Source: Melita Maschmann, Account Rendered ΓÇô A Dossier on my Former Self, (New-York 1965), p. 55-57
On 9 November 1938 I took part in a demonstration in front of the old gothic town hall in Frankfurt. I cannot remember now the details of this event. It was one of the routine occasions which I generally allowed to pass over my head in boredom and indeed regarded as a waste of time for people like myself, who had no further need of 'orientation'. I only remember that the Frankfurt SS Fuehrer asked my friends and me after the demonstration if we felt like coming with him as something else was planned for that night…I myself did not hear what was proposed. I only know that everyone said, We're not coming. We're too tired'. Next morning – I had slept well and heard no disturbance – I went into Berlin very early to go to the Reich Youth Leadership office. I noticed nothing unusual on the way. I alighted at the Alexanderplatz. In order to get to the Lothringerstrasse I had to go down a rather gloomy alley containing many small shops and inns. To my surprise almost all the shop windows here were smashed in. The pavement was covered with pieces of glass and fragments of broken furniture. I asked a patrolling policeman what on earth had been going on there. He replied: In this street they're almost all Jews'. Well?' You don't read the papers. Last night the National Soul boiled over.' I can only remember the sense but not the actual wording of this remark, which had an undertone of hidden anger. I went on my way shaking my head. For the space of a second I was clearly aware that something terrible had happened there. Something frighteningly brutal. But almost at once I switched over to accepting what had happened as over and done with and avoiding critical reflection. I said to myself: The Jews are the enemies of the new Germany. Last night they had a taste of what this means. Let us hope that World Jewry, which has resolved to hinder Germany's new steps towards greatness, will take the events of last night as a warning. If the Jews sow hatred against us all over the world, they must learn that we have hostages for them in our hands. With these or similar thoughts I constructed for myself a justification of the pogrom. But in any case I forced the memory of it out of my consciousness as quickly as possible. As the years went by I grew better and better at switching off quickly in this manner on similar occasions. It was the only way, whatever the circumstances, to prevent the onset of doubts about the rightness of what had happened. I probably knew, beneath the level of daily consciousness, that serious doubts would have torn away the basis of my existence from under me. Not in the economic but in the existential sense. I had totally identified myself with National Socialism. The moment of horror became more and more dangerous to me as the years went by. For this reason it had to become shorter and shorter. But now I am anticipating. On the 'Night of the Broken Glass' our feelings were not yet hardened to the sight of humans suffering as they were later during the war. Perhaps if I had met one of the persecuted and oppressed, an old man with the fear of death in his face, perhaps….
