The Night of Broken Glass

November 9th 1938 is widely seen as a violent turning point in Nazi Germany’s 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 Europe’s 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.

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