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Did
you know immediately that something was wrong?
Oh
yes. I was very much aware of what the situation was. I finally
left Germany in 1937, so I was going to school under the Nazi regime
from 1933 to '37, four years.
On
the subject of anti-Semitism that you asked me about, there's another
incident that I want to share with you. In 1935 when I was thirteen
years old, and it was getting to be time for my Bar Mitzvah. You know,
when the Jewish boy comes of age, religiously. A few weeks before my
Bar Mitzvah, our synagogue was broken into and vandalized. I still
remember that various objects - torah scrolls, prayer books, prayer
shawls and so on - were taken out of the synagogue and in a muddy field
just right near the synagogue the vandals set fire to them. The fire
didn't completely destroy everything because it rained that night and
put the fire out eventually. But still it was all desecrated. This
happened just a few weeks before my Bar Mitzvah was supposed to be.
Which is supposed to be a very happy event.
Interestingly
enough, the man who was the burglar was caught, and at that time the
Nazis still wanted to do everything by the book. They didn't want people
to go and take the law in their own hands, so they tried the fellow
and they gave him a jail sentence of about ten months, which apparently
he served.
But
here is how times changed A mere three years later, on November 10th
1938, this same man was the principal perpetrator who set fire to our
synagogue. On that day - which was called Kristallnacht, Crystal
Night - practically all the synagogues in Germany were burned to the
ground, including ours. The man who did most of the job was the same
man who had burglarized it three years earlier. But this time he was
considered a hero. About three or four years after the war, he was
tried for this act of arson, and he was sent to the penitentiary for
about six years.
What do you remember from that day in 1935 when
your temple was desecrated?
I
remember seeing the Torah scrolls opened up in a muddy field next to
the synagogue. I remember seeing them where the burglar took out the
Torah scrolls, opened them up, and tried to set fire to them. But due
to the rain that night, the fire was out and of course they were completely
demolished. But I remember seeing that. It was devastating. Particularly
since I was going to be Bar Mitzvah in a couple of weeks.
We
had such a small Jewish community - it only consisted of seventy people
- that we hadn't had a Bar Mitzvah in that synagogue for about
thirteen or fourteen years. I was going to be the first one in thirteen
or fourteen years. It was going to be really an event for our little
community and here the synagogue was broken into and desecrated. I
don't suppose that he took all the Torah scrolls out because I know
we had some Torah scrolls when I was Bar Miztvah. He probably
didn't take all of them out. Maybe just some of them.
What was the community's reaction to the desecration?
The
same as mine! Same reaction. We were just really devastated. It was
a terrible feeling to have that happen.
Did you end up having your Bar Mitzvah?
Yes!
I ended up having my Bar Mitzvah and the synagogue was full of people
- relatives who came from out of town, and everyone in the Jewish community
was there. It was quite an event. The portion that I read - you
see the custom is, on every Sabbath during the year, to read a section
from the Torah, the five books of Moses. In the particular section
that was read that Saturday, three of the most famous words in the
Torah appeared, and it was in the portion that I read. Those words
are "Love thy neighbor as thyself." It always made a great
impression on me.
How did your feelings on the Nazis evolve or change
as you entered high school and became more aware of the situation?
As I
told you before, I can't pinpoint any particular event except the boycott
day - that I remember. But otherwise, you know, it was
a slow process - how it evolved and how I began to know more and more.
I do remember reading a book - and how in the world I got a hold of
that, I have no idea - because it was a history book about the Nazis
rise to power, and I still read that in Germany.
Now,
you know, the Germans burned books, but I have no idea how in the world
we got a hold of this particular book, which was a very critical analysis
of the Nazis rise to power. One of the things I remember reading
in it - which was an event that was not publicized in the papers, was
kept quiet, happened in 1934 - a year after the Nazis came to power.
This
is what I read in the book: There was a power struggle within the Nazi
party. The Nazis had their own paramilitary organization,
which was called the S.A., which is the Storm Troopers, the Brown Shirts.
Then they had the S.S., which was an elite unit, and at first it
was the bodyguards for Hitler. Then it became much more generalized
- much bigger - but it was still an elite unit and eventually it even
became part of the army.
Between
the S.A. and the S.S., there was sort of a power struggle, which would
be predominant. The leader of the S.A. - the Brown
Shirts - was a man by the name of Ernst Röhm. Hitler decided to
tilt the balance in favor of the S.S. and the generals of the regular
army. He had to do away with the leadership of the S.A.
One
time, when the S.A. had a meeting in Nuremberg, Hitler and the other
thugs from the S.S. invaded their headquarters and killed them. They
called that night the "Night of the Long Knives." You might
have heard of it. Then they put out the word that Röhm was
a homosexual - and that was a crime and that's why they killed him.
Nonsense. Maybe he was a homosexual, but so what? I remember reading
this still in Germany. I still don't know how in the world we got
a hold of that book.
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