by Jon E. Lewis
At 3 a.m. on 10 November 1938 was unleashed a barrage of Nazi ferocity as had had no equal hitherto in Germany, or very likely anywhere else in the world since savagery, if ever. Jewish dwellings were smashed into and contents demolished or looted. In one of the Jewish sections an eighteen-year-old boy was hurled from a three-storey window to land with both legs broken on a street littered with burning beds and other household furniture and effects from his family’s and other apartments. This information was supplied by an attending physician. It is reported from another quarter that among domestic effects thrown out of a Jewish dwelling, a small dog descended four flights to a broken spine on a cluttered street. Although apparently centred in poor districts, the raid was not confined to the humble classes. One apartment of exceptionally refined occupants known to this office, was violently ransacked, presumably in a search for valuables that was not in vain, and one of the marauders thrust a cane through a priceless medieval painting portraying a biblical scene. Another apartment of the same category is known to have been turned upside down in the frenzied course of whatever the invaders were after. Reported looting of cash, silver, jewellery, and otherwise easily convertible articles, have been frequent.
Jewish shop windows by the hundreds were systematically and wantonly smashed throughout the entire city at a loss estimated at several millions of marks. There are reports that substantial losses have been sustained on the famous Leipzig ‘Bruhl’, as many of the shop windows at the time of the demolition were filled with costly furs that were seized before the windows could be boarded up. In proportion to the general destruction of real estate, however, losses of goods are felt to have been relatively small. The spectators who viewed the wreckage when daylight had arrived were mostly in such a bewildered mood, that there was no danger of impulsive acts, and the perpetrators probably were too busy in carrying out their schedule to take off a whole lot of time for personal profit. At all events, the main streets of the city were a positive litter of shattered plate glass. According to reliable testimony, the debacle was executed by SS men and Storm Troopers not in uniform, each group having been provided with hammers, axes, crowbars and incendiary bombs.
Three synagogues in Leipzig were fired simultaneously by incendiary bombs and all sacred objects and records desecrated or destroyed, in most instances hurled through the windows and burned in the streets. No attempts whatsoever were made to quench the fires, functions of the fire brigade having been confined to playing water on adjoining buildings. All of the synagogues were irreparably gutted by flames, and the walls of the two that are in the close proximity of the consulate are not being razed. The blackened frames have been centres of attraction during the past week of terror for eloquently silent and bewildered crowds. One of the largest clothing stores in the heart of the city was destroyed by flames from incendiary bombs, only the charred walls and gutted roof having been left standing. As was the case with the synagogues, no attempts on the part of the fire brigade were made to extinguish the fire, although apparently there was a certain amount of apprehension for adjacent property, for the walls of a coffee house next door were covered with asbestos and sprayed by the doughty firemen. It is extremely difficult to believe, but the owners of the clothing store were actually charged with setting the fire and on that basis were dragged from their beds at 6 a.m. and clapped into prison.
Tactics which closely approached the ghoulish took place at the Jewish cemetery where the temple was fired together with a building occupied by caretakers, tombstones uprooted and graves violated. Eye-witnesses considered reliable reports that ten corpses were left unburied at this cemetery for a week’s time because all grave-diggers and cemetery attendants had been arrested.
Ferocious as was the violation of property, the most hideous phase of the so-called ‘spontaneous’ action, has been the wholesale arrest and transportation to concentration camps of male German Jews between the ages of sixteen and sixty, as well as Jewish men without citizenship. This has been taking place daily since the night of horror. This office has no way of accurately checking the numbers of such arrests, but there is very little question that they have gone into several thousands in Leipzig alone. Having demolished dwellings and hurled most of the movable effects to the streets, the insatiably sadistic perpetrators threw many of the trembling inmates into a small stream that flows through the Zoological Park, commanding horrified spectators to spit at them, defile them with mud and jeer at their plight. The latter incident has been repeatedly corroborated by German witnesses who were nauseated in telling the tale. The slightest manifestation of sympathy evoked a positive fury on the part of the perpetrators, and the crowd was powerless to do anything but turn horror-stricken eyes from the scene of abuse, or leave the vicinity. These tactics were carried out the entire morning of 10 November without police intervention and they were applied to men, women and children.
There is much evidence of physical violence, including several deaths. At least half a dozen cases have been personally observed, victims with bloody, badly bruised faces having fled to this office, believing that as refugees their desire to emigrate could be expedited here. As a matter of fact this consulate has been a bedlam of humanity for the past ten days, most of these visitors being desperate women, as their husbands and sons had been taken off to concentration camps.
Kristallnacht: Synagogues Fired, Vienna, 10 November 1938
REUTERS CORRESPONDENT
All Vienna synagogues were destroyed today with the exception of one in the centre of the city.
Police, assisted by Nazi black-uniformed guards, went from house to house arresting all male Jews under sixty years of age. Jews were also taken up in the streets and trams. A number were arrested as they were waiting in a queue outside the British Consulate for visas. Those arrested were taken to police headquarters, but were not told what their fate would be. It is understood, however, they are to be sent to the new Austrian concentration camp in the quarries of Mauthausen. No official number of arrests has been issued, but it is estimated to be at least 10,000.
Some of the arrested men were supplied with spades and taken to the destroyed synagogues, where they were made to clear away the ruins.
A number of Jews are reported to have fled to Vienna Woods, hoping to escape arrest.
Twenty-two suicides of Jews have been reported in Vienna since the beginning of the demonstrations.
The synagogue at Linz was set on fire this morning by a crowd of 500 persons and completely burned down.
Around 7,500 Jewish shops and synagogues were destroyed in Germany on ‘Crystal Night’. Nearly 100 Jews were killed.
Kristallnacht: ‘everything devastated and destroyed’, Vienna, 9–10 November 1938
GISA, VIENNESE TEENAGER
A letter to a relative:
You cannot imagine how things have been with us. Papa with a head-wound, bandaged, myself in bed with severe fits, everything devastated and destroyed. And the poor child had to look after us, cook, and run errands, although still in a state of serious exhaustion. It has already been nearly fourteen days, and I still can’t take it in – I have already told you that we had a similar visit on Yom Kippur, and it had a similar bloody and tragic ending. At first I was just glad that we had survived, but when I realized that I had no dresses, no coat, and to cap it all not even a stitch of underwear any more, then I thought again that my heart would break. So that you don’t think I’m exaggerating, let me tell you that when the doctor came to bandage Papa, Rosa and Herta, all three of them bleeding copiously from head wounds, we couldn’t give him a towel or any piece of cloth to wipe the blood off his hands, so he had to leave. My poor heart had to take in the fact that the place was so full of fragments and splinters, because all the glasses, windows and mirrors had been smashed, that we didn’t know where to turn. The day after, we were sent two shirts to put on, one for me and one for Papa. I can’t tell you how many tears I shed, we are destitute, we don’t even have the most basic clothing, we can’t ev
en go out into the street; in any case I have no desire to do so! But even that was not enough; two days later we were told that I had to make room at once and accommodate two more families in my flat; furthermore, I was to be ready within three hours. What could I do but get up and take everything from the bedroom into the dining room, and the two families, Frau Kramer with two children and Frau Terner with one child and a sick mother, moved in with me. You cannot imagine what things look like here.
With lots of love,
Your unhappy Gisa
Kristallnacht: ‘A Jew is Taken to Oranienburg Concentration Camp’, November 1938
ANONYMOUS
Following Kristallnacht about 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps.
When we arrived at the camp, first of all our names were called and entered in a register, then we were made to line up in the courtyard from about five in the morning till about two in the afternoon. Anyone who moved was kicked or punched in the face. Our requests to be allowed to relieve ourselves were denied, and the guards responded with the most coarse abuse. Finally at about midday a senior officer agreed that we could be taken together to the latrine The first food was not distributed until twenty-four hours after our arrest. The food was good.
We had to hand over all our clothes, and received in return ragged concentration camp clothing, consisting of threadbare army uniforms, overalls and the like. Jews are completely forbidden to smoke in Oranienburg and are not allowed to cater for themselves, or buy anything in the canteen.
The next day we had to do drill. It was bearable for the younger ones, as many of us had been front-line soldiers. The older men collapsed, and were kicked, punched, slapped in the face and hit with rifle-butts, always accompanied by the most vulgar and obscene insults. Among the prisoners in my section was H., a businessman from H., over seventy years old, and former lawyer J., also over seventy. Both were mistreated in the manner described above. When people returned to the line after individual drill, they were kicked so that they fell flat on their faces, and then without provocation the guards trampled on their backs and buttocks with their hobnailed boots.
The camp Commandant inspected the ranks at roll-call. Sometimes he stopped and insulted one of the prisoners in a very coarse manner, which cannot be repeated. He said without provocation to a man next to me, ‘Now I’ve got to take my glove off especially for you, you filthy Jewish swine,’ and after he had calmly done this, he struck the unfortunate victim several times in the face and on the chin.
A Rabbi is Incarcerated in Buchenwald, November 1938
RABBI WILDE
Buchenwald (German for ‘beech forest’) concentration camp was situated outside Weimar, the city of Goethe and Schiller. Between April 1938 and April 1945 approximately 240,000 were incarcerated in the camp, of whom one-fifth are thought to have died from ill treatment.
We were made to hurry down some steps that descended from the [railway station] platform. In their first exhibition of sadism our new guards had coated these with soap, and the many who slipped were mauled with rifle-butts. Two thousand five hundred members of the Adolf Hitler Guard in grey uniforms continued pummelling us with their rifle-butts all the way to a tunnel. Here we were lined up facing the wall and told, ‘Don’t turn round. Throw down your knives and razors.’
After we had stood in the darkness for an hour and a half they ordered us to move on. We had to trot over to some armoured trucks which then carried us to the camp. No notice was taken of any who dropped from exhaustion; they stayed where they dropped. Older people had to struggle to hoist themselves into the trucks, which were a good four feet off the ground. The SS lined the running boards and watched us through chinks between the planks. They distracted themselves during the long journey by grabbing prisoners’ heads and slamming them to unconsciousness.
Upon our arrival we had to run with hats or skull-caps in hand to a square not far from the main gate. On our way we had to pass between two rows of SS troopers armed with whips, some of which seemed to be fitted with barbed wire or pieces of lead. One trooper, perched on a platform to one side of the gate, swung a great whip down on the heads of passers-by beneath.
One man slumped to the ground at my feet. I managed to side-step him but then lost my footing on the gravel and fell flat on my face. My head was bleeding. I leaped up to hurry on, but an SS trooper was already descending on me. I realized that he was going to hit me in the jaw. More by reflex than by intention I halted in my tracks, so that the blow he landed lost some of its force. He walked away without a word. I was so shocked that I did not feel the pain.
We stood on our feet from morning until evening to be trained in camp ‘discipline’. Three men were flogged twenty-five times each as public punishment for some ‘infringement’ or other. When the victims cried out they received twenty-five more blows. I was too far from them to hear more than the swish of the stick and the yells of the prisoners. I realized that they were trying to unnerve us, to sap our will and our dignity. An SS officer began screaming, ‘None of you will leave this camp alive.’ And from that moment I vowed that no matter the cost and no matter how brutal the spectacle I was made to endure, I would not allow my will or my dignity to be belittled. The SS seemed little more than a bunch of maniacs and sadists or the petty henchmen of a criminal gang. I realized that these eighteen-year-old or twenty-three-year-old boys were being systematically trained to display brutality towards everyone in the execution of their orders, whether young or old, innocent or guilty. They were gathering strength for a war against foreign enemies and even against their own people. Whenever I saw the camp Commandant I reminded myself that we were civilized people, but that he was dirt.
The following morning I saw the corpses of two suicides. One of them had thrown himself against the electrified barbed wire; the other had died from a guard’s bullet. The idea of committing suicide never entered my head while I was in detention, even though I was surrounded by large numbers of men who had lost their sense. Later, mental cases were locked in a washroom behind our barracks, and one of my friends, a neurologist, was told to look after them.
Kindertransport: A Boy Leaves Berlin, December 1939
JOHN SILBERMANN
By 1938 Nazi persecution had reached such levels that an increasing number of Jews desperately tried to leave Germany. In order to address the refugee problem US President Roosevelt called a conference in the French town of Evian. This achieved little because in a climate of recession most major countries, including the US and Great Britain, refused to take more refugees. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht the British parliament, however, had a change of heart and agreed to take in an unspecified number of Jewish children under the age of eighteen. By the so-called Kindertransport 10,000 Jewish children left Germany and Austria for Britain.
Over the years since 1933, my parents were changing from hoping that the Nazi era would only be short-lived, that life was going to be hard and we needed to lower our standards and our sights for a while, withdrawing to the inner family and survive as best we can economically. But with the Nuremberg Laws it became quite evident that there was no future for Jews in Germany and that’s when people seriously started to consider emigration. But even then it was half-hearted.
Putting it in today’s comparable terms: if you’re in your forties or fifties age group, with children at school, with a home and no serious economic difficulty, and if somebody says to you: Look, there’s a threat on the horizon and you may not be able to carry on this lifestyle, why don’t you emigrate to Uruguay, or Iceland? You say: Yes, that sounds sensible, I’ll think about it. That was just about the atmosphere: Jews realized that it wasn’t sensible to stay where they were but the likely points of immigration were not attractive; added to which there was a language problem and an economic problem because already the Nazis had laws in place forbidding Jews to take assets and capital out. So if you left you were going to be poor in a world which was just clawing its way out of the 1929–30 rec
ession.
So wherever you went from 1935 to 1938, you were going to be fighting the local population for an income, for work or setting up business. Everyone understood that they ought to be emigrating, but it was only when the watershed of Kristallnacht occurred in November 1938 that my parents, in common with 90 per cent of other German Jews, thought: It’s no good staying, they’re going to kill us. Survival in the life-threatening sense was the only thing that mattered ...
I remember in my carriage there was a baby of two or three years old, and this child was given to a teenage girl who was told, ‘Look after her until you get to England.’ What courage that took for those parents! We travelled from Berlin for several hours until we came to the Dutch border. It made a huge impression on me: here I’d been in an ever-deepening situation of bad treatment, bullying, vulnerability, victimization, and here comes the Dutch border. Trains used to stop on one side of the border while the German officials did their stuff, then the train shunted over to the Dutch side and the same thing happened all over again. But, with one difference: accompanying the Dutch officials came a load of ladies in grey uniforms and I think it was the first time for years that non-Jewish people said something kind to us. They brought chocolate, soft drinks; they gave us postcards to mail home to our parents [to say] that we had crossed the border. Somebody had gone to a lot of trouble there to understand what kids would need. We hadn’t expected it and to this day I have a great fondness for the Dutch.
Kindertransport: A Boy Leaves Vienna, 1939
JOHN RICHARDS
I went up to my father before I got on the train and put my arms around him and I said, ‘I’m sorry about the [torn] trousers, I don’t want to go, I love you so much.’ He kissed me and said, ‘I forgive you, try and behave and be a good boy.’ I went up to my mother and she kissed me; although she was my stepmother I could see tears in her eyes and she told me she loved me. I then went to my stepbrother Heini and he came into my arms and we kneeled down, we had those long socks on, you don’t see them in England, and he kissed me and hugged me and begged me not to go. Little Zilla was there, I kissed her and said my farewells and we got on the train.
