More Than Broken Glass: Memories of Kristallnacht

<v Narrator 1>Major funding for this program was provided by the Ivan L. <v Narrator 1>Tillem Foundation. [theme music] <v Woman 1>Suddenly I realized that this light which I was seeing was fire inside the <v Woman 1>synagogue and this fireman was apparently protecting the other building. <v Woman 2>All of a sudden he turns around, ?inaudible? <v Woman 2>I thought and now he's sh- shooting me. <v Woman 2>Now I am finished. <v Paula Klein>And I do remember faintly, he he tried to muster <v Paula Klein>a faint smile and waved as if to say <v Paula Klein>things would be all right. That was the last time that I ever saw my father. <v Man 1>The home and the synagogue, the two centers of our life <v Man 1>in Mannheim. <v Man 1>Uh being uh one, burning the other one ransacked. <v Man 1>Where we gonna go. What, what am I going to do?

<v Man 1>What's gonna happen to me? [music plays] <v Narrator 2>Kristallnacht or Crystal Night, the Night of Broken Glass <v Narrator 2>was a brief period in November 1938 of unprecedented violence against <v Narrator 2>the Jews of the Third Reich. <v Narrator 2>Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda who instigated the operation, claimed <v Narrator 2>it was a spontaneous outburst of the people's rage.

<v Narrator 2>It was an unforeseen but loosely organized step in the Nazi policy <v Narrator 2>to remove Jews from German life. <v Paula Klein>We had a piano zu H- uh at home, and <v Paula Klein>I went for piano lessons to Kitzingen the uh <v Paula Klein>little city near a half an hour from where I was born. <v Paula Klein>And I went every week for piano lessons and I played <v Paula Klein>good piano. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>In Germany uh the higher education was separated between boys <v Rabbi Karl Richter>and girls. I went to a boys school. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>The girls had their own schools and the train never met. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>[laughs] Didn't know what a girl was until I graduated from high school. <v Narrator 2>In the 20s, German Jews considered themselves more German than the Germans. <v Narrator 2>They lived and worked at every level of society.

<v Dr. Fred Grubel>For three years, I was in uh very interesting law office, law <v Dr. Fred Grubel>office of the president of the German Bar Association. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>And I worked also in the central office of the Bar Association. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Everything looked wonderful. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Those days in the late nineteen hundred 20s, I graduated in <v Rabbi Karl Richter>1928. There was very little anti-Semitism. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Uh we lived like uh everybody else. <v Raul Hilberg>They did feel accepted and they thought of themselves <v Raul Hilberg>as Germans. <v Raul Hilberg>Uh the major validation for that thought was their participation <v Raul Hilberg>in the First World War in the course of which uh, the <v Raul Hilberg>Jewish community of Germany, numbering a little over 600000, lost, <v Raul Hilberg>12000 men killed in action. <v Raul Hilberg>[music plays] Uh that's a very important argument in Germany for equality. <v Ernest Michel>I remember visits to my grandfather's home in the northern part of Germany.

<v Ernest Michel>Uh he was a soldier in World War One. <v Ernest Michel>I remember a picture of him hanging on the- in the living room on a horse. <v Ernest Michel>He was a member of the German cavalry and very proud having received the <v Ernest Michel>Iron Cross. <v Paula Klein>So uh when I got married, my father said that's an old piano, I <v Paula Klein>wouldn't let you. I buy you a new one. <v Paula Klein>And he bought a new piano for me. <v Paula Klein>And this was standing in my living room, all new furniture. <v Paula Klein>Beautiul, beautiful. [music] <v Frederick Oechsner>Berlin at that time was certainly one of the most <v Frederick Oechsner>exciting cities in the world if not the most exciting. <v Frederick Oechsner>In every respect it was probably one of the most

<v Frederick Oechsner>bitter sweet towns that you could think of. <v Frederick Oechsner>I say bitter and I will return to this uh with reference to the <v Frederick Oechsner>mood of the people, sweet in terms of creativity <v Frederick Oechsner>and the wonderful things that people were doing in the arts and the sciences. <v Frederick Oechsner>It really masked the terrible underlay of <v Frederick Oechsner>depression and joblessness and uh absolute hopelessness, <v Frederick Oechsner>mostly as a result of the of the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed <v Frederick Oechsner>on Germany, and this had been just a a d- decade before <v Frederick Oechsner>uh, economic hardships, which are difficult to measure. <v Narrator 2>Germany was left bankrupt by the Treaty of Versailles. <v Narrator 2>The world leaders, while stripping Germany of its assets and land <v Narrator 2>had also redrawn the map of Europe.

<v Jack Goldman>Even though I was born in Germany, my parents had come, especially my father <v Jack Goldman>had come from a part of uh of uh Europe, that before the <v Jack Goldman>war was Austria and with the war, the family moved <v Jack Goldman>to Western Germany. <v Jack Goldman>And when the end of World War One came about, <v Jack Goldman>that portion became uh Poland. <v Jack Goldman>So he had to have a Polish passport and we had to have a Polish passport. <v Frederick Oechsner>As far as the political situation is concerned, uh <v Frederick Oechsner>there were 37 different political parties <v Frederick Oechsner>and they were knifing one another and and uh <v Frederick Oechsner>betraying one another and deceiving one another for advantage <v Frederick Oechsner>and the Reichstag, which was the parliament. <v Frederick Oechsner>And uh the top threat at that time <v Frederick Oechsner>and certainly recognized as such was the National Socialist <v Frederick Oechsner>German Worker's Party or Nazi Party under

<v Frederick Oechsner>Adolf Hitler. [music plays] <v Raul Hilberg>Indeed, when the clouds of Naziism began to gather towards <v Raul Hilberg>the end of 1932, the Jewish community made an attempt <v Raul Hilberg>to list each soldier who was Jewish, who was killed <v Raul Hilberg>separately and make a book out of it. <v Raul Hilberg>Uh this book uh was presented to Germany's president, Field Marshal <v Raul Hilberg>von Hindenberg on his 85th birthday at the end of <v Raul Hilberg>1932. Now, that was uh the mentality of the German Jews. <v Siegfried Tischauer>My father was in the German army. He died for uh Germany in the first war. <v Siegfried Tischauer>He is buried in the German military cemetery in France. <v Siegfried Tischauer>My grandfather were in the German army. <v Siegfried Tischauer>It was my country, I was born there. <v Siegfried Tischauer>[music plays] <v Raul Hilberg>When Adolf Hitler came to power uh in January 30, 1933,

<v Raul Hilberg>uh the situation began to change fairly radically. <v Raul Hilberg>For one thing, it was quite evident during the first few months <v Raul Hilberg>of this new regime uh that the status of equality had ended. <v Raul Hilberg>Now the only question for the Jewish community was whether they could survive <v Raul Hilberg>economically as second class citizens. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>They couldn't wait until the next morning. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>At 5:00 in the afternoon, a special messenger came to my home with a letter <v Dr. Fred Grubel>that since the Reverend Dr. Fred Gruber, <v Dr. Fred Grubel>according to his own indication, is of Jewish <v Dr. Fred Grubel>descent, he is immediately discharged from the judicial service <v Dr. Fred Grubel>period. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Next morning, I went back to court to get my books and so on, and I never will forget <v Dr. Fred Grubel>uh how crazy one was at that time.

<v Dr. Fred Grubel>Uh a uh Gentile colleague of mine, a lady, was quite <v Dr. Fred Grubel>upset and said ?inaudible? this and what are you doing now? <v Dr. Fred Grubel>And this is terrible what happens and so on. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>And I never will forget the crazy answer that I gave, uh I said colleague. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Don't worry. That happens to us every few hundred years, and we are still in this world. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>I think she thought me highly crazy. <v Karl Schleunes>The Nazis had promised that they would undo at the very minimum <v Karl Schleunes>their solution to the Jewish problem, as they called it, was to undo <v Karl Schleunes>that process of assimilation that began in the late <v Karl Schleunes>18th and early 19th century. <v Karl Schleunes>In other words, to once again separate Jews from Germans. <v Alfons Heck>It also had very personal implications because my kindergarten friend <v Alfons Heck>Heintz Erman was Jewish and he was removed from <v Alfons Heck>our elementary school six weeks after we started school. <v Alfons Heck>I knew he was Jewish. In fact, I had gone to the synagogue with

<v Alfons Heck>him once for his aunt's wedding. <v Alfons Heck>I spent a lot of time in their home. <v Alfons Heck>And he knew, I was ?Catholic? it didn't make any difference to us. <v Alfons Heck>Nearly was a a concept that we didn't understand. <v Raul Hilberg>By and large, the first measures of what I would call ghettoisation <v Raul Hilberg>began. This is not a visible ghetto, but it did <v Raul Hilberg>consist of such measures at first as prohibition of <v Raul Hilberg>intermarriages, and later on the necessity to carry out around <v Raul Hilberg>a card with various markings on it. <v Raul Hilberg>Uh, for example, Jews had to have the middle name for men Israel and for <v Raul Hilberg>women Sara. <v Raul Hilberg>Uh their passports were marked with a J. <v Raul Hilberg>And there were still other ways of identifying Jews. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>Was an old Jewish custom that among the Orthodox on the <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>Sabbath, every Jew, uh every male Jew, would wear a top hat ?inaudible?. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And of course, when that was done, when the Nazis were in power, that was simply a signal

<v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>for them to be beaten up and to be um persecuted. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>So what was done, I have vivid memories of that, in the synagogue itself? <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>The Schul, which is the name for synagogue, they built like wooden <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>uh cubicles where every male Jew was able to store his ?inaudible? <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>his top hat, and therefore he wore regular clothing to the <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>synagogue. But once in the synagogue, the men would then go to the cubicle, take <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>out the top hat and wear the top only for services. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>At the end of service they would put it back into the cubicle. <v Raul Hilberg>Already in 1933, with some exceptions, those in public service, which included <v Raul Hilberg>teachers, were to be dismissed. <v Peter Gay>The head of the Gymnasium was obviously an OK figure for the new regime. <v Peter Gay>Call up my father and ask him to come and see him uh which was a rather <v Peter Gay>astonishing thing. I was doing well and he didn't know what the problem was. <v Peter Gay>Well, it wasn't a problem. There was an argument that he was gonna give my father and did <v Peter Gay>that since I was a good student I should go the classical route and learn Latin.

<v Peter Gay>Uh but anyway, I tell the story only to say that this was the atmosphere even in 1935. <v Peter Gay>Even in a completely you know uh area in our school. <v Peter Gay>No Jewish teachers and uh and so on. <v Peter Gay>So that uh even the head of the school caring about which branch I would take, <v Peter Gay>assuming that I had some sort of future. <v Peter Gay>Uh it's characteristic of the very mixed signals that I was getting. <v Peter Gay>Uh obviously lots of negative ones too. <v Man 2>Children's books obviously are a very important means of communicating an <v Man 2>idea, propagandistic or otherwise, to our culture <v Man 2>and the folk tale, fairy tale <v Man 2>text books were widely circulated, illustrated, translated <v Man 2>into the anti Semitic idiom. <v Alfons Heck>Herr Becker, our elementary tea- teacher was quite a patriot <v Alfons Heck>and also a fanatic Nazi. Uh made sure that we understood <v Alfons Heck>that these people were different.

<v Alfons Heck>Now this was based on a textbook. <v Man 3>Little children are told to be aware of the way- and the way we tell <v Man 3>our children, you know, don't talk to strangers, uh that comes to be <v Man 3>translated very directly, into don't talk to <v Man 3>the Jew. Stay away from the Jew. <v Alfons Heck>I joined the Hitler Youth I- because I wanted to for the adventure, not because <v Alfons Heck>of the ideology. That was already a part of me. <v Alfons Heck>I would have never questioned it. <v Ernest Michel>I remember. I had two non-Jewish boy friends. <v Ernest Michel>Uh we were very close in 33, 34, and then it <v Ernest Michel>changed. I remember even their names. <v Ernest Michel>Kurt Hess and Heintz Munz. <v Ernest Michel>Uh they lived in my neighborhood, we were as close as can be. <v Ernest Michel>In 34, 1935, they became members of the Hitler Youth. <v Ernest Michel>And they didn't know me anymore.

<v Narrator 2>Jewish emigration after Hitler came to power was slow and steady. <v Narrator 2>Approximately 150000 over a five year period. <v Narrator 2>But the majority felt that the persecution they were suffering was temporary and that <v Narrator 2>there was no need for them to leave. <v Siegfried Tischauer>It would blow over. Sooner or later, it has to go. <v Siegfried Tischauer>That was bigger heads than I. <v Siegfried Tischauer>Much bigger head have had the same opinion, that will blow over that <v Siegfried Tischauer>will- won't last. <v Siegfried Tischauer>It didn't last a thousand years, but it lasted 12 years. <v Siegfried Tischauer>[music plays] <v Narrator 2>In those years, the nature of the Jewish communities changed. <v Narrator 2>As they were excluded from the services of the German state, they made their own. <v Narrator 2>They set up regular schools, welfare and loan organizations, as well as cultural <v Narrator 2>groups. They also set up special mechanical and agricultural schools. <v Narrator 2>Provide practical skills for the young prior to going overseas. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>But we were uh optimistic.

<v Dr. Fred Grubel>And uh therefore, the entire tendency was <v Dr. Fred Grubel>the young people should leave and the old people will stay here. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>One of these days, this whole nonsense will be over. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>But the youngsters should not wait for it. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>The old people will stick it out. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>And, uh, somebody. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Some good journalists coined a very touching word <v Dr. Fred Grubel>in German- Aus Kindern werden Briefe. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>That is children become letters from abroad. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>My favorite um thinking about my mother <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>is that every evening I told you that I was a little spoiled. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>Every evening, but spoiled in a good sense, maybe the same way that I spoiled my <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>children. Uh every evening was laying down with me until I fell <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>asleep. Now, from a pedagogical point of view, you know that I would say, hey, hold it, <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>don't do that. But I do remember very vividly that

<v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>um either my father or my mother read me stories and that she actually held me in her <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>arms until I fell asleep. <v Miriam Cohn>I loved the house in which we lived, it was like a large type Westchester <v Miriam Cohn>home, four stories high with a caretaker and a big garden. <v Miriam Cohn>And I really loved the house. <v Miriam Cohn>My mother and my father, who as a rabbi and <v Miriam Cohn>his spouse felt that we were extremely exposed <v Miriam Cohn>as the only Jewish couple in a few blocks. <v Miriam Cohn>And my mother literally did not feel safe there anymore. <v Miriam Cohn>And we took up residence in the apartment reserved <v Miriam Cohn>for rabbis in the synagogue itself. <v Narrator 2>[music plays] Hitler had always had expansionist aims. <v Narrator 2>In March 1938, the German army moved into Austria, quickly making <v Narrator 2>it part of the Third Reich. <v Narrator 2>The Nazis anti-Semetic policies were put into force with a vengeance by the occupiers

<v Narrator 2>as well as the native born. <v Narrator 2>Suddenly Austrian Jews needed to emigrate, causing a refugee crisis. <v Narrator 2>Franklin Roosevelt convened a meeting to address the problem, which was held in Evian <v Narrator 2>in France. <v Karl Schleunes>You have your own conference, uh some 30 or more governments <v Karl Schleunes>represented, frankly, accomplished virtually nothing. <v C. Brooks Peters>Rabbi Leo Beck, who is the chief rabbi of Germany, told me afterwards <v C. Brooks Peters>we had talked before and we talked again after the conference that uh <v C. Brooks Peters>I remember, I shall never forget the words he used. Uh uh he <v C. Brooks Peters>thought that Roosevelt must have had something up his sleeve <v C. Brooks Peters>or he wouldn't have had the conference convened. <v C. Brooks Peters>And when the conference turned out to be a total failure. <v C. Brooks Peters>Uh I remember Rabbi Beck saying uh the future is <v C. Brooks Peters>dim. Nobody wants us. <v C. Brooks Peters>The important thing to me, is the Nazis,

<v C. Brooks Peters>as every reporter in Berlin realized at the time, <v C. Brooks Peters>saw that nobody was willing to take these people and therefore <v C. Brooks Peters>anything that they would do in all probability <v C. Brooks Peters>would not meet with more than verbal remonstrance. <v Narrator 2>[music plays] But Germany still wanted its Jews to emigrate. <v Narrator 2>The government closely monitored any changes in the world's policies towards Jews. <v Karl Schleunes>Polish government in uh early October of 1938 issued <v Karl Schleunes>a decree to the effect that uh <v Karl Schleunes>all Polish citizens, including the uh Polish Jews <v Karl Schleunes>living in Germany at the time, if they had lived uh <v Karl Schleunes>outside of the country for more than five consecutive years, would require a revalidation <v Karl Schleunes>of their passports sent to a consulate in order to allow them to return <v Karl Schleunes>to Poland.

<v Karl Schleunes>The Polish calculation being that the uh increased persecution <v Karl Schleunes>in Germany of Jews might in fact lead some of the 60 <v Karl Schleunes>or perhaps many or all of these 60 to 70 thousand Jews to attempt to <v Karl Schleunes>return to Poland. <v Karl Schleunes>This became very clear as soon as these people began <v Karl Schleunes>going to Polish consulates in Germany to get their Polish passports <v Karl Schleunes>revalidated, the stamp is refused. <v Karl Schleunes>The picture becomes clear. <v C. Brooks Peters>The Germans heard about this and they told the Poles, look, we don't <v C. Brooks Peters>want an additional 10 or 15 thousand uh- <v C. Brooks Peters>Jews who are stateless when already we are <v C. Brooks Peters>interested only in getting rid of the Jews who are German Jews. <v C. Brooks Peters>If you persist in your policy, we will take <v C. Brooks Peters>countermeasures. <v Jack Goldman>And in October 1938, they

<v Jack Goldman>had a roundup of Jews with Polish passports. <v Jack Goldman>Uh in Mannheim [music plays] they only took the men over <v Jack Goldman>18 in ?inaudible?, which was just across the river Rhine. <v Jack Goldman>The entire family was taken. My father had been among those who had been arrested <v Jack Goldman>that day. And then sh- as we found out, he and all the others were shipped uh to <v Jack Goldman>Poland, and they were in ?inaudible?. <v Jack Goldman>That's right on the border, but on the Polish side. <v Narrator 2>The situation in Poland was bleak. <v Narrator 2>The Polish government refused to accept the people dumped across the border who were put <v Narrator 2>up in homes, old army barracks, and barns. <v Zindel Grynszpan>?inaudible? Zindel Grynszpan who had also been shipped to ?inaudible? <v Zindel Grynszpan>and gave testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann. <v Grynszpan's Translator>[Grynszpan speaking] The rain was driving hard. People were falling <v Grynszpan's Translator>and fainting.

<v Grynszpan's Translator>Some were suffered heart attacks. <v Grynszpan's Translator>On all sides one saw the old men and women and <v Grynszpan's Translator>our suffering was great. <v Grynszpan's Translator>There was no food. We did not want ?inaudible? <v Grynszpan's Translator>from Thursday to eat any German bread. <v Grynszpan's Translator>Then I wrote a letter to Germany. <v Grynszpan's Translator>No, to France to my son. <v Grynszpan's Translator>Don't write any more letters to Germany. <v Grynszpan's Translator>We are now in ?inaudible? in Poland. <v Narrator 2>His son, Hershel Grynszpan, had left Germany in 36 to try to find something <v Narrator 2>better for himself. He ended up living illegally in Paris. <v Ron Roizen>He was having trouble finding work. <v Ron Roizen>And he was uh um, you know, his residency couldn't be <v Ron Roizen>regularised. His parents uh he heard from a letter from his father <v Ron Roizen>had been deported in this expulsion late in in uh October. <v Ron Roizen>So he was very concerned over his family's welfare. <v Ron Roizen>I think he wanted to- have his sights set on shooting the German ambassador as a symbolic <v Ron Roizen>action. He finally uh made his way into the embassy and uh said that he

<v Ron Roizen>had an important package to deliver to someone, could he see a member of <v Ron Roizen>the delegation and he was shown in to see uh Ernst <v Ron Roizen>vom Rath, vom Rath's office. Vom Rath was a third secretary or I think the lowest ranking <v Ron Roizen>officer at the uh at the embassy and apparently rose to greet him and <v Ron Roizen>Grynszpan wasted little time in uh in uh unloading his revolver. <v Narrator 2>Vom Rath was severely wounded and Grynszpan was quietly handed over to the French <v Narrator 2>police. <v Ron Roizen>He was quoted uh after the assassination to make <v Ron Roizen>a rather eloquent tuh uh uh three line comment about <v Ron Roizen>uh that everywhere he'd gone, he'd been chased like a dog and that being a Jew wasn't <v Ron Roizen>a crime and the Jewish people had a right to exist on the earth somewhere, <v Ron Roizen>and that he uh really felt uh hunted uh <v Ron Roizen>everywhere he'd been and that no uh uh no place would accept him. <v Narrator 2>Late on the afternoon of the 9th in Paris, Ernst vom Rath died.

<v Ernest Michel>And the moment we heard it in the news there was a bulletin. <v Ernest Michel>We knew, ah! This may lead to something. <v Ernest Michel>[music plays] <v Narrator 2>November the 9th was also the 15th anniversary of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, <v Narrator 2>which was the Nazi's failed attempt to seize power by revolution. <v Narrator 2>Those who died were revered as heroes of the party. <v Narrator 2>This was celebrated annually by the Nazi old guard, in particular the storm troopers. <v Narrator 2>Munich was the center of celebrations. <v Karl Schleunes>On November 9th, Hitler and Goebbels and Himmler <v Karl Schleunes>and Göring and the entire Nazi hierarchy were gathered in <v Karl Schleunes>Munich to to commemorate this most sacred, uh <v Karl Schleunes>sacred of days. And I think it's about seven o'clock that news <v Karl Schleunes>reaches Munich of vom Rath's death in Paris. <v Karl Schleunes>Uh we have some witnesses, people who sort of heard, certainly saw

<v Karl Schleunes>and c- heard what was going on. <v Karl Schleunes>They recall uh Goebbels being in very close conversation <v Karl Schleunes>with Hitler, whispering for a time. <v Karl Schleunes>And one uh witness overhearing at least uh <v Karl Schleunes>the phrase that the SA, the Nazi storm troopers, should be allowed <v Karl Schleunes>perhaps to have a final fling. <v Karl Schleunes>[music plays] And Goebbels is left to make the speech. <v Karl Schleunes>Again an exact record of what he said uh was not kept. <v Karl Schleunes>He spoke uh off the cuff, but enough witnesses suggest <v Karl Schleunes>that he did allude, of course, to the crime in Paris, the Jewish <v Karl Schleunes>crime in Paris, told the audience about the death of vom Rath <v Karl Schleunes>and said that the party leadership would <v Karl Schleunes>uh have nothing against an expression

<v Karl Schleunes>of uh p- resentment on the part of the German people <v Karl Schleunes>against this Jewish crime. <v Raul Hilberg>The Nazi Party and its formations were not to <v Raul Hilberg>enter into any activities <v Raul Hilberg>of violence against the Jews in the streets or in their homes, <v Raul Hilberg>but on the other hand, they were not going to prevent, they <v Raul Hilberg>were not supposed to prevent any spontaneous <v Raul Hilberg>outburst of anger within the German population. <v Raul Hilberg>These orders went out in the late evening hours of the night <v Raul Hilberg>and were interpreted by party officials to mean that the party <v Raul Hilberg>should organize actions against the Jews, but <v Raul Hilberg>that it should not appear as the organizer of <v Raul Hilberg>these actions. [music plays] <v Narrator 2>Quickly, with little or no attempts at disguise, storm troopers throughout the country

<v Narrator 2>began to take their revenge. <v C. Brooks Peters>But at almost uh precisely 2 AM, a motorcade <v C. Brooks Peters>came down the Friedrichstrasse, made a right turn <v C. Brooks Peters>into the Leipzigestrasse, and after the entire <v C. Brooks Peters>motorcade, which consisted of a dozen plus or minus <v C. Brooks Peters>a couple Mercedes touring cars, open touring <v C. Brooks Peters>cars with the tops down. <v C. Brooks Peters>After the entire motorcade had turned in to the Leipzige street, uh <v C. Brooks Peters>at a signal from a man in the first the leading car in <v C. Brooks Peters>the motorcade, the entire motorcade came to a stop. <v C. Brooks Peters>At another signal from the man and the leading car, 4 people <v C. Brooks Peters>of the 5 in each of these automobiles alighted, <v C. Brooks Peters>jumped from the cars and proceeded 2 in each <v C. Brooks Peters>car with an iron crowbar, the other 2 wearing gloves,

<v C. Brooks Peters>presumably to prevent their getting cut. <v C. Brooks Peters>Uh the men with the crowbars banged in the showcase windows <v C. Brooks Peters>of every Jewish owned shop. <v C. Brooks Peters>[music plays] <v Peter Gay>Now, the first thing I saw was the ?inaudible? <v Peter Gay>enormous uh place, almost as large as Macy's. <v Peter Gay>It occupies, occupied, then occupies now a large city block, <v Peter Gay>at about six stories. And what I saw was uh uh an <v Peter Gay>unbelievable mess of smashed windows, mannequins on the on on <v Peter Gay>the street. <v Frederick Oechsner>This uh din of of breaking glass <v Frederick Oechsner>took place in um in an an amazing silence otherwise.

<v Frederick Oechsner>I didn't hear any shouts, noises. <v Frederick Oechsner>It was as quiet as an execution. <v Frederick Oechsner>[music plays] <v Narrator 2>The smashed glass in the store windows of Berlin was just one part of the loosely <v Narrator 2>organized operation simultaneously occurring all over Germany. <v Helga Franks>When I came out. It was a beautiful sunny morning, but <v Helga Franks>I smelled something in the air. And I said, geez, how come it's- what's burning? <v Helga Franks>I mean, it was too late for leaves. <v Helga Franks>And s-. And I turned uh <v Helga Franks>to the right. And I s- saw the te- uh, the synagogue, and <v Helga Franks>I saw lights inside the synagogue. <v Helga Franks>I said, what's going on? Mourning? <v Helga Franks>What is it, a holiday? And I could figure out there was no holiday in November. <v Helga Franks>And then I suddenly looked and I saw a decrepit <v Helga Franks>fire truck standing in front of the temple, a small one.

<v Helga Franks>I said, what's that fire truck doing? And with that, I see one <v Helga Franks>fireman stands standing on behind the <v Helga Franks>synagogue on, on top of another building and having a hose in his hand. <v Helga Franks>And suddenly I realized that this light which I was seeing <v Helga Franks>was fire inside the synagogue. <v Helga Franks>And just firemen was apparently protecting the other building. <v Alfons Heck>I saw the destruction of the synagogue, which was less <v Alfons Heck>than uh 400 yards from our home. <v Alfons Heck>It wasn't burned, but it was destroyed totally on the inside by uh SA <v Alfons Heck>troopers, some civilians, some members of the SS and plenty sooner were <v Alfons Heck>perhaps a hundred people standing outside watching the destruction. <v Alfons Heck>And it was a strange feeling you sort of were stunned by the brutality <v Alfons Heck>of it, but there was also a certain amount of excitement in it. <v Alfons Heck>You thought, if the state can do this, it must be really powerful.

<v Helga Franks>And I ran in crying and I was remember I was crying, I said the synagogue <v Helga Franks>is burning and uh my father <v Helga Franks>ya know got up and ran on next to the window and looked out and <v Helga Franks>said, well, why aren't they doing anything? <v Helga Franks>He was upset. <v Helga Franks>Where's the fire uh men? And I don't know what possess- possessed me, but I said they <v Helga Franks>don't want to do anything. <v Alfons Heck>And I must say, the destruction evoked a certain <v Alfons Heck>amount of fascination, especially in us young. <v Alfons Heck>You almost wanted to smash things, too. <v Alfons Heck>I think that would be a correct description. <v Alfons Heck>And many people seem to ?inaudible? <v Alfons Heck>seem to share that view because several others did go into the synagogue <v Alfons Heck>and helped us smash things. <v Alfons Heck>It was, in fact, my uncle who had turned my friend and I around and chased us home. <v Alfons Heck>[music plays]

<v Narrator 2>Over 1000 synagogues were destroyed in Germany through vandalism, through fire <v Narrator 2>and through explosives. <v Narrator 2>The fire and police departments had been ordered not to interfere with the attacks on <v Narrator 2>synagogues and stores, except the extent of protecting other Aryan property. <v Narrator 2>But the terror didn't stop there. <v Narrator 2>It extended into people's homes. <v Paula Klein>They came in, but I hided my husband with my baby. <v Paula Klein>My ?inaudible? little girl. <v Paula Klein>So my inlaws said, my husband, this baby. <v Paula Klein>We hide it all up in the attic, you know. <v Jack Goldman>My mother opened up the door and they just pushed her aside <v Jack Goldman>as they came in. There were a number of them.

<v Jack Goldman>I don't remember how many of them came in, but there was a group, not just one or two. <v Jack Goldman>And as they were going through the apartment looking for items to uh to throw out the <v Jack Goldman>window and asking for specific items such as prayer books. <v Jack Goldman>Um- I was dumbfounded. <v Paula Klein>Every house, every Jewish house. <v Paula Klein>You could see nothing but stones, stones and glass, some glasses, <v Paula Klein>some dishes and furniture lying there and <v Paula Klein>I can tell you. Everything, broke, broke. <v Ernest Michel>I went to our apartment and a frightful sight <v Ernest Michel>was there. <v Ernest Michel>The apartment was ransacked. <v Ernest Michel>My father had been arrested. <v Ernest Michel>My sister was not there. I didn't know where she was. <v Ernest Michel>My mother was beaten and the whole furniture, everything <v Ernest Michel>was in disarray.

<v Paula Klein>The Kristallnacht came and he saw this piano <v Paula Klein>standing there. I think 50 went like <v Paula Klein>crazy of this piano. <v Paula Klein>Broke this piano, you can't believe it. <v Paula Klein>Left were a little wood. <v Paula Klein>I can't believe it. <v Miriam Cohn>My mother ran into the bedroom, which I shared with my <v Miriam Cohn>sister and she said that we had to get up immediately <v Miriam Cohn>because the Nazis were coming into the building and were <v Miriam Cohn>already in the synagogue next door. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>So my two sisters, my brother and I were four children, were alone <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>in the apartment that night, which turned out to be Kristallnacht. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>So we really didn't know exactly what was happening. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>We do remember the following. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>We got a call from a brother of my father, and he urged <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>us immediately to try to close the doors to our house, to

<v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>pull down the shutters and give the impression as if no one were home. <v Miriam Cohn>So when I left my bedroom, I was met by <v Miriam Cohn>a hulking Nazi with his usual black boots <v Miriam Cohn>that we're all familiar with. <v Miriam Cohn>And I became frightened. <v Miriam Cohn>It was a very big man. It seemed like a very big man. <v Miriam Cohn>And he seemed menacing. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And just at that time, we heard a key turn in our door. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And who walked in? It was the son of the uh Catholic family <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>that lived on the second floor, and this son, who at that time was 17, his name <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>was Felix. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>Uh when he saw me whimpering and he saw all of us uh like uh little scared rabbits, he <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>said, what's going on? And we explained to him and he immediately said, <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>you have nothing to worry about. Felix is here. <v Miriam Cohn>And as I came to the first floor, I saw <v Miriam Cohn>the father of the caretaker of the building standing there

<v Miriam Cohn>in a long night white shirt, which is what Europeans wore at that <v Miriam Cohn>time. Absolutely staring at and glued to <v Miriam Cohn>a spot which was to the right of me. <v Miriam Cohn>And as I looked at that spot, I literally saw the interior <v Miriam Cohn>of the synagogue in flames. <v Miriam Cohn>And slowly the smoke was enveloping our side of the building. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And we thought, you know, it might be bravado of a ?17? <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>year old. What he did was he immediately changed to his Hitler Youth uniform. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And then he leaned out the window on the second floor. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And when the mob came to our house, he said. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>This house has been sold to Aryans. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>Any damage you will do, you'll be responsible for, there are no more Jews here. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And so in a sense uh, it was just a young Catholic, humane <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>individual who saved our lives. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Regardless, of course, we attended to everyone who came in.

<v Rabbi Karl Richter>It was like a field hospital during a war. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Doctors and nurses uh chasing around, trying to bind up wounds, to set <v Rabbi Karl Richter>uh broken bones and so forth. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>I remember one 90 year old woman whose ear had been smashed with an ax <v Rabbi Karl Richter>and uh she died a few days later. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>But this was the kind of outrage that happened in the uh uh <v Rabbi Karl Richter>heat of this uh Kristallnacht. <v Frederick Oechsner>It was eerie. Of course, it was terrifying. <v Frederick Oechsner>It was just- uh uh uh everything <v Frederick Oechsner>gone wild. I mean, it was what you have nightmares about. <v Frederick Oechsner>[music plays] <v Ernest Michel>The home and the synagogue, the two centers of our life <v Ernest Michel>in Mannheim uh being uh one burning, the other <v Ernest Michel>one ransacked. Where am I gonna go? What? What am I gonna do? <v Ernest Michel>What's gonna happen to me? <v Narrator 2>Late on the afternoon of the 10th, Goebbels ordered an end to the destruction.

<v Narrator 2>The reaction of the general population was mixed. <v Alfons Heck>The next day in school, Herr Becker our elementary school teacher <v Alfons Heck>was a very straight laced Christian, very anti-Semetic, <v Alfons Heck>explained to us that it's ?incredible? <v Alfons Heck>that property is destroyed. <v Alfons Heck>But he said we have to show these people that they cannot get away with the murder of <v Alfons Heck>German diplomats. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Uh but there were other people I remember that a pious Christian woman came to my mother <v Rabbi Karl Richter>the day after it happened and said after what they did to the synagogues, <v Rabbi Karl Richter>fire will fall from heaven and destroy our cities. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Now, she meant it in the biblical sense. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>But as we know, it happened in a real sense. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>When the German cities were destroyed by bombing in the Second World War. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>[music plays] <v Narrator 2>One part of the Kristallnacht continued- the arrest of 20,000 Jewish

<v Narrator 2>males had been ordered by the SS. <v Narrator 2>They and in some cases the local police continued to arrest people, <v Narrator 2>process them through the local jails and ship them to the concentration camps of Dachau, <v Narrator 2>Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald. <v Paula Klein>The next day, ?he? came. <v Paula Klein>?inaudible? we said, ?inaudible? <v Paula Klein>you know? And said, I'm very sorry to my husband. <v Paula Klein>I'm so sorry I have to take you in. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>And I do remember looking out of the window to the street where my father <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>wor- father boarded a truck. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>I do not remember any brutality there. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>And no, there was no screaming. It was very quiet. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>My father was a short, slight man with a mustache and I do remember <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>fainted. He he tried to muster a faint smile <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>and waved as if to say things will be all right. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>There was the last time that I ever saw my father.

<v Siegfried Tischauer>In the afternoon, [coughs] uh we were oh, <v Siegfried Tischauer>always ?inaudible? around a hundred, uh approximately 100 <v Siegfried Tischauer>men. We are marched uh four <v Siegfried Tischauer>abreast to the railway station, flanked on both sides <v Siegfried Tischauer>by police and SS. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>The next day we got all our stuff back. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>We are put on, uh uh, ?inaudible? <v Dr. Fred Grubel>and shipped off to the, uh, station. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Destination, Buchenwald. [music plays] <v Narrator 2>The concentration camps had been set up just after Hitler came to power. <v Narrator 2>In 1938, they were still labor camps, the ovens and gas chambers <v Narrator 2>were still in the future.

<v Siegfried Tischauer>As we arrived there, as, as I've seen it with my own eyes, <v Siegfried Tischauer>an elderly man held a foot there, so he fall and broke his <v Siegfried Tischauer>leg. But it didn't matter to them. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>They, uh, told us that the water is <v Dr. Fred Grubel>spoiled and the water is infected and we only <v Dr. Fred Grubel>get sick if we drink water. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>So for three or four days, we didn't drink until it started <v Dr. Fred Grubel>raining, and I never in my life would have thought that I happy that it rained so that <v Dr. Fred Grubel>I can drink rainwater because the rainwater we knew is clean. <v Siegfried Tischauer>I don't know why, but stuck his rifle right to my stomach and <v Siegfried Tischauer>said, what would you say now, Jew, if I shoot you. <v Siegfried Tischauer>I have always been open, I have never beaten around the bush, I am very, <v Siegfried Tischauer>very open on this. <v Siegfried Tischauer>I speak up, but the good Lord protected me. <v Siegfried Tischauer>I kept my mouth shut because what I would have said would have been the wrong word.

<v Siegfried Tischauer>I would have said I would like it or because he would have probably gotten a medal for <v Siegfried Tischauer>shooting me. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>One thing was very touching. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>When the Orthodox rabbis went around and told <v Dr. Fred Grubel>the Orthodox people that they commit a sin <v Dr. Fred Grubel>if they don't eat this certainly not kosher food, <v Dr. Fred Grubel>because the worst sin is to endanger your own life. <v Siegfried Tischauer>And I had to watch the execution <v Siegfried Tischauer>of four or five, I'm not quite sure, ?inaudible? <v Siegfried Tischauer>uh prisoners on the gallows. <v Siegfried Tischauer>First they played music, you know, waltzes, marches and <v Siegfried Tischauer>uh like this uh Oktoberfest ?inaudible?. <v Siegfried Tischauer>And uh we were forced. <v Siegfried Tischauer>We had to see it. <v Siegfried Tischauer>That uh I think everybody did what's that uh we'll never

<v Siegfried Tischauer>forget that. [music plays] <v Narrator 2>Most who died in the camps died from the bad conditions. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>The sad times began when the first coffins arrived from <v Rabbi Karl Richter>the concentration camps of Dachau and Buchenwald. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>The coffins were closed, you were not permitted to open them. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>Uh we were told to proceed immediately to the cemetery for interment. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>There was always a secret policeman watching the procession <v Rabbi Karl Richter>and listening to it. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>We were strictly warned, not to mention the cause of death, although it happened. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>[music plays] <v Narrator 2>Some of the men were released in a few weeks. <v Narrator 2>Some were held for months. <v Narrator 2>Usually their release was because their families had arranged for immigration. <v Paula Klein>So, he asked me. <v Paula Klein>Who you want to see? I said ?inaudible?.

<v Paula Klein>No, you Jew! I said oh, yes. I want to see him. <v Paula Klein>I want to speak to him for one door to the other door to the other door. <v Paula Klein>I was shaking, you know. <v Paula Klein>So all of a sudden we c- I came in and he was standing me the back. <v Paula Klein>He wouldn't look on me. <v Paula Klein>And his face on the table. <v Paula Klein>What do you want? <v Paula Klein>So I said I'm Jude. <v Paula Klein>And my husband is in Dachau and I want my husband. <v Paula Klein>?I think? he won't listen to me, he listened to me. <v Paula Klein>All of a sudden he turns around. <v Paula Klein>?inaudible? I thought. And now he's shoo- shooting me. <v Paula Klein>Now I'm finished. I'm putting money here. <v Paula Klein>I said, Oh, no, I don't need money. <v Paula Klein>I want my husband. <v Paula Klein>?Tell me the Name? I said Oscar Klein more, I don't know, he's in Dachau. <v Paula Klein>He went on the telephone. I heard it speak.

<v Paula Klein>And then he said, go home, you Jew. <v Paula Klein>I went home. I told my father and my in-laws what I did, <v Paula Klein>you ?inaudible? for nothing, we don't believe it and you know. <v Paula Klein>3, 4 days later my husband came. <v Paula Klein>But you couldn't believe how he looked. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Be they are told, i- immediately after arrival, we should report <v Dr. Fred Grubel>to the Gestapo. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>And some how or other, I even was able to <v Dr. Fred Grubel>uh send a cable or a a telegram to my wife that with which train <v Dr. Fred Grubel>I would come and she picked me up and when I said ?inaudible?, that was in the evening, I <v Dr. Fred Grubel>have to go to Gestapo. She says, no, you feel safe to take it. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Uh I have to take a ?bath? and we go home. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Tomorrow is time enough. She was right. <v Narrator 2>[music plays] In the meantime, the body of Ernst vom Rath was returned to Germany. <v Narrator 2>In the hours before he died, he had been promoted and his funeral was a state event

<v Narrator 2>attended by Hitler himself. <v Narrator 2>Hershel Grynszpan was never tried. <v Narrator 2>No one knows what happened to him. <v Narrator 2>He disappeared while being held by the Germans during World War 2. <v Narrator 2>On November 12th, the meeting was chaired by Hermann Goering, Hitler's right hand man. <v Narrator 2>It evaluated what had happened and ended with several decrees. <v Raul Hilberg>It was a mess as far as Goering was concerned. <v Raul Hilberg>He said this is a terrible thing. It must never happen again. <v Karl Schleunes>Not because uh Jews have been hurt. <v Karl Schleunes>As a matter of fact, at one point he said, I rather that you would have killed two <v Karl Schleunes>hundred Jews, then destroyed all of this uh, destroyed all of this property. <v Karl Schleunes>It's going to take uh uh almost a- a year to replace <v Karl Schleunes>the glass. The glass alone. <v Raul Hilberg>In general, uh the voluntary ?Aryanisation?

<v Raul Hilberg>program became compulsory by the end of the year. <v Raul Hilberg>Liquidations of Jewish enterprises were not pursued. <v Raul Hilberg>Uh Jewish doctors and lawyers were virtually out of business except insofar <v Raul Hilberg>as they still had Jewish clients or patients. <v Raul Hilberg>In short, the Jewish economy was in a total shambles, it had <v Raul Hilberg>begun to disappear and emigration was a dire <v Raul Hilberg>necessity. So that's why Jews began to go to Cuba. <v Raul Hilberg>They went to Shanghai. They went anywhere they could go. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>You see, what I do remember very vividly is my mother, my <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>grandmother, because don't forget my father already was taken away to a detention camp. <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>My mother and my grandmother sitting me down and telling me that I'm <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>supposed to go to Switzerland with a group of children and my crying and saying, I don't <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>wanna go. And I do remember vividly that they said, <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>if you go, your father can come back home and then we'll try- <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>we'll pick you up in six months.

<v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>Today, I know that they knew that that wasn't true because I remember the letters I got <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>into Switzerland, which I still have, uh where my grandmother said it's not going <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>to be so bad and I'm not going to move and uh- I won't go further than the <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>cemetery was my grandmother's um uh saying because she <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>believed in that things would not be so bad it would be like s- a bad time that would <v Dr. Ruth Westheimer>pass over. [music plays] <v Edwin H. Hughes>A plea for the Jew is now a moral plea for ourselves. <v Edwin H. Hughes>Humanity cannot afford to be silent. <v Narrator 2>The Western countries did little to help. <v Narrator 2>The United States at that time had strict immigration quotas. <v Narrator 2>It didn't matter if one had money, visas or affidavits of support from American citizens. <v Ernest Michel>I was told by the American consulate and here, forgive me, I've become <v Ernest Michel>very emotional about it.

<v Ernest Michel>Because this not only affects me, this affected thousands of people. <v Ernest Michel>I was told that <v Ernest Michel>I would be able to come to the United States in <v Ernest Michel>19 hundred and 42. <v Ernest Michel>39, 40, 41. <v Ernest Michel>4 years later. <v Ernest Michel>I had an affidavit. I was 16 years old. <v Ernest Michel>I had an opportunity to get out, but the American government <v Ernest Michel>did not permit me to leave Germany and to get to the <v Ernest Michel>United States. <v Raul Hilberg>Whole idea of conducting violence in the streets <v Raul Hilberg>had become dead. <v Raul Hilberg>Because what had happened was a lot of corruption. <v Raul Hilberg>People were now stuffing their pockets. <v Raul Hilberg>The very thing that the Nazis were afraid of had happened <v Raul Hilberg>and it is interesting to note that that never was a repetition

<v Raul Hilberg>on German soil of a November 10. <v Raul Hilberg>Throughout the Nazi regime. <v Karl Schleunes>In a sense, the solutions now sought for that the Jewish problem <v Karl Schleunes>after Kristallnacht in 1938 are of <v Karl Schleunes>the more orderly variety. <v Karl Schleunes>Although one has to keep in mind that that order, a term orderly, <v Karl Schleunes>in fact also suggests mass murder. <v Raul Hilberg>As either voluntary emigration or forced emigration had become <v Raul Hilberg>impossible, the idea of a territorial solution, <v Raul Hilberg>so-called emerged. <v Raul Hilberg>That was the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe. <v Raul Hilberg>It was in short the annihilation of the Jews. <v Raul Hilberg>[music plays] <v Rabbi Karl Richter>History is memory.

<v Rabbi Karl Richter>Once you do not have a memory of past events, you have no history. <v Helga Franks>I think Kr- uh Kristallnacht was for me sort <v Helga Franks>of the realization that uh it <v Helga Franks>was the end of my life in Germany and <v Helga Franks>it was sort of li- the end of a life of childhood. <v Alfons Heck>I think it ended the feelings of illusion for both <v Alfons Heck>sides, the Jews and us Germans, or if you <v Alfons Heck>were Nazis, because from that moment on, nobody <v Alfons Heck>could be under any illusion what was going to happen at the very <v Alfons Heck>least and it was spelled out very clearly and daily. <v Alfons Heck>Germany was to be cleaned of Jews. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>I believe that the Kristallnacht really was the opening shot <v Rabbi Karl Richter>in the war, in Hitler's war against the Jews. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>And we knew that he aimed. After that time, at total destruction.

<v Rabbi Karl Richter>We hadn't realized it before. <v Rabbi Karl Richter>But I think this was the turning point. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>There was no right left. Absolutely nothing. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>This is the uh fantastic <v Dr. Fred Grubel>uh meaning of this pogrom. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>I like to call it pogrom and not Crystal night, Crystal night is <v Dr. Fred Grubel>uh an invention of the pretty flippant uh street language <v Dr. Fred Grubel>of Berlin, who called it Crystal because there was so much crystal on the street <v Dr. Fred Grubel>and it then was picked up. It was this pogrom which <v Dr. Fred Grubel>for the first time showed that the Nazis are unique <v Dr. Fred Grubel>in their complete disregard for any <v Dr. Fred Grubel>kind of humanity and for any kind of respect <v Dr. Fred Grubel>for pure life. <v Dr. Fred Grubel>Then we knew that was the end.

<v Raul Hilberg>Nevertheless, uh there's a great irony in this whole situation. <v Raul Hilberg>The speed up of Jewish emigration as a consequence <v Raul Hilberg>of November 10, 1938. <v Raul Hilberg>Uh we cannot now say how many Jews would have stayed and <v Raul Hilberg>been trapped in Germany had it not been for November 1938. <v Raul Hilberg>But we can say that almost 100,000 Jews left <v Raul Hilberg>Germany. After November 10 and <v Raul Hilberg>Austria, uh in the case of Austria, we can say that <v Raul Hilberg>perhaps 60,000 or more left Austria after November <v Raul Hilberg>10. This acceleration of emigration simply meant that <v Raul Hilberg>people who might have stayed would have died in Auschwitz. <v Raul Hilberg>Instead, perhaps they went to Cuba. <v Raul Hilberg>Perhaps they went to Shanghai. Perhaps they went to some other not <v Raul Hilberg>desirable place. But nevertheless, one which gave them safety.

<v Paula Klein>When he came everything was broke, I was crying. <v Paula Klein>I said to my husband, my piano my- said that's why you cry? <v Paula Klein>This was not right of you he said you cry about <v Paula Klein>your piano? <v Paula Klein>They kill people. Everybody. <v Paula Klein>A piano we can go buy again. <v Paula Klein>But, you know, that's nothing. <v Paula Klein>He was mad and we ?inaudible?. I cried. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>There's a story in the Talmud which might sum up this whole thing that <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>uh when the Romans were persecuting the Jews way back when. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>They took a famous rabbi and they took a scroll of the Torah and <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>wandered round about him and then they made a bonfire. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And when they asked the rabbi while he was in deep agony, what do you see? <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>His answer was, I see the parchment burning, but I see the letters <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>soaring upward. <v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>And I guess what the Talmud is trying to say is that the spirit can

<v Rabbie Manfred Fulda>never be destroyed. [music plays] <v Narrator 1>Funding for More Than Broken Glass. Memories of Kristallnacht was provided by these <v Narrator 1>and other contributors.

<v Narrator 1>A complete list is available from PBS. <v Narrator 1>[PBS theme plays]