An inside perspective of Hitler's Germany (2)

Today is the anniversary of the two day rampage in Hitler's Germany known as Kristallnacht.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht

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Kristallnacht (IPA: [kr,ɪst.aɫ.n'ɒxt]; literally "Crystal night") or the Night of Broken Glass, was a pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9–10, 1938. On a single night, 92 Jews were murdered and 25,000–30,000 were arrested and deported to concentration camps.[1][2] It is often called Novemberpogrom or Reichspogromnacht in German.
The Nazis coordinated an attack on Jewish people and their property in Germany and German-controlled lands as a part of Führer Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic policy.[3]
On November 7, 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year old German Jew enraged by his family's expulsion from Germany[citation needed], walked into the German Embassy in Paris and fired five shots at a junior diplomat, Ernst vom Rath. Two days later, the diplomat died and Germany was in the grip of skillfully orchestrated[citation needed] anti-Jewish violence. In the early hours of November 10, coordinated destruction broke out in cities, towns and villages throughout the Third Reich.
The consequences of this violence were disastrous for the Jews of the Third Reich. In a single night, Kristallnacht saw the destruction of more than 200 synagogues and the ransacking of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes. It marked the beginning of the systematic eradication of a people who could trace their ancestry in Germany to Ancient Rome and served as a prelude to the Holocaust that was to follow.[4][5]

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I thought you all might be interested in reading about how my mother witnessed in person this event.

My mother was born in a suburb of Berlin in 1922, and so she was only a month shy of being sixteen years old when this occurred. She had graduated from the standard schooling at the time and was taking a trolley car into Berlin to attend what was called "business school" for young ladies. What they meant by this was that young ladies who would become shop keepers went to this school to learn how to wrap packages for customers, keep a shop inventory and ledger, and basically be a clerk in a small shop.

As my mother took a trolley car into Berlin each day, it passed through what was a Jewish neighborhood, where there were Jewish shops, residences and synagogues. She and the other passengers of the trolley car looked out the window in astonishment, seeing the store front windows of the shops and residences smashed in, the glass lying in shards in front, and the synagogues also damaged and destroyed. She says they just stared in astonishment. When they reported to their school, the schoolmaster, a man, called them all together. He said, "Girls, you may have noticed some strange things on the way here. For your safety I am telling you to say nothing about this at all. Do not talk about it to anyone." She said he was visibly scared for his and their safety. And so the schoolgirls all said nothing and went on with their classwork. She said it was terrifying, but when nothing else happened that was visible to them after that, things calmed down so far as she could tell.

While we are on the subject, here is what my mother experienced about whether "average Germans 'knew' what was going on with the Holocaust." After the event of Kristallnacht, like I said, nothing else seemed to happen. But of course people wondered what had happened to the Jews, both those who disappeared that night, and later as the persecutions took place. The people of Germany were told that the Jews were being "resettled" to land outside of Germany. Now, my mother explained that Berlin was a kind of "cosmopolitan" and sophisticated city, even though my mom was from poor farmer/carpenter upbringing, everyone thought of themselves as being not easy to fool and somewhat worldly. So they did, at least these people in her neighborhood of Berlin, believe that the Jews were being relocated.

But some years later the rumors started. She said that yes, they started hearing that there were incredible stories of concentration camps and massacres. But they were only rumors because as everyone later learned, most of the camps were outside of Germany, so there were few German witnesses (despite what one sees of Germans working at the camps). Only rumors got back to the average people such as my mother and her parents in Berlin. And here is where their "sophistication" worked against them. They just flat out could not believe it. They thought that these were just crazy rumors of the type that spring up during war. My grandfather was a World War I veteran, so he knew how bad things happened, but also how rumors spread like wildfire during war. So my mother said that sure, don't let any German tell you that they didn't hear the rumors, but on the other hand, most Germans thought they were insane rumors.

Here is one of the most fascinating parts of my mother's witness. She grew up close friends with a Jewish boy. So he was a teenager like her when these events took place. He and his family, who were "half Jewish" (one parent was Jewish and one was not) actually lived in Berlin throughout the war and escaped deportation and death. How did they do it? They were able to pay off an SS agent who documented them as being not Jewish on the basis of the half of the family that was not Jewish. These were not rich people by any means, they were one of the estimated 100 Jews who were able to stay in Berlin through means such as these (paying off and laying low because they had a fortunate connection) or through outright hiding. There's an out of print book on this subject but he's not in it. So my mother was in a position to know as much or a bit more than the average Berliner since she maintained contact with this young Jewish man. In fact, she was widowed in 1942, at the age of 19, and she continued to see her Jewish friend with a somewhat romantic mindset throughout the war, to the horror of her parents, my grandparents. Why were they horrified? Not from prejudice but incredible fear because after all, here she was maintaining contact with this Jewish young friend right in Berlin, under the noses of the authorities. But they all made it through the war.

My mother had a son, my half brother, born in 1942. So my dad, an American paratrooper, had his first sight of the woman who would become my mom as she walked with her toddler son to the store to find milk and rations in 1945, when Berlin had fallen to the Russians, and then was occupied by the Americans. They fell in love and married. But let me tell you that the young Jewish man not only survived the entire war in Berlin, but he also emigrated to America and lived in New York City, where he either owned or worked at a bar. I met him in 1962 after my father had died, and he was a great and kind man.

While I understand people's criticism of the average German, I won't hear anything on that subject about my mother. For a woman, let me tell you she has brass balls. She stood by her Jewish friend as he hid in Berlin while the Nazis were marching all around. And I'm not exaggerating. My mother told me that during public displays that all the citizens had to leave their schools and shops and cheer when the Nazi bigwigs held a rally or marched by. She saw Hitler, Goering and all those maniacs from only a few yards away on at least one occasion. She also had to be one of the "dancing maidens" at the Olympics, back in 1936 when Jesse Owens made us all proud and Hitler mad, ha, yes, she was there. So I will not hear anything bad about her as she showed more loyalty and courage toward her Jewish friend than anyone I can think of in much less dire circumstances today.

Likewise, my childhood best friend, an American girl born of German parents, told me about her parents' experience in the south of Germany, in the area known as Bavaria. The people in the village risked torture and death by the Nazis because they would recover and hide pilots who survived when their airplanes were downed. Sometimes they would have to row out in boats and fish them out of lakes, and then hide them and get care for their injuries, all in great haste before the local German military arrived. So these people were also the unsung righteous heroes who did the best that they could to save English and American wounded or downed fighters.

Anyway, that is an example of how kids and adults today need to learn about history from people who were actually there and who can explain what it was like. I have a bit more about her story regarding how she had to flee the advance of the Russian army, and they wrecked vengence on all Germans they found, and how my grandmother evaded the Russians and was untouched. But I'll save that for another posting sometime!

I hope that you have found these reminiscences interesting and useful.