Survivors Remember Kristallnacht

I don’t remember exactly what day it was, but we woke up in the morning and ready to go to school. I lived with that Mrs. Bamburger and we saw our synagogue on fire, the black smoke coming out. And then we turned on the radio and we were, we heard the news that most of the synagogues were on fire and we shouldn’t go out of the house. Jews should stay in the house, don’t go outside. And that’s what we did. We stayed inside. And then came around mid-morning, it wasn’t noon yet, and mid-morning came a hoard of people to the door. And didn’t ring the bell, just smashed the door down, came in with scissors and all kinds of instruments and just demolished the whole apartment. I remember she had a beautiful library, a whole wall of beautiful books, and they found the books, some they tore apart. All the dishes out of the cupboards were smashed. All the plants were turned over. Pillows and things were cut up. It was just terrible. They went from -- that was a mostly Jewish occupied home there -- and they went from door to door and did the same thing on, in the whole house. Well, we just... we, I, I can’t even describe anymore what our feelings were. We were just sitting there looking at the mess. How do you clean up? How do you do? How do you go out and buy new stuff? It was terrible, terrible.

So the school was closed and teachers were arrested and so I went home to my hometown. And when I came to my hometown, there were the windows were smashed in again and that was already a few days later. So my mother told me that my father was arrested and under the circumstances which he was arrested. He tried to hide in the attic and the policeman came and said, “Look, I have to bring in a body. If he doesn’t come, I have to take you into custody.” So my father gave himself up and he was sent to Buchenwald. He was in Buchenwald for four weeks and was dismissed because he was a World War I veteran fighting for the German Army, the German Army. And the dismissal was under the condition that he would leave the country right away.

I didn’t see my father when he came back from Buchenwald. I saw him a few weeks later and... He was there for four weeks in Buchenwald and when I saw him again, he said, he told my mother, “We have to get out of here. No matter what, we have to get out. No matter where we... wherever we can find a place to go, we gotta go.”

So well, where do you go? So what happened? He took a little suitcase and it became known that people smuggled people over the borders to Belgium, Holland, etc. So he went to the western part of Germany and somebody took him over the border to Belgium, only with a little suitcase in his hand.

All the assets were confiscated. We didn’t have any control over our assets anymore. Bank books, everything has to be... Well, they knew already what you had. I mean, they knew, but you had no control. It was called the “Sperrkonto.” Everything... only so much money you got every month to live off. That’s it. You had to give up all your jewelry. It was confiscated. You could only keep your wedding ring and a watch, that’s all. Everything else was confiscated.

And also, a big payment had to be made as punishment for Kristallnacht. You know, people had to repair their own... the, the damage that was done they had to repair from their own pockets. And on top of it, I don’t know how many millions of dollars, marks at that time, had to be paid to the government as punishment.

At that time, my mother and one more family were the only Jewish people left in that little town. And we had a dentist there who was our dentist actually but became a very, very big official Nazi in the party, and he wanted our property very badly. And when the war broke out in 1939, I think he hired a few people and they just took my mother out and beat her up. And she had no choice. She had to leave.

We have to be aware of what’s happening around us. We have to be alert and really... I don’t think anything like this can happen again. I cannot believe it. I cannot... It’s... I can’t believe it. I have to tell the people what happened so they know it shouldn’t happen again. It should never happen again, something like this. Just be aware of your neighbors. Be aware of what’s happening around you. It’s terrible when you live under a dictatorship. Awful. Even if you’re not discriminated against, any dictatorship is terrible.