Testimonies on the Events of 'Kristallnacht' Testimonies on the Events of 'Kristallnacht' Different Sources From the Memoires of Alfons Heck. Source: Alfons Heck, The Burden of Hitler's Legacy , (Frederick 1988) pp. 61-62. My neighbour Helmut and I were on our way home from school, walking past the synagogue when a group of men led by Paul Wolff, a local carpenter and fervent member of the SS, marched in front of us singing. Suddenly they broke into a run and stormed the entrance of the building. Seconds later, the intricate lead crystal window above the door crashed into the street, and pieces of furniture came flying through doors and windows. A shouting SA man climbed to the roof, waving the rolls of the Torah. Wipe your asses with it, Jews.' He screamed, while he hurled them like bands of confetti on a carnival… …The SA men were laughing at Frau Marks who stood in front of her smashed plate glass window, both hands raised in bewildered despair. Why are you people doing this to us?' she wailed at the circle of silent faces in the windows, her life-long neighbours. What have we ever done to you?' Mrs. Aaron Source: Martina Kliner-Fruck , Es ging Ja Ums Leben, (Frankfurt/Main 1995). pp. 88-89. Our apartment was raided during the night…At first they rang repeatedly. We did not open. Then they hammered on the door, so that we eventually opened it. The SS men were standing there and immediately beat my husband. They told me: Please go inside. We have an account to settle with this gentleman'. They took him outside… The noise woke up the janitor… He went outside and found my husband lying on the sidewalk, unconscious. He carried him inside and I called our doctor. She said to me over the phone: please call a Jewish doctor. I will not come to you anymore'. From the protocol of 10 November 1938 taken in the court of Buchen in the matter of the killing of Susanne Stern, a widow, aged 81: the testimony of Adolf Heinrich Frey, of the SA who shot her Source : Paul Sauer Dokumente ueber die Verfolgung der juedischen Buerger in Baden-Wuerttemberg , Vol. 2 (Stuttgart 1966), pp. 26-27. I knocked on the door… It took about 3-4 minutes for Frau Stern to open the door… She smiled at me provocatively and said: What an important visit, this morning'…. I demanded that Stern get dressed… After two minutes she sat down on the…sofa. When I asked her whether she did not intend to follow my instructions and get dressed, she answered she would not get dressed or come with us. We can do whatever we want…. I am not leaving my house. I am an old lady'…. I took my service revolver out of my pocket… I called on the woman another 5 or 6 times to get up and dress. Stern loudly screamed into my face with scorn and insolence: I will not get up and I will not get dressed. You can do with me whatever you want.' At the moment she screamed do with me whatever you want', I released the safety of the pistol and shot her once… Stern collapsed on the sofa. She leaned back and grabbed her chest with her hands. I now shot her for the second time, this time aiming at her head. Hannele Zuerndorfer Source: Barbara Suchy Duesseldorf - Donnerstag den 10 November 1938, (Duesseldorf 1989) p. 115-16. It must have been around 3 or 4 a.m. when I woke up because of the noise of breaking china and glass… We jumped out of our beds and ran to our parents' bedroom. This was no longer our safe haven. My father stood at the bed, speechless, in his night dress - he was about to come and get us - our mother sat erect in the bed…her eyes filled with terror.… Seconds later, a group of animals stormed into the room, their faces distorted with hatred. They yelled and screamed, stamping their boots on the floor, swinging their axes, hammers and knives. They ran around the room, destroying, shattering and crashing everything… A chair flew through the air and landed in the mirror, the splinters flying all over. I ducked and saw one of the monsters swinging his knife at a picture with a terrible roar. My father loved that picture very much. It was very valuable and depicted a beautiful landscape… All of a sudden my attention was captivated by my father in his night gown turning towards the picture, as if he wanted to protect it. Not this one. Not this one'. I heard him beg. And then, like in a nightmare when everything happens in slow motion and one is totally paralysed and helpless at the moment of decision, I saw how another Nazi was throwing the big block of marble from the table… My father ducked instinctively, jumped on the bed, and watched wordlessly as the one with the knife swung it and slit the picture… Testimony of Twerski (Vienna) Source: Video Testimony from Outcasts' – Film by Yad Vashem 1997 They burst into our home - I was a child - it was at night. They woke me up by beating me. And throwing things around and burning. They had...in every home they went first at the entrance they used to take out their bayonets...They were SS and SA people. and tore out the 'mezuza' out and throw it away. At me they threw a bayonet and the bayonet was stuck in the door. They broke everything and burned it. They took all the books in Hebrew and threw them down through the window into the yard, poured petrol on it and burned it. Before that, books they did not burn, they told me: you have to tear them. Of course I did not want to tear them. It is not easy, so I got beaten up very badly. In the end I saw there was no way out so I tried just to take the cover...not the book itself, just the cover. Of course they were even more angry. And then when they almost left, I ran down to the yard and tried to save every book I could that already started burning. I have one here that started to burn already that I managed to save. But what at least gave us the satisfaction that we managed to save the sifrei Tora, the Tora scrolls.... 6. Miriam Ron – Leipzig Source: Video Testimony from Outcasts' – Film by Yad Vashem 1997 We had no radio, we didn't know what's going on. And a little bit later came an employee of my father – he was not Jewish and he said: go away, run away as quick as you can because I have seen in your street about 25 people that I know that are SA. They don't come in uniform, they came out dressed in civil. So we ran out and tried to stop a taxi. He didn't want to take us. He said: I'm sorry, but my car is going to be completely spoiled. Then we walked and walked and then in one street my mother saw a shop that she knew. and my mother said: let's go in the shop. And I just pretend that I wanted to buy something but the owner of the shop said: don't, please go. My business is in danger if you stay here. So we went out again. We tried to stop another taxi driver. And he said: come in, I will take you. I am not afraid. I will take you. And besides, I hate them, the Nazis. My family, they are all communists. And they are all in concentration camps. And if I can do something against them I will do it. And he took us to the Polish Consulate, which was in a very nice quarter, but it was just opposite the High Court. The High Court of all Germany was in Leipzig. And all the time, when I ever passed this, my parents said to me: From here comes justice. And from this house justice comes from, they threw the garbage of the whole... It was such an insult that I can't forget. Benjamin Sommer Source: Yad Vashem Archive, VD 1366. Then came; Kristallnacht' ... . No one thought ... we knew about the assassination.... We knew they would avenge it, we knew that they would do something, but no one in his most awful dreams imagined anything like; Kristallnacht' . It was terrible. Sudden. It transformed the situation from one moment to the next. And then they felt the disaster coming… Downstairs, in our house, they broke all the shop windows…In the morning, everybody shut themselves in their houses. There was nothing else to be done...It was terrible. It was a sign something was going to happen…The next morning they broke in the door. They didn't even ring the bell. They caught my father. They simply threw him down the stairs. The non-Jewish neighbours heard screams and opened the door. Then they quickly shut it again…There was nothing to be done…They took my father to Dachau and we stayed alone….There were no news from him of course. And terrible anxiety… There was a rumour that they would release prisoners under certain conditions. Mostly if the person to be released would turn over his business to an Aryan…Of course nothing was paid…They also had to sign that they would not tell anything… Then, when they started to release people, we knew that those returning to Mannheim arrive at 5 o'clock in the morning at the railway station. So my mother and sister got up every night….I stood at the window at 5…6…7 and nothing happened. 42:30 And then, after several months, one day father returned. He seemed to be totally broken. He didn't tell us, the children, anything. He spoke to mother. We didn't know what he told her. The only thing was that as a child I saw that a few weeks later he went to get false teeth…They had broken his teeth…He had to turn over his business…. 8. Report of the American consul in Stuttgart, November 15, 1938 Source: John Mendelsohn (ed.), The Holocaust, Vol. 5, (New-York 1982), p. 179-181 …In a figurative sense, my home has been bombarded by visitors and telephone calls giving evidence of the distressing circumstances in which many people are finding themselves. Hundreds are appealing for help and encouragement, and with husbands in concentration camps many are without funds…For more than five days the office has been inundated with people. Each day a larger and larger crowd has besieged the Consulate, filling all the rooms and overflowing into the corridor of a building six stories high. Today there were several thousand. .