Something must have happened this Wednesday in November 1938, but where and what? Do not they bring anything on the radio yet? And the newspaper? What does that write?

Unrest spreads, continues in whispers until Thursday and leaves an uncomfortable feeling. When I come home from school, adults in small groups stand close together, in twos, threes, which is forbidden, and talk quietly, hastily together. What they say is not meant for strangers' ears, as if it were a sin, and immediately afterwards, they are striving to disperse as if they have something to hide.

I'm still too young, I can not handle it, may they think. Yesterday was the 9th of November, later one would say cynically-trivializing "Kristallnacht", but yesterday everything remained quiet in Harburg.

Today as well. Until it gets dark. The doorbell is ringing. Daddy opens. Murmur. "Yes, when?" Well, I'm coming, "says Daddy. "Just be careful!" Warns Mutti. "Oh, woman!" Dad waves off and puts on his SA uniform. Special Operations. He has to go. Where?

Dad is wearing the banner

"Come on, boy, it's time for bed," says Mutti. But there is something happening out there! I get up again. "I can not sleep." - "Well, then you can look for a moment."

Mom still has to do in the kitchen. I look from the living room to the girls middle school, a big red brick building. Close behind, in the next cross street, is the elementary school I visit, and not far from it the hill with Schwarzenberg Square, now called Hermann Göring Platz, next to it the Jewish cemetery.

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Reich Pogrom Night: My father, the SA man

It is already dark, the sky is overcast, but the cloud gray opposite, behind the big red school building, that turns reddish, sways back and forth, flickers irregularly, becomes brighter. What's this? A flash? No, the twitch and waves are not fast enough for that. An inexplicable sight.

I had never seen a big fire before that, let alone the reflection of a fire.

There is a report on the events, a court record. I read it many years after the end of the war:

"The mortuary [at the Jewish cemetery] was set on fire in the early evening of November 10, probably around 7:00 pm A large crowd of sightseers soon gathered and some men, members of the Marine SA [...], pulled the hearse , whose hangings had easily caught fire, from the hall and set it, after they had cleared the cloths, first off a little under trees outside the cemetery, from there the car was soon pulled away by members of the Hitler Youth and other adolescents "set on fire again and burned around."

Mum is still in the kitchen. Is nobody looking out the window but me? Then I can not ask anyone to the spectacle in the clouds.

When Mutti finally comes into the living room, I see down on the street SA people marching up, a whole squad: "There, Mum, look, Daddy marches at the top, and dad carries the flag!"

Video: "Do not go on the street, the synagogues are burning"

Video

REUTERS

The flag bearer at the top is always the biggest, and at 1.72, dad is way beyond many of his generation. The actual flag bearer, who always leads the way, got sick this evening.

Every few steps, one drumbles. Drrrrrrum. Drrrrrrum. Drrrrrrum. Then there is silence again, apart from the step of the nail boots. Some SA people carry burning torches, the reflection reflected in the window panes. Where are they marching? Mum does not know that either. I'm supposed to go to bed, "or you'll be sleeping in school tomorrow."

Fall asleep? I can not sleep at all; I even hear Daddy come home late in the evening and crawl out of bed.

"Dad, Dad, I saw you, you marched on the top and you carried the flag!" - "That's right, well, come on, let me push you, oh, let him, Lene."

"That can bring him to the concentration camp"

Daddy was at the synagogue, he says, it's not far away. We live in Eißendorfer Straße 31, the synagogue is at number 15. What was there?

"The SA has just shut down, along with the police," says Daddy, "but there were people - what kind of people? Well, what do I know? People just, they hit the doors and the leaded windows in the synagogue and Inside everything, really destroyed everything, smashed with hammers and axes, and also thrown out, which was not nailed down: candlesticks, prayer books, chairs ... Of the books, I would have liked to take one, Helene, they were beautiful, almost all with gilt edges But you can not do that, but now, husch, husch, into the basket, Claus! Good night! "

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Claus Guenther:
Heal, heal Hitler

Scenes of a childhood

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Friday, November 11, 1938. In class, they talk about the synagogue being destroyed. "My father was there", that does not hit my lips. Tombstones would have knocked them over at the Jewish cemetery, one of them says. "They should not have done that," says our teacher, Mr. Deckert. "Let the dead rest."

At home, I tell you what the teacher said. "For God's sake!" Says Mutti. "How can he say that? That can take him to concentration camp!" - "To the Kazett, what is that?" - "That - er - is a labor camp."

That would be bad. Mr. Deckert is not that young any more, I think. "The synagogue," I ask, "that's a church, is not it?" - "Yes, Claus, a Jewish church."

"In the city center, in the Lüneburg, the Wilstorfer and the Bremer Straße, slices are thrown in everywhere, there are still pieces of broken glass, and even at Lindor the shop window is broken!" - "Yes, Claus, because that's a Jewish business."

The neighbor children were deported

And then on the sand, with Sally Laser : That's when Omi bought me a cap the day before yesterday, now all the slices are broken. A saleswoman sweeps the pieces together weeping.

I do not understand that. The Hans has his football in a windowpane, accidentally, of course, the disc was splintered, there was something going on. But now? And here? That's what adults have done!

Four days later, on November 14, the immediate release of all Jewish students from state schools is ordered. Participation in the classroom is forbidden to them.

When they were denied their education, Edith was 13, her brother Werner 17 years old. They were neighbors, but I did not notice them. Castle was the name of the family. Three years later, on November 8, 1941, the two teenagers and their parents had their maternal grandmother in Hamburg-Dammtor, on the Moorweide. Hours later, they were put on a train and deported to Minsk. They murdered her there, all five. For one reason: they were Jews.