November 9, 1938, there was a change.
I, as a child , didn't notice the changes with the boycotts and the things that were happening under Hitler's rule.
But that night, at 10 o'clock, I was awakened.
I went to the window, and I remember my teeth chattered.
I was so afraid.
There, in the street, I saw brownshirts , volunteer fire people, boy scouts ("Hitler youth", as they were called),
carrying a flame in one hand and a brick in the other.
They were coming to my house.
There were, at this point, five Jewish families left.
This town, at one time, was 10% Jewish.
They were coming toward my house, our house.
Bricks were flying, windows were shattered.
I ran downstairs to be with my family. We had a little inner room that was dark. No windows.
We huddled together and we screamed, because we didn't know if we would survive the night.
The Nazis came in and hacked the furniture apart, and screamed, and carried on, and made us leave our home.
We walked through the woods to the Catholic hospital.
There, the nuns received us.
An hour later, the Nazis came and made us return to our home.
Again, we went through the woods.
We came to our home, and there wasn't a chair for my grandmother to sit on.
My grandfather's beautiful yellow canary was trampled to death.
Who did this?
It was not the Schermbeck Nazis.
It was the Nazis from the next village.
This was so highly organized.
The Nazis from Brunnen came to Scherbeck to destroy the homes of the Jews and our synagogue.
The Nazis from Schernbeck went to Dorsten to do their damage.
It seems that it's easier to hurt someone you don't know.
My aunt and I swept up the glass, tried to put some order.
My grandparents did go next door.
The Christian family opened their door and took them in, and gave them breakfast.
My mother came that morning.
Through all this, how does a child feel about not knowing what is happening to her mother?
I didn't see my mother for an entire week,
when, indeed, she was held at gunpoint in Dinslaken, in the Jewish orphanage.
All the children from this orphanage were put into a hay wagon on November 10.
There were so many that some of them actually pulled the wagon to the railway station,
and were then deported.
My mother was there for a week, until she finally came to her family home, and I knew she was all right.
My brother came the next morning.
He boarded up the windows from the cold.
The kachelofen, which was the pot-bellied stove, was completely hacked apart.
It was a difficult time. My proud grandfather...
I can relate to you a story that was told to me by a man who used to work for him.
He drove cattle for my grandfather.
He stood across the street and hid in the bushes the morning after Kristallnacht.
Difficult to talk about, but this beloved man put on his tefillin and his prayer shawl,
and stood in the doorway of his home with his hand reaching to God, asking "why?"
This is what hurt me in later years,
knowing how my family was hurt after living the life of an assimilated German Jew.