Each year, at her Synagogue - Beth Emet, in Evanston, IL, she would share reminiscences of her experiences on Kristallnacht. I don't have copies of all of her speeches, but I shared the following at Shabbat services at Temple Emanuel on Friday night, November 10, 2017. Here is the text that she delivered on November 5, 2010:
Several
events occurred in the month of November during the last century which are of
vital importance to the Jewish people.
The most recent was on November 4, the fifteenth anniversary of the
assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, which is within memory of many in this
room. However, the one upon which I wish
to focus this evening took place in Germany in 1938 during the night between
November 9 and 10. History books refer
to it as Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass. I remember those days 72 years ago most
vividly and want to share a few memories with you.
Some
historical references are necessary. In
the middle of October 1938 the Polish government issued a decree threatening to
deprive all Polish citizens living in Germany of their Polish passports. This Polish measure was widely regarded as an
action directed primarily against Jews, and fearing that thousands of Jews were
about to be marooned in Germany, the German government turned the tables on the
Poles and rapidly deported Jews who held Polish citizenship to the Polish
border. They were unable to take more than a small suitcase with them, and what
happened to their belongings and businesses is not available in history
books. No one in Poland had anticipated
this, and when the trains arrived during the last days of October 1938 at the
border between Germany and Poland, the German guards forced the people off the
trains, but the Polish border guards refused to let them step unto Polish
soil.
For
several days it was utter chaos at the borders.
Eventually people were settled some place in Poland, and after the
Second World War broke out in September of the following year, many of those
were sent to the death camps. Whatever
lives they had, after deportation from Germany, were difficult, to say the
least.
In 1938
Herschel Grynszpan was a young man living in Paris with relatives. He was born in Germany, had arrived in France
earlier that year, but his parents remained in Germany. They were Polish citizens and were subjected
to the deportation. When he learned of
their fate, he went berserk, bought a gun, and went to the German embassy in
Paris. He asked to speak to a person in
charge, was sent to a deputy called Ernst von Rath, and shot him. Von Rath died two days later. Grynszpan’s fate is unknown. There are various stories; one even suggests
that he survived the war years in prison in Germany, returned to France, and
lived out his life with a new identity.
Kristallnacht,
which in German records is referred to as the spontaneous reaction to
Grynszpan’s deed, provided the Nazi government with the opportunity to remove
all vestiges of Jewish life from German soil.
Synagogues were totally destroyed; businesses could not be continued,
unless they were managed by Germans. All
Jewish schools were closed, and every man could expect to be arrested and taken
to a concentration camp.
My
parents and I went into hiding on Friday, November 10. We were scheduled to leave for America a week
later, and the only reason we were able to keep that date was because we were
not at home, when the Gestapo came to arrest my father. I remember the days in hiding as terribly
tense times. We were not personally affected
by the Polish deportations, because my parents did not carry Polish
passports. They were stateless persons,
having fled from the Ukraine in 1920, which cost them their citizenship. My father had built up a business in Leipzig,
and until 1933 life was quite good.
However, he realized quickly that there was no future for Jews in
Germany after 1933, and being an ardent Zionist, he made numerous attempts to
get certificates for the three us to immigrate to Palestine. However, his lack of citizenship was a
deterrent, and in the spring of 1938 he asked his sister in America to send him
an affidavit. She did, and that
accounted for our scheduled departure.
We had
reservations on the boat called The New Amsterdam, and when we left Leipzig on
November 19, we were scheduled to go to Rotterdam. The trip to the Dutch border was about four
hours long, and those were literally the longest hours of my life. I was terribly frightened. Would the border guards let us cross? Would they let my father leave? Where would they take us, should they not
allow us to leave? However, we were in
luck; everything passed smoothly, and suddenly we were in Holland. Nevertheless, it took several days, before I
was able to get rid of the dread that had settled in the pit of my gut.
The
impact of an experience such as Kristallnacht is hard to describe. No matter how one turns the events, there are
always unanswered questions. I think
about my classmates. Half of them did
not survive the Shoah. I think about my
parents’ friends, who did not make it out of Germany. And I think about people who were able to
carry out the cruelties and horrors that took place in Germany, and I have no
answer. All one can do is to hope and to
pray that such events will never occur again, and that people will finally
accept that we are all created in the image of God. I pray that the Eternal One will stay close
to us and will give us the vitality to make the world a good place for all
people, so that everyone will be able to walk in peace and achieve
fulfillment. Keyn y’hi ratson.(May it be God's will.)
SKB – November 5, 2010
