Eyewitnesses remember 'Night of Broken Glass'
Panel at Brookdale recalls the flames of Kristallnacht
Liesel Spenser, left, Erica Rosenthal, and Fred Spiegel tell an audience at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft about their memories of Kristallnacht.
Photo by Jill Huber
November 18, 2008
Exactly seventy years after Kristallnacht, three eyewitnesses shared their memories of the "Night of Broken Glass" with an audience at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.
The Nov. 9 event was sponsored by BCC's Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Center.
Liesel Kaufmann Spenser of Aberdeen, Fred Spiegel of Howell, and Erica Tichauer Rosenthal of Tinton Falls were children in Germany in 1938, when, on the night of Nov. 9-10, thousands of Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed in Germany and Austria. More than 30,000 Jews were arrested that night and sent to Nazi concentration camps.
More than 100 audience members listened as the three survivors recounted what they endured on the night that is widely considered to mark the beginning of the systematic Nazi destruction of European Jewry. The sights and sounds of that horrific night are forever etched on their psyches, they said.
"I remember the flames, the smoke, and the chants," said Spenser, who was 15 and living in Wanne-Eickel, Germany. "The next day, the synagogue was still burning and a crowd was still shouting. They said, 'Burn them — kill the Jews.' I still hear those voices."
Until 1933, her family had lived in peace in their three-story home with a grocery store on the ground floor. Then, with the Nazi Party in control of the government, non-Jewish customers started to boycott the business and anti-Semitic slogans appeared on the windows.
After Kristallnacht, Spenser's parents secured a place on a Kindertransport for her and her younger brother. In 1939, the siblings eventually boarded a train that took them to England. For a while, they maintained limited contact with their parents through the Red Cross.
But in 1941, a message conveyed that Spenser's parents had been deported. In 1945, the Red Cross confirmed that they had died in a concentration camp near the Polish border.
"I've often felt guilty that I had left my parents in the midst of such terrible danger," said Spenser. "But I thought that somehow, we would all be together again. And because of their sacrifice, I can speak for those who perished."
Rosenthal, who lived in Cosel, Germany, was 12 on Kristallnacht. Her father's business already had been taken away, and she heard her teachers refer to the "pure Aryan blood of good students versus bad Jewish blood" of the others.
"On Kristallnacht, fear took over our lives," Rosenthal said. "The synagogue burned and we were so afraid of what would happen next. Would they kill us? We wanted to live so badly. On Nov. 9, the SS men came and took my father away, and rocks came pouring through our windows."
Healing process
The family hid in their home for hours while angry crowds shouting anti-Semitic epithets rampaged through the neighborhood. The star of David was torn off the door of the synagogue, its windows were smashed, and gasoline fires were burning all over the property.
"The Nazis threw the Torah scrolls on the ground and their Nazi boots trampled on them," Rosenthal said. "Then we tried to escape, but the SS caught us and made us kneel in front of the burning synagogue. They said we would go up in flames next."
She saw her neighbors beaten and heard agonizing screams. And the night grew colder.
"It was so cold, but we tried to keep as still as pillars of stone," Rosenthal said. "I felt my mother's tears running down my face."
Eventually, a Kindertransport took her to England.
"I've always wondered why my life was saved," she said. "Why did I survive? And when I speak about the Holocaust, am I doing justice to those who died?"
Spiegel was six and living in Dinslaken, Germany, in 1938. On Kristallnacht, he saw the nearby synagogue burst into flames as "hooligans" smashed the doors of his home, shattered the windows, and trashed the contents of the house.
"I saw people participate in this terror, while others just stood and watched," he said. "My family had lived there for hundreds of years, and I couldn't believe this. We had always considered ourselves to be Germans of Jewish faith, and my father had been in the German army in World War I.
"But after Kristallnacht, none of that mattered."
Although Spiegel escaped to Holland in 1939, his luck ran out when the Nazis invaded the country. He survived a slave labor camp, a transit camp, and Bergen-Belsen, which was liberated in April 1945, a week before his 13th birthday.
"Despite everything, I couldn't hate the entire German nation because of what the Nazis had done," he said. "I couldn't live that way. My position hasn't always been popular with other Holocaust survivors, but I've found that talking to students in the United States and Germany has been a healing process."
The current generation of Germans is trying to come to grips with the Nazi past, he said.
"They are living with this terrible legacy," said Spiegel, "and they want to learn what happened and why. I tell them there are many reasons, but no single answer. It's never been easy to talk about any of this, but I always will — it's a way to fight the Holocaust deniers, who might be the most dangerous enemies of all."
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