“We had to leave” / The Nazi Racial State Video

Nazism in Germany & Austria: 1933-39

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, “racial enemies” and political opponents were targeted for persecution.

Jews were excluded from professions, public organizations, and educational institutions.

Rabbi Erwin Schild

Antisemitism was one of the great governing principles, so immediately we felt oppressed.

Gerry Waldston

I noticed that things for my parents and their friends seemed a little tougher.

Jack Hahn

It became a big problem, because I was the only Jew in class. There were some antisemitic incidents.

Dr. Ernest Poser

At assembly time each morning everybody would sing the then fashionable Nazi songs, one of which spelled out, “Wenn das judenblut vom messer spritzt,” liberally translated as, “When the Jewish blood spurts from the knife.” We had some conflict.

Gunther Erlich

I had some fistfights going back from school. But I also had friends who stuck with me.

Sigmund Muenz

I was allowed to come five minutes late and leave five minutes early because of the beatings I would get walking home from school.

Dr. Peter Ziegler

I was thrown out of school. I had to leave school. Unfortunately, my family could not leave Austria because my father was Managing Director of the Rothschild Bank in Vienna. Until that affair was settled we were not permitted to leave.

Hon. Fred Kaufman

Within a few months my father lost his contacts, his job if you will, his business. He was importing from a factory in Germany, and the owners came to see him and said, “Look, we like you, you’re doing a good job for us, and we’re happy with what you do, but our customers wouldn’t like to have a Jewish representative, so sorry but you’ve got to go.”

Dr. Peter Ziegler

We were thrown out of the apartment that we lived in. It was sort of a fearful experience, but then again I should say that I was 16, and it didn’t seem like the end of the world at the time to me.

Rabbi Erwin Schild

They didn’t believe that antisemitism would endure. They thought that maybe after a few years they would forget about it. But very soon that disbelief turned to despair.

Kristallnacht November 9-10, 1938

The “Night of Broken Glass” was a series of coordinated, state-sanctioned attacks against Jews throughout Germany and Austria.

Jack Hahn

That night I will never forget. They took all the Jews from Nuremberg and Fürth, which was probably four or five hundred. They made us stand on the marketplace from whatever time we arrived there until 6 or 7 in the morning while they burned the two synagogues in that town.

Rabbi Erwin Schild

Synagogues were set on fire, and Jewish homes and businesses were broken into. As I reached the seminary building, I could see that Nazis in uniform were in the building and flinging out of the upper-story books and Sefer Torahs into a burning bonfire on the ground.

Dr. Walter Kohn

I was, together with other Jewish kids of a similar age, arrested and taken to a police station. It was a hectic, frightening situation.

Jack Hahn

They beat up the Rabbi and tore out his beard. And then in the morning, about 6 or 7 o’clock, they took all of the men 18 and above to concentration camp.

Rabbi Erwin Schild

We soon were arrested, marched through the city to the jail. At least in the jail we were safe from the mobs. But, you’re 18 years old and all of a sudden you’re in jail – it was pretty terrible. But more terrible things were to come. After two or three days in jail – maybe it was two days – we were interviewed by black clothed SS(Schutzstaffel) Storm Troopers and consigned to Dachau concentration camp.

Gunther Erlich

I was picked up and taken to Buchenwald. But it wasn’t a permanent camp – it was a temporary camp, and you were released if you could leave Germany.

Dr. Walter Kohn

Emigration sooner rather than later seemed to be the only solution in the long term. In the short term, it still depended on what the world will do.