Voices from the Holocaust

by Jon E. Lewis

  We passed the Swiss border in the morning. Fact and fiction about refugees being hounded out of the train and sent to concentration camps abounded, but my train went through unscathed. After the self-important, bellowing Nazi guards the phlegmatism of the Swiss border police came as a relief.

  When I arrived in Zurich after breakfast, my first task was to visit the Jewish refugee centre. All I remember is an endless queue stretching along the four walls of a courtyard and two female secretaries checking the names and documents before disappearing behind shuttered doors. They would come back, call out names, and people would either leave the queue and go in through the door or go to the exit, dejected. It all seemed quite mysterious. After an hour’s waiting, a bearded man with a black hat suddenly came out of the office, called out my name and ushered me into the office with great courtesy. This sudden preferment caused great dismay in the queue. Someone behind me hissed, ‘Luxusemigrant’ – deluxe refugee.

  The bearded old man introduced me to the presiding officer of the committee. He knew my family. ‘They’ve been generous to many good causes,’ he said, apologizing that his organization was short of money and could not reciprocate in the same way, but telling me they would pay for board and lodging and give me a little pocket money.

  I spent my first day of freedom at a lakeside café listening to Swiss military music. It sounded heavenly after the harsh, syncopated tones of the SS anthems or the Prussian military marches played by Austrian bands with exaggerated zeal.

  Weidenfeld was later joined in London by both his parents.

  Hitler Speaks, Nuremberg, September 1938

  VIRGINIA COWLES

  The Nazi Party held annual rallies (Parteitage) in Nuremberg from 1933 onwards; the 1938 rally was the last, because from 1939 onwards the Reich was at war. Virginia Cowles, a British journalist observed it.

  One night I went to the stadium with Jules Sauerwein to hear an address Hitler was making to Nazi political leaders gathered from all over Germany. The stadium was packed with nearly 200,000 spectators. As the time for the Führer’s arrival drew near, the crowd grew restless. The minutes passed and the wait seemed interminable. Suddenly the beat of the drums increased and three motor-cycles with yellow standards fluttering from their windshields raced through the gates. A few minutes later a fleet of black cars rolled swiftly into the arena: in one of them, standing in the front seat, his hand outstretched in the Nazi salute, was Hitler.

  The demonstration that followed was one of the most extraordinary I have ever witnessed. Hitler climbed to his box in the Grand Stand amid a deafening ovation, then gave a signal for the political leaders to enter. They came, a hundred thousand strong, through an opening in the far end of the arena. In the silver light they seemed to pour into the bowl like a flood of water. Each of them carried a Nazi flag and when they were assembled in mass formation, the bowl looked like a shimmering sea of swastikas.

  Then Hitler began to speak. The crowd hushed into silence, but the drums continued their steady beat. Hitler’s voice rasped into the night and every now and then the multitude broke into a roar of cheers. Some of the audience began swaying back and forth, chanting ‘Sieg Heil’ over and over again in a frenzy of delirium. I looked at the faces around me and saw tears streaming down people’s cheeks. The drums had grown louder and I suddenly felt frightened. For a moment I wondered if it wasn’t a dream; perhaps we were really in the heart of the African jungle. I had a sudden feeling of claustrophobia and whispered to Jules Sauerwein, asking if we couldn’t leave. It was a silly question, for we were hemmed in on all sides, and there was nothing to do but sit there until the bitter end.

  At last it was over. Hitler left the box and got back in the car. As soon as he stopped speaking the spell seemed to break and the magic vanish. That was the most extraordinary thing of all: for when he left the stand and climbed back into his car, his small figure suddenly became drab and unimpressive. You had to pinch yourself to realize that this was the man on whom the eyes of the world were riveted; that he alone held the lightning in his hands.

  In 1938, no doubt inspired by the example of its Nazi neighbour, Poland passed legislation whereby passports held by its citizens were revoked if the holder had lived abroad for five years. The law was a not-so-subtle attempt to prevent the repatriation of the 50,000 Polish Jews living in Germany and Austria. The answer of Berlin to the ‘problem’ of the stateless Polish Jews stranded within Germany was quick and brutal: it herded them into railway carriages with a piece of luggage each and dispatched them to the German-Polish border.

  Expulsion of Polish Jews from Germany, 31 October 1938

  ANONYMOUS

  A letter sent to a friend:

  On Friday morning about 5.30 a policeman came to our house, got my father and myself out of bed and told us we would have to go immediately to the police station. He stated that it was simply for the important question of revising our Polish passports. He declared: ‘Dress warmly and take food with you for twenty-four hours.’ I asked why we should take food for twenty-four hours when there was nothing more involved than the revision of passports. He replied: ‘Oh, there are so very many Poles.’ He even refused us enough time to make a few sandwiches. We were obliged to leave immediately, being allowed to take with us only a pencil, and a comb, as well as four marks – though later he changed this to ten marks in order to buy food.

  As soon as we reached the street, he handed me the expulsion order, which bore a time limit of 24 hours. In order to prevent our escaping we were first taken to the Hitler Youth building, then in police cars to the Maikafer Barracks on the Chausseestrasse. Other Jews, I learned later, were taken to other barracks. Here we were abused, ordered about without reason, and told we were ‘international crooks’ etc. Then we were taken, again in police cars, by an indirect route to the Treptow Station and put on a train whose length seemed endless. Everywhere we were escorted by police with fixed bayonets. We were threatened with shooting should anyone try to escape. Some of the police were very decent and even talked to us, but they said, ‘Service is Service.’ Others were swine, and others like machines. The Berlin population, as far as I could see, behaved very well. Near the Schlesesche Station many Aryan Berliners were gathered to watch us. I myself saw some of them crying.

  In the train we were crowded together like cattle – literally one on top of the other like cattle, so one could neither breathe nor move. It was so full it was impossible to move from one seat to another. We were locked into the carriages. We had neither bread nor water. When we told the guards we had not been allowed to take any food with us, they said, ‘Our Sudeten Germans were treated just like this.’ After forty hours like this in the train other Jews who had arrived in Bentschen from other parts of Germany gave us some dry bread. Some of the younger men climbed through the windows to get water for the rest of us in Bentschen, whereupon the Polish station police beat a fifteen-year-old boy over the head and shoulders with their truncheons.

  When at last we were allowed to leave the train the great majority of us were forced to sleep all on the ground in the open air, though it was raining. About 1,400 Jews who had to leave their train on the German side of the frontier were chased by 300 SS armed with machine guns, and were told they would be shot if they came back. Only because of this, and after long hesitation, would the Poles let them cross the border.

  It is untrue, as I have read in the papers, that only a few thousand were expelled in this way. Only yesterday not less than 18,000 people arrived in Bentschen, and many were sent to other frontier stations. As far I know, all male Polish Jews were expelled from Berlin. Even men older than eighty-five and very small boys. I believe that the number expelled from Berlin alone must total about 40,000. One man in my train wept all the way like a baby. He showed me a photograph of his three-month-old girl, whose mother died when [the child] was born. On Friday morning this man was just feeding his baby when the police arrived. The baby was snatched away from him, given to a neighbour, an
d he was led away.

  In other cities, whole families were expelled. In Cologne the police behaved well. The Jewish community was allowed to give large amounts of food to those expelled. However, owners of stores and shops were forced to turn them over either to [a] landlord or [to] police. A girl from Cologne told me that the policeman who came to get her carried away her heavy suitcase through the streets. SA in the streets called him a ‘lackey of the Jews’ but he paid no attention and kept [hold of] the suitcase. Elsewhere I was told police were kind, except in Vienna, where all the expelled were given certificates of health without even seeing a doctor. They were also forced to sign a promise never to return. From Southern Germany a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy was put on the train. Yesterday three people died in Bentschen, and a young girl went mad. Today, I hear typhus has broken out.

  The Polish police claim to have no instructions to help us, though several empty trains were standing in the station. Of course, there was no possibility of sleep. I slept last night for the first time, on the floor.

  None of us has a pfennig, but this is important only in so far as it prevents our buying tickets to go further into Poland. The Jews here are giving us superhuman help. What they are doing for us cannot be described in words. Unfortunately, they are starving themselves. The few marks we did have are almost all spent now. In the Bentschen station Poles asked one mark for four cigarettes and for one sausage I had to pay ninety pfennig.

  Seventeen thousand of the German-Jewish citizens of Polish origin were dumped in the no-man’s town of Zbąszyń (Bentschen) on the German-Polish border. One of the stranded was Berta Grynszpan. She sent the following message on a postcard to her young brother Herschel, who was living in Paris, after she and their parents had been deported from Hanover to Zbąszyń.

  A Postcard from Zbąszyń, circa 1 November 1938

  BERTA GRYNSZPAN

  Dear Herschel,

  You must have heard about the disaster. I shall tell you what has happened. On Thursday evening, rumours were circulating that Polish Jews in our city were being expelled. None of us believed it. At nine o’clock that evening a policeman came to our house to tell us to report to the police station with our passports. We all trooped off as we were to the police station. Practically the whole neighbourhood was already there. Almost immediately we were taken to the town hall in a police car; so was everyone else. No one told us what was up, but we realized that this was going to be the end. They shoved an expulsion order into our hands, saying we had to leave Germany before 29 October. We were not allowed to go home. I pleaded to be allowed to fetch a few things and a policeman accompanied me. I packed a case with the most important clothes, but that was all we could salvage. We haven’t a penny. Could you send us something at Łódź? Love from all of us.

  Berta

  Incensed by the treatment of his family, Herschel Grynszpan bought a gun and entered the German Embassy in Paris under the pretext of delivering an important document. On being shown into the office of Third Secretary Ernst vom Rath, Grynszpan pulled out his 6.35 calibre pistol and cried, ‘You are a filthy boche and here, in the name of twelve thousand persecuted Jews, is your document.’

  Grynszpan fired five shots at vom Rath, mortally wounding him.

  The assassination provided Goebbels with the opportunity to whip up a wave of anti-Semitic attacks throughout Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland on the night of 9–10 November. The pogrom became known as Kristallnacht, ‘night of broken glass’.

  Kristallnacht: Shopwreckers in Berlin, 10 November 1938

  GUARDIAN CORRESPONDENT

  The operations of the wreckers of Jewish shops and places of business were in two parts. First small wrecking squads, who began their work as early as two in the morning in some cases, smashed the windows and showcases of Jewish-owned premises, whether the proprietors were foreign Jews or German Jews. All Jewish shops are marked with special signs, which facilitated their work. The first squads, working quickly and in darkness, only dealt, however, with the Jewish premises on main streets. When Berlin went to work this morning it experienced the extraordinary sight of wholesale smashed windows with dummy figures and the like leaning out on to the streets; nothing, however, was then plundered.

  But about midday the work of the original squads was supplemented by the wreckers proper. They operated too in small bands and were followed by crowds of supporters who proceeded to smash the interiors of the Jewish shops to pieces and in many cases to throw the goods in them out into the streets. These wreckers in their turn were supplemented by others, including many youngish boys. They seized whatever implements they could find and absolutely broke up everything to hand. A small page boy sent out from an hotel was seen to interrupt his commission for a few minutes smashing with the rest of the crowd.

  In some part of Berlin foodstuffs, clothes, underclothing, and even furs were thrown out to the crowds. In other shops none of the contents, apart from the windows and fittings, were touched until this evening. Plundering did not seem to be the purpose of the wreckers themselves. Where there was plundering they threw out the contents of the shops to the crowds standing outside.

  Kristallnacht: ‘A Planned Action’, Berlin, 9–10 November 1938

  ANONYMOUS

  At exactly three in the morning the house in which I lived, in which there was a small Jewish business, started to shake. Both window-panes were shattered and the contents of the shop-windows ruined. Naturally I cannot tell whether this had happened the first time. I lived in the Kurfürstendamm district. As I am in the habit of sleeping with the window open, I heard the noise of breaking windows from this area. In the house where I lived, a second bombardment of the undamaged parts had been organized. From my window I saw a small car pass by; two men in civilian clothes got out and smashed the windows. Evidently it had all been carefully planned, because they got back into the car in order to repeat their action nearby. At about six in the morning another convoy arrived, who likewise destroyed anything that was left to be destroyed. At intervals during these three hours fire engines could be heard rushing through the streets, and the smoke from Fasanenstraße was an omen of what was likely to have occurred. In any case it was a planned action carried out by SA, SS and Hitler Youth in civilian clothes. In a barber’s shop, one of those involved related in my presence that they had been drinking till three in the morning to prepare themselves for the action. The next morning a terrible sight was to be seen, and the smouldering synagogue in Fasanenstraße was like a signal. As far as I could observe, people looked at the devastation in silence, and perhaps with some inner emotion. Indeed, some people openly expressed indignation. While I was crossing the Kurfürstendamm in the morning, an old gentleman with snow-white hair addressed me impulsively and expressed his outrage, calling the event a crime against civilization for which the Germans would one day have to atone.

  Kristallnacht: The Confidential Report of the American Consul in Leipzig, Saxony, November 1938

  DAVID H. BUFFUM

  Sent by Consul Buffum to the Consul General in Berlin.

  The macabre circumstances that form the subject matter of this report had a fittingly gruesome prelude in Leipzig a few hours before they occurred in the form of rites held on one of the principal squares of the city on the night of 9 November 1938, in commemoration of fallen martyrs to the Nazi cause prior to the political takeover in 1933. To such end apparently anything in the corpse category that could be remotely associated with Nazi martyrdom, had been exhumed. At least five-year-old remains of those who had been considered rowdyish violators of law and order at the time, had been placed in extravagant coffins; arranged around a colossal, flaming urn on the Altermarkt [Old Market] for purposes of display, and ultimately conveyed amid marching troops, flaring torches and funeral music to the Ehrenhain, Leipzig’s National Socialistic burial plot. For this propagandistic ceremony the entire market place had been surrounded with wooden lattice work about ten yards high. This was covered with white cloth
to form the background for black swastikas at least five yards high and broad. Flame-spurting urns and gigantic banners completed a Wagnerian ensemble as to pomposity of stage setting; but it cannot be truthfully reported that the ceremony aroused anything akin to awe among the crowds who witnessed it. Judging from a few very guardedly whispered comments, the populace was far more concerned over the wanton waste of materials in these days when textiles of any kind are exceedingly scarce and expensive, rather than being actuated by any particularly reverent emotions. On the other hand for obvious reasons, there were no open manifestations of disapproval. The populace was destined to be much more perturbed the following morning during the course of the most violent debacle the city had probably ever witnessed.

  The shattering of shop windows, looting of stores and dwellings of Jews which began in the early hours of 10 November 1938, was hailed subsequently in the Nazi press as ‘a spontaneous wave of righteous indignation throughout Germany, as a result of the cowardly Jewish murder of Third Secretary von [sic] Rath in the German Embassy at Paris.’ So far as a very high percentage of the German populace is concerned, a state of popular indignation that would spontaneously lead to such excesses, can be considered as non-existent. On the contrary, in viewing the ruins and attendant measures employed, all of the local crowds observed were obviously benumbed over what had happened and aghast over the unprecedented fury of Nazi acts that had been or were taking place with bewildering rapidity throughout their city. The whole lamentable affair was organized in such a sinister fashion, as to lend credence to the theory that the execution of it had involved studied preparation. It has been ascertained by this office that the plan of ‘spontaneous indignation’ leaked out in Leipzig several hours before news of the death of Third Secretary von Rath had been broadcast at 10 p.m. 10 November 1938. It is stated upon authority believed to be reliable, that most of the evening was employed in drawing up lists of fated victims. Several persons known to this office were aware at 9 p.m. on the evening of 9 November 1938 that the ‘spontaneous’ outrage was scheduled for that night sometime after midnight and several of such persons interviewed, stayed up purposely in order to witness it.