Survivors Remember Kristallnacht

I was in Würtzberg during Kristallnacht, in the dormitory. During that night in the dormitory which was in a very small street in Würtzberg, in the middle of the night, we heard noise and they broke in. The janitor in that building was non-Jewish. He told us, “Get up. They’re coming here and they’re going to make some ruckus. So get up and be ready to leave.” There were about 50 boys in this building and we stayed downstairs.

We waited until about six, seven o’clock in the morning. Then the whole crowd of people came in, whole crowd. And they told us, “Go outside into the narrow streets.” They have cobblestone streets in Würtzberg. “And form lines of five, five abreast.” In the meantime, they called all the populace in order to tell the world that it was not the Nazis but it was the plain peoples, the plain people you see, the usual people.

And they were standing at the side and we walked through there, through the street and they were calling us names. They were spitting. They would do all kinds of... And we passed by the burning synagogue.

Then they put us into prison cells in the prison, you see. And I was in the prison with about 15 people in the cells and they kept us there. Every day less and less people were in the prisons because they sent them to concentration camp. After six days, we heard the rumor, “Tomorrow we are emptying the prison.” That day in the evening, they called us again. That was Thursday evening I think. And they said, “Jews are now free, free, you can go. But you must report to the Gestapo, the secret service police, within 24 hours, each one in his home state.” Now I tell you the reason why these seven were set free is because we were stateless, you see. How do you become stateless? You lost your citizenship. Because I was a stateless person because my father was Russian. He lost the Russian citizenship. The German citizenship had lost for a long time, so we were stateless. So next... so we had to go within 24 hours back to Bremen.

We came to Bremen about seven in the morning and I called up my parents, but there were no answer. So I took a streetcar and I went to my parent’s house and I called there, no answer. We have two entrances, one to the business and one to the private quarters. I went to that door and there was a... there was a little piece of paper, it said, “Get the keys from the from the police department.” While I was standing there, on the other side there was a furniture store and the non-Jewish neighbor, very friendly to us, he didn’t want to go out to talk to me. But he said to me, he beckoned me, “Come in. I want to tell you what happened during the night.”

He told me that, “During the nacht, night, Nazis came and were in uniform and they called your father. When your father didn’t come, they broke in there and they went up to the bedroom.” And there was my mother and one brother, two brothers, because my sister was already in Hamburg. And they asked my mother, “Where’s your husband?” Now either she didn’t want to tell them or maybe she really didn’t know. Because my father went to this neighbor of ours, who told me the story, and he told him, “I’m going to Sweden. It’s a neutral country.” So... he never went there. But they came up to her and they asked my mother, “Where’s your husband?” Of course she didn’t know or she didn’t want to know, I don’t know. But when she said, when she didn’t say this, they killed her. We found the bullet. Now for Nazis, if you don’t answer them, you see, it’s... it’s a criminal act and they need to shoot you. And they shot her. And I didn’t know about it, of course, for all the seven days I was in prison. And afterwards before I left Germany, I asked for a death certificate. You know what they wrote in the death certificate? “On this day, on the 10th of November at four o’clock a.m., in the morning, they found my mother dead.” They had shot her. The found her dead.

So I heard that two Jewish women buried her on Friday. And I had to go to Hamburg, to my relatives, because I couldn’t stay there. There was no one. And I came to Hamburg on that day and I found my father there. He was sitting shiva. That means mourning after someone dies. And I found him there. And my younger brother, because he was just bar mitzvahed, 13 years old, they had put into the orphan home.

We wanted to leave Germany. Of course, we wanted to leave Germany. Many Jews wanted to leave already right after Kristallnacht and many did. But it was very difficult. My mother had written already to the whole world where we had acquaintance or so, to help us get out. But they all said it will not be so bad, and it will pass over. But then after Kristallnacht, we wrote again to one of our... my father’s families in Saskatchewan, in Canada, you know. And when he heard about this, then he said he... Then he said he would do something and he sent us a landing card. The landing card came in February and was good for three months, we had to leave. My father went to Hamburg and he met a man from the Cunard White Star Line. And this man helped us to get to Britain and from there to Canada.

My mother was always there and you could always go to her. And she strengthened me and she was my religious influence and... and I knew her and her family. A mother is a mother. She was always a spiritual leader but not only that, also in other ways. Our family life was very close and I miss her and unfortunately she was killed. There were many people killed in my family, not only that. Other family members were killed. My grandfather, my father’s father, was already killed in Russia. There are always bad things happening, but we still believe in these people who gave us tradition and who brought us up and we always learn something from everyone.