Survivors Remember Kristallnacht

When Kristallnacht began, we’re talking about November, early November, 1938. By then we had finalized... my sister and I finalized our plans to emigrate. We went after our passports. We had our affidavits. We had two cousins in this country who had been here many years who decided, yes they would give us an affidavit and, plus an old friend of my mother’s. So that part was there. So we were... I wouldn’t say we were ready but we by now probably had our tickets for the Veendam which was the Dutch boat to take us to this country in January.

That day my father didn’t come home and we didn’t know where he was. The 10th... 11th. Things -- what is now known as Kristallnacht because of all the broken glass -- were unbelievable what happened in Vienna. I saw a lot of it.

And even though there was Ausgehverbot, which meant you couldn’t go out, I went out. I was very blonde and blue-eyed, and I tried to look like somebody with a attaché case going to the lawyer, which I did. We tried to get Father out. So I walked around quite a bit. I must have known that one of these days I’d have to talk about it. So I saw horrendous things. I saw people being made to wash the sidewalk and being beaten with a whip, as I said.

There was no authority that you could report to. That was the awful thing. This was accepted that they were supposed to do that. The police had no, absolutely no, authority after what happened that March.

There were some very good people, too, that gave you a phone call and said, “We’re sorry about all this. Are you alright? Do you need help?” There was a lot of that going on. I don’t think you hear enough of that. How many kindnesses there were committed by people.

We were sitting at home waiting for our father to come home. That’s the only thing I can think of. Any time the phone rang or any time the doorbell rang or something happened, some news from Father. That was a very difficult time, very difficult.

We finally, after about ten days, we got the first communication from my father. “I’m fine. Don’t worry.” That sort of thing.

So we did get communication for the next few weeks. This got into December then. The last Christmas that my sister and I were going to spend with my mother and her sister and brother-in-law who moved in with her, and we... one of the things that Father wrote again and again, “The girls should go on with their trip to America.” Which, of course, was a difficult thing to do, but it was the right thing to do.

My sister and I went to Rotterdam where we boarded the Veendam, and it was a very, very rough trip. The Atlantic is very rough in January. We started in Rotterdam on the 13th of January and landed in this country on the 25th. The trip was longer than it usually is because of the rough seas. And the first letter from our mother -- we stayed with our cousins in New York -- first letter of my mother brought the sad news that my father had died in Dachau. Some... one day, I don’t know, must have been soon after we left, no, he died on the 23rd, so it was after that, somebody appeared at her door with a box of ashes from her husband, so it was a rather horrid news to her. And, of course, it was very difficult for us to make our way in this country with that news coming.