From the testimony of Raphael Rosenzweig, former student of the Jewish Philanthropic School in Frankfurt.
Source : Yad Vashem Archive 0.1/295
…Already in 1937 we witnessed a constant turnover of students and teachers, which was problematic for routine the running of the school. Students left the school every week, when their families emigrated or when their parents decided it would be better for them to use the time left before leaving Germany for learning a trade. Many teachers, especially the younger ones, left and were replaced by others who had left the smaller towns or were fired from public schools… The persecutions intensified in the summer of 1938. When the Polish Jews - among them many Philanthropic students - were expelled and left wandering between the two border guard posts, expelled from the one side and unwanted by the other, and when the synagogues burned on that infamous Crystal Night, it became clear to everyone that this was the end of German Jewry. On that grey morning we, the few students who showed up, stood at the windows and watched the smoke rising to the sky. One girl tried to hide her crying. We stood there, in heavy silence, feeling the impending disaster. We heard the door open, but no one looked up. Only the unfamiliar crude command turn around!' made us realise that events had reached the school as well. Next to the school principal stood a Gestapo man and an SS man. Dr. Hirsch spoke softly, taking leave and attempting to comfort us, while the men next to him were pulling him to come with them. We knew what awaited the man who stood with them as a prisoner, while talking to us as an educator. Every one shook hands with him when he left the classroom. He was then pushed brutally toward the room at the end of the hall. Three weeks later classes resumed, but teachers who had been released from concentration camp and students whose fathers and brothers were still in camps could not create the atmosphere necessary for studies. The spirit of the Philanthropic School, the tradition of humanism within the framework of German culture and of Jewish traditions that had been dying for some years, was ultimately killed on Kristallnacht . The closing of the Philanthropic School a short while later was only the formal act which in effect sanctioned an existing situation….
