. And suddenly I heard a music, pipe and drum type music, and a bunch of Hitler youth came by. Neat, orderly, had a flag and their brown belts on. They had their little daggers which had the words “blood and honor” written onto them. And I stood there on the sidewalk and I said, “Why in the blazes can I not march with them?” Now if you’re looking back and saying, “Maybe you’re lucky you didn’t” - sure. But at that moment standing on that corner, I wanted with all my heart to be part of this group of young Hitler youth who were marching by there, looking healthy, happy, content, determined. And I wanted to be part of this and not being able, I went home and told my mother that story. And of course she said, “Well, you haven’t missed anything.” But she understood, she understood because she too wanted to be German.