The Night of Broken Glass. Группа авторов

Читать онлайн книгу.

The Night of Broken Glass - Группа авторов


Скачать книгу
take the child to my office until you are taken away. If the boy saw that, he’d never forget it for the rest of his life.’ A last kiss, a last look. When and where will I see my wife, my children and my 75-year-old mother again? What do they want now from us poor, beleaguered, tormented people?

      We were in the big cell for three hours as the daylight slowly faded and it grew dark. As if by magic, a light bulb on the ceiling lit up. Then the door opened and a guard led us into the prison courtyard. High walls all around, and high up small, poorly lit and barred windows. Yesterday evening still at home, in the peaceful family circle: this evening everything senselessly destroyed and annihilated and scattered. The women and children amid the ruins and devastation, the men in prison. And nowhere a gleam of salvation, nowhere a ray of hope. Moreover, this was Friday evening, the beginning of the Sabbath …

      Ten minutes later the high lattice gates closed behind us; we were incarcerated. The next morning the newspaper report said that Jewish men had had to be taken into protective custody ‘in order to protect them from the people’s wrath’.

      Three men were put in each individual cell; we could hardly move. Laughing, the prison guard explained to us: ‘We were not expecting such a crowd.’ Then there was a dark broth, probably supposed to be coffee, a few slices of bread and a little jam, and the cell door closed again. The first night in prison. Suddenly the light went out and we sat there in the dark. We spread our overcoats on the floor and tried to rest. Sleep was impossible. The hard ground prevented my body from relaxing, my head was tired from brooding and thinking, and my thoughts were at home with my wife and children and my old mother. My heart was agitated by the events of the last twenty-four hours, my thoughts constantly turned around the questions ‘Why are you here, how long will it last, what is going to happen to you?’

      Every quarter of an hour, the clock in the nearby church tower chimed. If I stood on the table, I could look out over part of the city, which I knew well. A part of the city in which I had worked; good friends of mine used to live not far from the prison. Why, oh God, do you chastise your people? Why must we of all people suffer so much for the name of justice? What have we done wrong?

      Monday, 14 November 1938, four in the afternoon. A neverending, dull, rainy day was slowly coming to a close. Then the door opened and we were once again led down to the courtyard. We saw each other for the first time since our arrest. Unrecognizable, these pale, tired, emaciated faces, framed by beards. Big, black eyes that bore within them the suffering of generations, of centuries of torments endured. Eight hundred men in a small prison courtyard, eight hundred innocent men, husbands, sons, fathers and grandchildren … A few Gestapo officers were waiting for us, big fat faces. Importantly, carrying portfolios, they went up and down the front line, well rested, well fed, and in the mood to commit new infamies.

      After an hour in the drizzling rain, our clothes stuck to our bodies, we were exhausted, our nerves ready to break. Then we were called up one by one before a row of young Nazi party doctors wearing riding boots and carrying riding whips who glanced fleetingly at our haggard, weary bodies. When it was my turn, I saw an elderly forensic doctor I knew, who waved to me and called: ‘You will be examined by me.’ The young party doctors let me pass, and the elderly doctor examined me very carefully. After a minute, I knew my fate. ‘Physically not sufficiently developed for use in the work service.’ My knees almost gave way; God had clearly put his hand over me to protect me from worse, for I had escaped the concentration camp by the skin of my teeth. I was hardly able to give the old doctor a grateful glance, because it was the turn of the next fellow-sufferer. My two cellmates, both men over sixty, drew the same lot. In this night we slept a little for the first time, although our bodies and our nerves were stretched to the limit.

      Wednesday, 16 November 1938, the Day of Prayer and Repentance in Germany. Suddenly, at five in the morning, the light went on, and we got up, thinking our watches were running an hour late. Somehow we vaguely felt that this was a special day. At 5.30, the coffee was handed out before the cells were cleaned. At 6.00, cell doors on the corridor were opened, names were read. The door to our cell remained closed, nobody was paying any attention to us. At 6.15, all the Jews whose names were read appeared in the dark prison courtyard. Jews in overcoats, without overcoats, in pyjamas and slippers. Names were read out by lamplight, names of friends, acquaintances, people, brothers, fellow believers, names, names … Then, like a thunderbolt, the truth struck us: they were going to the concentration camp, to the hell from which there is no escape. There is only work and hunger, disease and the sadism of the guards; there is only DEATH, DEATH, DEATH …

      Under our cell window, those doomed to die were handed over to the police. The names were read once again, then came a command that I will hear until the end of my life: ‘Guards on the outside, Jews in the middle. Break step!’ Tears rolled down our faces, we did not wipe them away, farewell, you brothers, farewell, you friends, God be with you, you Jewish men, God protect your wives, your children, your mothers, your fiancées, your grandparents. Farewell! Their steps faded slowly away in the gloom of a grey, foggy morning; then again a police officer shouted, and in the distance they were already departing. Slowly the gates of the prison closed again …

      That is what happened on the morning of Prayer and Repentance Day in all the prisons of Germany, in the year 1938!

      My


Скачать книгу