November 9th 1938 is widely seen as a violent turning point in Nazi Germanys assault on the Jews. An estimated 400 Jews lost their lives in the anti-Semitic pogrom and more than 30,000 were imprisoned or sent to concentration camps, where many were brutally mistreated. Thousands more fled their homelands in Germany and Austria, shocked by what they had seen, heard and experienced. What they took with them was not only the pain of saying farewell but also the memory of terrible scenes: attacks by mobs of drunken Nazis, public humiliations, burning synagogues, inhuman conditions in overcrowded prison cells and concentration camp barracks. The reactions of neighbours and passersby to these barbarities ranged from sympathy and aid to scorn, mockery, and abuse.
In 1939 the Harvard sociologist Edward Hartshorne gathered eyewitness accounts of the Kristallnacht from hundreds of Jews who had fled, but Hartshorne joined the Secret Service shortly afterwards and the accounts he gathered were forgotten until now. These eyewitness testimonies published here for the first time with a Foreword by Saul Friedländer, the Pulitzer Prize historian and Holocaust survivor paint a harrowing picture of everyday violence in one of Europes darkest moments.
This unique and disturbing document will be of great interest to anyone interested in modern history, Nazi Germany and the historical experience of the Jews.
Uta Gerhardt is a German sociologist and professor emeritus at the University of Heidelberg. She studied sociology, philosophy and history at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. In 1969, she obtained a Ph.D. at the University of Konstanz.
Thomas Karlaufis a literary agent and author.
Editorial Note and Acknowledgements vii
Foreword Saul Friedländer x
Introduction Thomas Karlauf: Thus Ended My Life in Germany' 1
Part I The Terror 17
Hugo Moses 19
Siegfried Merecki 36
Rudolf Bing 56
Toni Lessler 65
Sofoni Herz 72
'Aralk' 82
Marie Kahle 88
Part II In The Camps 93
Karl E. Schwabe 95
Gertrud Wickerhauser Lederer 110
Karl Rosenthal 115
Georg Abraham 135
Hertha Nathorff 148
Carl Hecht 165
Ernst Bellak 174
Part III Before Emigration 179
Martin Freudenheim 181
Alice Bärwald 183
Siegfried Wolff 187
Margarete Neff 194
Fritz Rodeck 208
Fritz Goldberg 228
Harry Kaufman 231
Afterword Uta Gerhardt: Nazi Madness 236
Notes 261
Bibliography 275
