Kristallnacht: How It Was
Oppenheim, Ruth
KRISTALLNACHT HOW IT WAS RUTH OPPENHEIM November 9, 1938. No matter how hard I try to write or speak calmly about that night, I am still shaken by the event that shattered my childhood. Although...
...Mother often talked about how hard they had worked all their lives and how carefully they had saved their money...
...My parents had applied for a number some time ago, it seemed...
...The plan was that he would try to earn enough money to send for the rest of us...
...My oldest sister Julia, then 14, was able to get an affidavit from a distant relative...
...It felt strange to see him in the hospital...
...Each time my mother was about to give birth, Grandfather expressed his hope that it would be a boy, and then just as strongly his disappointment that it was once again a girl...
...Julia's whisper alerted us that the courtyard gate was opening...
...Seemingly, in that wonderful, far-away land of beautiful movie stars, only flawless human beings were acceptable...
...Rosa, take the children out of the house and hide...
...It was our only means of getting an education and, amazingly, we were willing to subject ourselves to this abuse...
...God had answered our prayers...
...We made room for her in our cramped quarters, and she held Helmut and Herbert on her lap, trying to soothe them back to sleep, while the rest of us leaned on her once more...
...When America was mentioned, it was always with awe and adoration...
...They say that Leo Marcus lost an eye...
...We crouched together in the dark, frightened that our mother might not return...
...There we were allowed to practice the piano...
...What difference does it make...
...The consul had passed his verdict, and with cold arrogance he dismissed yet another burdensome Jew...
...We were not afraid because she had detected us, but rather relieved to have someone aware of our plight...
...The small town of Werne seldom had need for jailing anyone...
...The night seemed endless, though we probably dozed off now and then as we hid behind the barrels marked Dortmunder Pilsner Bier-Germany's finest...
...Mother hushed and comforted him...
...My parents had always been very selective about what they discussed in our presence...
...One even threatened suicide if she would not marry him...
...She recalled the birth of my brother Herbert, across the hospital hall from the room where my grandfather lay dying...
...In spite of difficult times, they had persevered and started all over...
...On his bar mitzvah day, my brother read from the parchment scroll...
...Now and then our domestic activities were interrupted by announcements coming over the radio...
...Uncle Ernst and family had the lowest quota number, and they were the first to make the trip to the much-dreaded American Consulate to verify their fitness for emigration to the USA...
...Would we be perfect enough for the American Consulate when our time came...
...But she rejected them all...
...Fleeing must have totally absorbed us, as we frantically scrambled for a few belongings...
...I couldn't fathom the depth of my mother's anguish, but in retrospect I realize that she must have despaired inwardly while she outwardly attempted to reassure us...
...Thirty thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps, almost three hundred synagogues were burned» many others vandalized...
...The director of the local jail, evidently somewhat embarrassed about the imprisonment of townspeople whom he had known for a lifetime, had told us that we could bring home-cooked food to the men-so some were preparing meals to be delivered to jail...
...she took lessons with the local nuns and even played the accordion...
...In utter exhaustion we stumbled among the remains of our home until the ringing of the telephone brought us back to reality...
...the cornerstone of the new building memorializes the synagogue destroyed on Kristallnacht and the Jews who once lived in Werne...
...The minute I met your father I knew he was the one...
...Due to my uncle's stiff knee, the United States required of him an amount of assurance that he would not become a financial burden to his new country that was greater than it seemed possible to obtain...
...By a fortunate turn of events, our house, which was now filled with women, also harbored a man, unknown to the Nazis...
...The SS herded the men into the little synagogue, ordering them to take the Torah into the cellar...
...We would bring my parents a rose, so that the fragrance might sustain them while they fasted...
...Disorder everywhere...
...Mother came rushing toward us, gasping for air...
...My father, first in line, refused, and continued to refuse in spite of relentless beatings...
...My father, in turn, forewent the customary large dowry and married for love-a rarity at that time, we were told...
...Nothing helped...
...They pushed and dragged him down the street with shouts and boasts of imminent revenge...
...She seemed so sure, so majestic and calm-and we were only too willing to believe that God would not tolerate such conditions for long...
...At times there was the frightening possibility that my uncle might be detected...
...Who was it...
...There we took refuge behind a few beer barrels, near the wall that had shielded the town's people from their enemies in the Middle Ages...
...Just two blocks from the Werne town square, our house, where the Heimann family had lived for generations, faced the Steinstrasse, the main street of our small northern German town...
...Next, they were ordered to destroy the Torah...
...Each shadow intensified our terror, as we fled across the cobblestone yard, past the old barn and the dog shed...
...Uncle Ernst pleaded with the consul, though that was not his style...
...We clung to him with tears and questions...
...DerDankdes Vaterlands" was what they had promised him when he received his Iron Cross...
...I'll take care of Helmut...
...Herschel-17 years old-and his family were stateless...
...If only Nero, our German shepherd, had hot gotten sick and died...
...years later, so did my brother's sons, David and Mark...
...As the discussion went back and forth, it reminded me of the Yom Kippur prayer, "On that day it is decreed who shall live and who shall die...
...they carried on the family name...
...We were only allowed the privilege of sitting in class, without participating in any way...
...Sobbing, we huddled together in one bed, listening fearfully until long after they were gone...
...We daily bicycled with food to our father in the little jail outside of town, but we tried not to burden him with the new harassments we faced...
...Instead, they were pushed and dragged into the market square, to watch as the synagogue was set ablaze to the accompanying jeers of the jubilant SS...
...My father, and my grandfather before him, had been such Vorbeter...
...Mother Superior knew our family well...
...What about Albert and Ernest...
...I vaguely remember waking up to the pounding on our front door-or was it my older sisters' frightened cries that awakened me...
...cartons of newly bought linens (for our emigration to America) lay scattered among dishes and the few remaining books...
...he had never been sick before, except for an occasional head cold-nothing that had ever interrupted his work routine...
...My mother took charge...
...with dejection they returned...
...they were mostly not loRuth Oppenheim is the academic department manager in the English Department at Brown University...
...With the house full of people, there was no time to indulge in despair...
...No accurate tally exists of the destruction that occurred that night, but more than the glass that was to give the night its indelible name was shattered...
...What happened...
...The hurt of outer wounds healed in time, but part of him was left behind in ashes there on the market square...
...Slowly, with great sadness, we left the hospital, plodding our way back to the upheaval of our home...
...The ruins of the synagogue were painful to us, but the square held even greater memories of pain for my father, though it was only later, and from others, that we learned what had happened there that night after the men were rounded up...
...My mother was fond of telling us about the numerous eligible suitors who pursued her while she was young...
...It would have been too painful to see the charred remains...
...Too frightened to move, and instinctively knowing that there was no escape, we clung closer to our remaining source of safety, our mother...
...Mother explained that, according to the police, it was for his own safety, to protect him from the SS men...
...Retaliation was swift, in the form of a night that would go down in history as Kristallnacht...
...Hanna cautioned us not to move, for the barrels might clank and give us away...
...There is nothing that I cannot do...
...Was it someone's cry, "Albert fought for the VaterlancTl Finally, they let him drag himself away from the market square, weighed down with the heavy parchment scroll and his pain...
...I had little understanding of what it meant to have a lifetime of savings unjustly taken away...
...I have done heavy physical work all my life...
...He died in 1961 at the age of 67...
...Of what avail were they now...
...We then returned to the house, weary and numb...
...After Kristallnacht, we found it difficult even to leave the house...
...Some of the SS men rushed into the house...
...The blows kept coming, but he would not give in to the shouting mob, would not destroy what he had always held sacred...
...Jewish children were expelled from school...
...Arrival of company had always signalled the immediate offering of food, and the unusual circumstances of that November day could not defeat the tradition of hospitality...
...Julia and Hannelore, help your brother and sister get dressed...
...We felt confident that we would be able to earn a living somehow, even in America...
...Dawn shed enough light for us to recognize our long-time neighbor as she came toward us hesitatingly...
...To me America brought to mind Shirley Temple movies with dancing, singing, tears and laughter, always with a happy ending...
...When we did go out and when we passed the market square, we managed to do so without glancing into the narrow alley, just a few feet away from the town hall, where the synagogue used to stand...
...Tears and discussions followed their return...
...Although Herschel Grynszpan's parents had lived in Hannover for 25 years, they had now been expelled from Germany...
...Of course, one couldn't be sure that it might not all be a hoax, but anything at all was worth pursuing...
...Lamps were smashed...
...He and Aunt Bertha managed to return to our house the next day...
...Hermann Heimann had wanted a grandson above all else...
...she would describe the terrible inflation after the war, when money became worthless...
...The dimpled, curly-haired Liebling der Welt was also our favorite...
...Ours was the only Jewish family with children...
...My father and the other men refused, fearing that once trapped down there, they would never escape alive...
...The community was too small to support a rabbi, so a congregant led the prayers...
...Shocked outcries greeted the reports of decrees that confiscated Jewish bank accounts and levied high "taxes" that would be withdrawn automatically from the accounts...
...He wants you to know that the SS have no orders to hurt women and children...
...Even now they livened up the sober atmosphere with laughter and anecdotes...
...We hesitatingly opened the back door...
...This choice seemed unthinkable to me...
...Each school day brought a series of such excruciatingly painful experiences...
...On November 7, 1938, temporarily maddened by his predicament, Grynszpan killed the Third Secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernest Vom Rath...
...Protective custody...
...I found your shoe, Herbert...
...There, the other Jewish women had taken refuge, in the hope that it would be safer to stay together until the men returned...
...He would surely have protected us now, as he had once saved my life...
...My mother must have decided it would be more dangerous for us to flee through the deserted streets of the town than to hide near the house...
...Sobbing, she lifted the receiver...
...One of my earliest memories is the jubilation that reigned when my brother was born, even while we mourned Grandfather's death...
...The huge mirror was shattered...
...Such ordinary tasks as buying milk now involved bicycling to an out-of-town dairy after hours...
...I'll be right back...
...Most of our books had been thrown out of the window, together with photo albums and other treasured keepsakes...
...Maybe in America...
...Over the past few years, as we were no longer allowed to play with even those who had been our closest friends, we had learned to rely on one another more and more for companionship...
...Sister Elizabeth says we can see him later this morning...
...I was struck by the whiteness that dominated: starched white sheets, white walls and the unfamiliar pallor of my father's face...
...Now that we could no longer attend movies, it helped to know that Shirley Temple, too, had been banished, replaced by a German child star, who even for German audiences held none of the magic of the "Darling of the World...
...We could watch him for hours...
...He died one hour later...
...Heimann, Johann just returned from the nightwatch at the police station...
...The bohnen Zimmer was almost reverently reserved for special company...
...We all lived together in the big family home, and although Grandfather enjoyed his three granddaughters, he yearned for a grandson...
...While all eyes turned to me, I blushed a deep purple, wondering whether they didn't know that we were one of the few families in town with modem plumbing...
...She was infuriated and humiliated that now she had to give an accounting to the bank for every item of clothing bought...
...My parents explained that to get to America, in addition to the necessary low exit number, an American affidavit was needed, guaranteeing that we would not become a financial burden to anyone...
...every smile and movement evoked ecstatic response from us as we vied for his attention...
...Julia, who had always been so afraid of the dark, now tried to hide her fear while helping us as we squirmed and shifted behind our cylindrical shelter...
...I could not connect this with the home where we were taught nearness, where every item of clothing that we took off at night had to be folded tidily, and the shoes carefully placed in line...
...Mrs...
...And all over Germany, Jews were beaten, injured, murdered that night...
...We knew all our neighbors well...
...In jail...
...He was not one to show emotion or affection openly, nor did he now, but we knew and snared what he and my mother felt for each other...
...only certain stores could be frequented, and then only after hours...
...Suddenly words and places were mentioned that I had never heard before: Shanghai, Johannesburg, Bogota were all discussed with great excitement...
...November visit well...
...Our baby cousin, whom we adored, was staying with us that evening...
...It was rumored that if enough money could be put up, immigration to these places was possible...
...No Jews live there now...
...crystal lay shattered among overturned furniture...
...She hung up and her pained face told us more than we were prepared to hear...
...She left in May of 1939, to become a maid soon after her arrival in New York...
...When can we see him...
...These beer barrels had served us well before in hiding games, but now the stakes had completely changed...
...a way of life had been shattered...
...As the hours wore on, we wrestled with tiredness, discomfort and unanswered questions...
...We were allowed to visit Father in the hospital that morning...
...They slept in the bedroom next to mine on the second floor...
...A rabbi from a nearby city would come once a week to give us Bible and Hebrew lessons, but the emphasis was on hospitality and sociability...
...Yet we never refused to attend...
...There was less risk in supporting a healthy teenager, so less money was required...
...Since the SS did not know of my uncle's visit, they did not search him out...
...dazed, we wandered through what had once been our neat and orderly home...
...Please give me a chance and reconsider...
...Father tried to keep that reserve as we kissed him good-bye, though it was noticeably difficult for him...
...But now the adults' anxiety was so great that they could no longer refrain from talking about the problems that preoccupied them...
...The room had not been sacred to the intruders...
...A neighbor later recalled that she had heard us repeat over and over the Sh'ma Yisroel and our pleas to God to bring back our father alive...
...In horror my sisters and mother watched from the upstairs windows...
...Whenever anyone unfamiliar approached the house, my uncle would hide in the attic until the danger passed...
...We burst into tears at hearing the fate of the town's Jewish men...
...I was too frightened to look out...
...Yes, where is he...
...Postscript My father managed not only to rescue the Torah on Kristallnacht but to bring it to America...
...Now, absorbed with finding a comfortable spot, we felt closer than ever, fortunate that we were four...
...My mother motioned her to stop...
...The synagogue where the Jewish families of Werne once worshiped has been replaced by a sportswear store...
...It was a mild night for November...
...Now this, too, would end...
...But our confidence did not suffice...
...Vati is in the hospital until he is well enough to go to jail...
...They were younger than my parents and always added a lighter, more carefree touch that delighted us all...
...Hurry...
...The contrast between the home that I was accustomed to and the devastation that confronted us was overwhelming...
...In contrast to the usual quiet of the town's streets, now a mob of SS men was shouting, "Heraus mit den Juden," while pounding with their fists against the heavy wooden door...
...Even the small adjoining room where my grandfather had slept when he was alive, and where my sisters and I had hardly dared enter for fear that his ghost might greet us, had not been spared...
...They had not been given enough time to get dressed, so they were still wearing night shirts (except for my father, whose army training had taught him to slip into clothes on short notice...
...With his usual vigor, he desperately jumped over a table at the Consulate to demonstrate that his leg was not a hindrance...
...While my mind wandered to Shirley Temple movies, my parents and their friends talked about little else than the desperate search for any country in the world that might be willing to accept Jews...
...There my parents donated it to a New York synagogue, The Tabernacle...
...The living room, with its massive carved furniture and its plush red sofa set off by a mirror that reached to the ceiling, had always been sacred to us children...
...I felt sure that the wondrous land across the ocean would bring a happy ending to all our sadness...
...My mother broke down and could hardly speak...
...All the new decrees did not take on any real meaning for me until life settled down to a daily routine once more...
...But little by little, I understood that we, too, would have to separate...
...Maybe it would be wise for Aunt Bertha and Helmut to go ahead alone, my uncle thought, but Bertha would not hear of separating...
...Cleanliness, neatness and good manners...
...Now, eight years later, we entered another hospital room...
...They can't put him in jail...
...don't move...
...By now the numbers were too high to offer new applicants any chance of emigration...
...The kitchen was in full operation...
...He assured us that he was all right-but now he would have to try to find refuge somewhere, and we must leave at once...
...My favorite, Uncle Ernst, who had been visiting us with his wife and small son, happened to be invited out to dinner on the night of November 9, while we took care of little Helmut...
...Since our money was confiscated, we had to obtain an authorization from the bank before making any purchases...
...My father must have dressed hurriedly...
...My father tried to cheer us up and to reassure us that he would come home soon, while we tried to swallow our tears...
...I tried to comfort my mother...
...Visits to my father provoked a mixture of feelings: sadness, outrage at the injustice and some shame that he was imprisoned...
...I wondered whether they didn't know that we were one of the few families in town with modem plumbing...
...The police are helpless, but they won't let anything happen to you...
...The pounding of fists and stomping of boots continued...
...In our eagerness to escape, we scarcely noticed the destruction on the downstairs floor...
...might increase the German quota, people continued to apply...
...How I envied my sisters for being in charge of our little cousin's care, how I wished that I, too, were considered old enough...
...Did Johann hear what happened to them...
...And Poland had denaturalized Jews who had lived abroad for more than five years, so the Grynszpans would not be able to return to Poland...
...Did they tire of pounding that proud, tall Jew...
...In the past, snatches of conversations and whispers were sometimes picked up by my sisters and repeated to me with revelations of completely unsuspected crises...
...Vati had returned...
...We're all alive and that's what matters...
...All-important was the American quota number...
...England announced her willingness to accept transports of children, but the children would have to be separated from the parents...
...just spare my family...
...When the door opened, it was my father, streaked with blood and hunched over, holding the Torah from our synagogue...
...I, then 11 years old, shared the back room with my younger brother...
...Somehow the expulsion from school dismayed us, though school had long ago become a torment...
...in Germany, families lived for generations in one house...
...The one-room structure, built in the early 19th century, was just large enough for the 10 Jewish families who lived among the 20,000 inhabitants-most Catholic, some Lutheran-of Werne...
...I remember his terrified face as he quickly climbed to his hiding place, skillfully propelling himself in spite of his stiff knee, a memento of a motorcycle accident during his bachelor days...
...The records show that the attacks against the Jews, supposedly spontaneous, actually had been planned carefully by Nazi leaders...
...My mother was no longer able to control her grief after the night's ordeal...
...Why did the SS eventually relent...
...My mother, lost without her husband, died four years later at the age of 66...
...Alle Meine Enten" and "Haenschen Klein" were about all I mastered, but Hanna had more talent...
...Hermann Heimann did live long enough to have the infant boy brought to him and to place his hands over the head of the newborn, whispering the ancient Hebrew blessing...
...Vati, what have they done to you...
...In the European tradition only sons counted...
...Stay here...
...Mother hurried us, now so filled with fear, down the stairs through the back door of our house...
...He held fast to what remained...
...Yet in desperation and with the slight hope that the U.S...
...Mother Superior personally led us down the antiseptic corridors with her long black habit rustling as she walked, her white starched wimple bobbing as she bent over to whisper reassuringly to my mother, "Der liebe Gott sieht sich so was nicht an...
...When the intolerable darkness started to give way to dawn, we heard movement in one of the neighbor's houses...
...We later learned that the SS men were drunk...
...Jewish businesses and factories were also confiscated...
...So we grew up with confidence in our parents' love for each other, as well as in their love for us...
...They are after the men, so it's better that we separate...
...They threw Leo Gumpert off the roof, and he is badly hurt...
...There was another opportunity as well...
...My father's quiet reserve balanced my mother's lively, emotional personality...
...She seemed bewildered as she continued...
...Under my mother's direction, my sisters cleared the debris...
...And again and again we prayed, though silently now, "Dear God, please bring Vati back to us...
...There, in the cobble-stoned market square of the town where he was born, in front of some of the townspeople with whom he had fought in France and at the Russian front, the beatings continued...
...No one in America could put up enough money for a family of six...
...She shook her head and hurried back to the safety of her home...
...The rabbi, on the other hand, seemed to enjoy his visits...
...The contents of the drawers and shelves lay scattered everywhere...
...I can't remember whether or where my father hid the Torah...
...There seemed no other way than to have my father go next, when his number came up (August 1939...
...I don't remember ever visiting anyone there before, but I remember our 10th of I remember my embarrassment when a teacher would expound on Jewish crimes and dirty Jewish traits...
...With relief we reached the heavy gate leading into the narrow back street, where the only remnant of the town's ancient wall still stood...
...With great apprehension and even greater hope they set out for Stuttgart...
...We hurried past the garden where we had often played hide-and-go-seek...
...I didn't know then how true those words would turn out to be...
...Other decrees followed: Jews were barred from all public places...
...Much was considered inappropriate for "children's ears...
...All was demolished...
...I thought of my English class, taught by an SS officer whose black-uniformed figure loomed in front of the class, frightening me to such an extent that I failed to learn anything...
...Amazingly, it still mattered what former school friends might say...
...All the Jewish men were imprisoned in one cell, a converted bam, owned by a policeman...
...How could they do this to our father, who had always been so good and kind...
...Former friends and neighbors avoided us, or furtively greeted us-if no one was in sight...
...I'll come with you...
...The other men followed his lead...
...Just as we collapsed in the dark corner that we hoped would conceal us all, little Herbert cried out that he had lost his shoe...
...By the time I was fully awake he was at the front door...
...Glasses reserved for occasions so special that I had never seen them used now were splinters that glistened against the dark red of our Persian rags...
...Joy and grief mingled as we ran to him...
...consequently, we never learned much...
...Some time later, we were paralyzed by a creaking at the back door and then sounds of a man shuffling up the stairs...
...cal men, but rather had been brought into town from other areas, incited by their troop leaders to seek revenge for the assassination of Vom Rath...
...For our part, we did not want to jeopardize those who might have defied the Nazi rule, so we kept our distance...
...My father did not live to see his five grandsons reach bar mitzvah age...
...My remembrance of our little synagogue includes childhood pranks and giggling spells when the services lasted too long, and Yom Kippur visits to my parents when they prayed and fasted there all day, Father clad in a long, white shroud like all the other men...
...I remember my embarrassment when a teacher would expound on Jewish crimes and dirty Jewish traits...
...They complemented each other well...
...And there was Helmut, a wonderful diversion and better than any doll we ever owned...
Vol. 10 • April 1985 • No. 4
