"On the nights of November 9 and 10, gangs of Nazi youth roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues and looting. In all 101 synagogues were destroyed and almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, Jews were physically attacked and beaten and 91 died (Snyder, Louis L. Encyclopedia of the Third Reich. New York: Paragon House, 1989:201)."
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written by Janet Kirchheimer, on beliefnet.com, about her father on "The Night of Broken Glass": Over the years, my father has told me of his experiences in Dachau-that he didn't know why he was being arrested; that he was photographed, fingerprinted, had his head shaved, got examined by an SS doctor, then beaten by an SS guard; that he got a cotton blue and white striped uniform, and that luck was getting a hat, that he took the long underwear off of a dead man and wore it so he wouldn't freeze to death as well; that Dachau was a testing ground for the Final Solution; that a 16-year-old boy figured out that he could stay warmer by volunteering for jobs; that each Jew was designated by the Nazis as a Schutzhaftjude-"protected Jew"; that picking up a pair of glasses that belonged to a fellow prisoner, after he'd been beaten by an SS officer, and returning them to him was all you could do; that getting caught tying newspaper around your legs to try to stay warm could get you shot by the SS; that he always had hope he would get out; that some prisoners went crazy and were shot.
The following poems detail some of his experiences.
Town Hall
"What for?" my father asked. "What
did I do? I'm only 16," and
the Gendarme told him if he didn't
like it, if he asked any more questions, he could go home,
they'd arrest his father instead. And he saw his father
paying his tax bill in the next room,
and he didn't call out, afraid they'd arrest him too, afraid
his father would want to take his place, and
the Gendarme said he had a job to do, a quota of ten men,
and he didn't care how he filled it, and my father
knew the Gendarme, went to school with his daughter.
He was told to empty his pockets, turn
in any money and weapons, and he turned in
his pocketknife, and told the Gendarme he had to go
to the bathroom, and another Gendarme, Wilhelm,
took him, and he knew Wilhelm too. He told Wilhelm
not to worry, he wasn't going to run away, and
Wilhelm said he knew, but he was doing his job.
As my father and nine other men were loaded on a truck
that said "Drink Coca-Cola," he turned and saw
Wilhelm crying like a child.
Let us commit....never again.
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