SNAPSHOTS OF A LIFE
KRISTALLNACHT… AND BEYOND
Of Fear, Hatred, and Reconciliation
By Rolf Gompertz

1933…Hitler comes to power.

“Die Juden sind unser Unglueck!” “The Jews are our misfortune!”

It is bad to be a Jew, It is bad to look like a Jew, It is bad to have a Jewish nose. I am five years old. 1933…1934…1935…1936…1937 Signs, everywhere: “Juden unerwuenscht! - Jews not wanted!” 

They ban and burn books. Any book, by a Jew or about a Jew, Books by anyone and about anything considered incompatible with Nazi beliefs. “Where books are burned,” wrote German-Jewish poet, Heinrich Heine, prophetically, “human beings are destined to be burned also.”

Orders are given, laws are passed to boycott Jewish stores, businesses, and services, to forbid Jews from becoming doctors or lawyers. To terminate Jews from teaching positions in public schools and universities, to dismiss Jews from Civil Service jobs, to stop socializing with Jews, to forbid intermarriage between Jews and Christians.

In 1933, there were 66 million Germans in Germany. Less than 1 percent, some 500,000 were Jewish.

November 9, 1938 - Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass.
Krefeld, Bismarckstrasse ll8. 

It's already two o'clock in the morning, the next day. All is calm, all is quiet, in this unholy night. We live on the second floor. I have a room, on the third floor. Another month, and I'll be eleven years old. Now I am sound asleep. Suddenly there is a pounding, a loud, constant pounding and I wake up--a pounding, a terrible pounding at the front door.

"Open up, open up, or we'll break the door down!"

I run to the banister. I see my parents on the second floor below, frightened, hesitant. My father wants to go down, but my mother stops him. He just had an operation around his eyes and she does not want anything to happen to him. Before he can argue, she is down the steps.

"Open up, open up, or we'll break it down!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming," my mother calls out.

I am scared. I rush into my room, grab a small suitcase and rush out again. "Vati, Vati!" I call down. "Daddy, Daddy! If they take you, I'm going with you!"

My mother has reached the door. As she opens it she and the door are hurled against the wall. Nazis, half a dozen of them, with rifles, rush up the steps. My mother follows. I come down. We all meet on the second floor. They want to lock us into the kitchen.

"No, no," my mother screams, "we won't be locked up!”

We run around through the rooms, one after the other. As we come into the study, my father rushes to his desk, with the head Nazi close behind. My father opens a drawer, pulls out the Iron Cross, his medal from World War I, holds it up and shouts, "Is this the thanks I get for having served the fatherland?" The Nazi and he stand face to face.

What now? Curses: "Damned, dirty Jew!"? The butt of the rifle in the face? Or an even quicker, final answer: a bullet in the head?

For a moment, a long moment, silence, deadly silence, their eyes locked for an eternity. Suddenly, the Nazi turns, signals his men silently, leads them down the stairs, out of the house and into the black night, without breaking one dish.

Day breaks but it isn't over. They come to take my father away to the concentration camp along with all the other Jewish men of the city. He is at the doctor's. They never come back for him and let him go.