Never Forget… Kristallnacht… 70 Years ago

Today is 9-11, yes, the 9th of November, as the date is written in German (first the day, then the month).

Today, 70 years ago, is remembered as the Kristallnacht, or the night of the broken glass. It is the day  the Nazis orchestrated open attacks on Jewish individuals, property, and businesses. It was the night they destroyed synagogues and started burning books of Jewish authors. The night Hitler showed the world what he was planning to do with Jews and the night Germany demonstrated their reaction about standing up or defending their fellow citizens and neighbors of Jewish faith. The reaction was to let it happen…

It was also the night that thousands of Jews were arrested and taken to concentration camps. My grandfather Siegfried Rosenthal was one of them.

We can never forget… the story has to be told… My grandfather never spoke to us about what he experienced…but he did take the time to write it down… I translated it into English so my children (who speak German) and their future families (who will most likely not speak German anymore) will never forget…

I’d like to answer your question about my past and about my life.
When 1933 the hunt against us German Jews started, which sounded absurd and unthinkable for us, since 12000 Jews died on the field of honor during the War from 1914-1918.
The thought, that someone could lead an annihilation  process against us Jews would have never occurred to me. A cousin of mine, who served in the marines from 1912-1918 and was decorated with the Iron Cross I and II, told me during that time: „..But we are Germans, fought for Germany and were honored and decorated officers. They would never do anything to us.
That’s what all Jews believed, since we believed ourselves good Germans.
I overheard a conversation between a husband and a  wife, friends of mine, who were from Poland, but have been settled in Germany for many years. The wife told her husband, that he was mistaken, that never anything what happened to the Jews in Russia would happen here, since the Germans were civilized people and would never allow such an atrocity.“

She was wrong, it got much worse than Russia.

I was in Germany during 1933 – June 1939.
I must mention that my father, who was an old men, was living with me when I tried to emigrate. He did not want to leave , since in his words „ you don´t transplant an old tree“.

I experienced bitter times during that period in Germany.
People who knew me were not allowed to greet me when they saw me, since it was forbidden to greet someone Jewish. We were outlawed.

As the older generation knows well,  „Der Stürmer“, distributed sickening, humiliating and untruthful things about us. I ripped this paper in front of a Nazis  and threw it in his face, when he showed it to me during 1935. I can thank my father that nothing happened to me. He was well known and respected in the German-National circles, since he was a co-founder of the German Red Cross in Wattenscheid and had received numerous high decoration during the First World War.

On November 9th, the so called Kristallnacht, a police officer , who came to our front door, asked me politely to come with him to the police station in regards to an investigation. When I arrived there, I saw that already several other people had been arrested. They had to stand with their faces against the wall. I was yelled at and had to face the wall too.

Later we were herded under floods of insults, into a huge truck and taken to a prison in Herne.
From there we were loaded into a train. We did not know where to.
I must admit that the police, who guarded us, behaved very correctly towards us.
The train stopped at night in the middle of nowhere. . They opened the doors of the train and the SS hit us with the back of their riffles out of the wagons. Weather young or old, we were herded across the fields to the concentration camp Oranienburg. An old teacher of mine, way over 60 years old, fell and I took him on my shoulders and carried him to the KZ. When I took him off my shoulders an SS officer hit me in my neck, because I had helped him. There we stood , around 800 “prisoners” for 12 hours against a wire fence. No one was allowed to move until we were taken to the barracks.

I don’t want to talk about the details of the camp and the life there. My father died while I was in the camp. A short while later I was released. I received a letter from the camp officials that I had to leave Germany within 3 weeks. I had to sell my properties for pennies. I tried to receive Asylum for my family and me in Bolivia, where in the end emigrated too. We stayed there until 1946, when we went to Buenos Aires, Argentina. I followed my sons back to Germany in 1970 and live since then in Walldorf.

You ask me if I still feel German? I want to answer this question honestly. Us, German Jews, were better and more enthusiastic Jews, than many others, who called themselves German.
Prrof is that 12000 Jews died for Germany during WWI. Many highly decorated officers of the first World War were transported to Poland and shot or gassed.

Can I still feel as German as I used to?
I DO have the German citizenship…….