Source: Martina Kliner-Fruck , Es ging Ja Ums Leben (Frankfurt/Main 1986) , Arthur Reis, Der Eiserne Steg, (Heilbronn 1987) and Walter Tausk Breslauer Tagebuecher 1933-1940 [Diaries from Breslau 1933-1940], (Berlin1975).
1. Lola Landau
Source: Lola Landau, Von dem Vergessen - Meine drei Leben (Frankfurt & Berlin 1987) p. 285.
To my great astonishment, I noticed many familiar faces among those visible there: petty merchants, clerks who perhaps once had nodded to me courteously behind their desks. I observed the familiar features of the cigarette vendor at the corner kiosk, a fat man with laughing eyes who always loved to tell me jokes. Now his lips moved villainously and his eyes looked glazed. What has happened to these people? What devilish charm has turned them from easygoing, harmless people into rampaging beasts?
2. Hannah Gluecksmann
Source: Martina Kliner-Fruck , Es ging Ja Ums Leben (Frankfurt/Main 1986) p. 83
April 1, 1933 - Boycott Day: Two Nazis stood in front of our shop and sought to stop the women from doing their shopping there. Most of them were the wives of working men. But they refused to be stopped. They entered the shop with their baskets and their children. It was a neighbourhood of working people, a Communist neighbourhood. And the shop was full. My father, pale as whitewash, closed the shop. We children called out: Leave it open, leave it open! But my father did not have the courage, and he closed the store an hour later. There was such a commotion, and the men outside did not know exactly how to behave. They were afraid of these working men's wives...
3. Frau Zahl
Source: Martina Kliner-Fruck , Es ging Ja Ums Leben (Frankfurt/Main 1986) p.82
I can remember the first pogrom. It was on April 1, when I was coming from the Stadium with Toni O., a schoolmate of mine...We saw about 20, 30 or 40 men, I cannot remember how many. At any rate it was a large number of young men. They all had emblems or swastikas or a Jewish star shaven on their heads and signs on their body: ΓÇ£I have defiled a German girlΓÇ¥ or ΓÇ£I am a Jew - a traitorΓÇ¥. All kinds of such sayings were on them. She slapped my face so that I would not scream, and pulled me back.
4. Arthur Reis
Source: Arthur Reis, Der Eiserne Steg (Heilbronn 1987)
Right at the beginning of March, when the city was taken over... by SA Sturmbannfuehrer Gueltig and his deputy Hugo Koelle, a series of initiatives by individuals to harm Jews were undertaken. There was whispering about house searches and terrible atrocities committed against Jews especially in the cellars of the Brown House that stood opposite the Reis residence. Some of the first victims of the new regime were Hermann Bauernfreund and Max Stobezki, who were kicked and beaten with whips and sticks... While these individual actions were still done mostly clandestinely, the persecution of the Jews came out to daylight on boycott day. That Saturday SA, SS and Hitler Youth gangs went out in an organised manner and blocked the entrances to Jewish stores, lawyer and doctor offices. They distributed leaflets, hung up enormous signs, and marched through the streets of the town yelling, 'The Jews are our misfortune. Don't buy from Jews'. There were no vigils in front of the J. D. Reis store, and no signs were hung up. The Store was closed on Saturday, as was our habit for generations.
5. From the Diary of Walter Tausk, Jewish Breslau Merchant
Source: Walter Tausk Breslauer Tagebuecher 1933-1940 [Diaries from Breslau 1933-1940], (Berlin1975).
[Born 1890, fought in the First World War, a Jewish merchant from Breslau. He was deported to Kovno, Lithuania on 25 November 1941, where he perished.] I decide to go to Leipziger and Kessler, and find a big confusion in front of the store. The Christian Partner who is a foreign citizen, argues with several Nazis who wish to smear his shop with inscriptions. Steinhauber protests: I am not on the list, and forbid you to do it.' The brutal SA men insist on the government order. Finally they all leave for the courthouse. Meanwhile other brutes arrive and smear the windowpanes. I slide into the store and find the Christian employees in a state of high excitement. There are no shoppers. The employees are outraged. One of them gets a rag. Two Nazis enter - looking like criminals - one of them says: No one touches the window. Everything is to stay as it is until the decision is taken...'
