48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction/Dawn of the Holocaust by Mitchell G. Bard

Author:Mitchell G. Bard
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2008-07-30T00:26:00+00:00

What Shall We Do?

Jacob Wiener was living in a school dormitory in the port city of Bremen in northwestern Germany where he was a student and also taught Spanish. In the middle of the night, about 2:30 or 3:30 a.m., he heard noises. Jacob got up and said to the other students living with him, "`The best thing is we get dressed now. And if anything should happen, we are ready to encounter whatever there is.' And I said, `Let's get our bags ready, if anything should happen.' And then I said, `Let's maybe hide under the bed, or in that corner.' And then I decided, `No, we shouldn't hide. We should just meet it head-on."'

Jacob tried to lock the door, but it was no use. "They came in, and they saw our suitcases there. And they said, `Take these suitcases and throw them against the window.' They wouldn't fall outside the window because the windows were barricaded. Then I said to them, `What shall we do?'

"`Stay here and wait until we give you orders. And you should know, we never even bent a hair of a Jew, and we won't do it this time, but, eventually, you will all be exterminated,' something like that. I don't know if they said the exact words."

After the Germans left, the students went downstairs and found that the intruders had cut the electric lamps, which were now hanging loosely, and they had also ripped out the faucet so water was spraying out. A non-Jewish woman who lived downstairs came and made them coffee and offered the students food around 4 a.m. About two hours later, the Nazis returned.

They were in civilian clothes and told the students to pack a few things. Jacob thought he should pack everything, but the Nazis said they didn't need to worry, that they would be coming back. Around 7:30 a.m., the students were told to start marching. About 50 or 60 people were marching together in a line toward a prison. They passed the synagogue, which was burning. As they walked through the narrow streets, people stood and watched. Some spat and threw stones at them.

When the marchers reached the prison, the Germans processed each Jew. "The Germans were very methodical. When you came in, they took a picture of you, on the right side, from the left side, from the front. And they took all your money, or all kinds of things which you had in your pocket. And they made a complete record of it. They were very meticulous. They were very orderly in that sense. And they gave it to us, and they said, `Sign here.' Okay, we signed. Then they led us into cells, prison cells. And I was in prison cell number 99, I think. And there were about 15 boys in that prison cell. They put us in there. And there was, like, a toilet, a bowl. And there were windows on top, with iron bars. I don't think there was anything else, maybe a few mattresses or so.

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