In 1938, Forster tightened the screws of repression. Some Jewish businesses were seized, and the deeds transferred to Gentiles. Jews were also banned from cinemas and theaters. They were barred from public baths and swimming pools and denied the right to become lawyers, doctors or any other type of professional.
Persecution reached its zenith on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), on November 9, 1938, when I was just two months old. The name refers to the shards of glass that littered the streets of Germany, Austria and some parts of Czechoslovakia, after Nazis rioted and destroyed synagogues, Jewish businesses, homes, schools and cemeteries. The official Jewish death toll was recorded as ninety-one, but the true number of victims ran to several hundred.
Kristallnacht was a turning point in Hitler’s grand scheme to eradicate the Jews. The acquiescence of the German population at large and the lack of any significant objections gave the Nazis the confidence to ratchet up anti-Semitism and institutionalize it as German government policy.
The destruction on Kristallnacht was most severe in Berlin and Vienna. The Nazis in Danzig also went on the rampage. They intended to burn down the Great Synagogue. But the building was defended by a ring of Jewish First World War veterans who had fought in the trenches on the German side.
Being a Jew in Danzig was now extremely precarious, but my parents continued to stick it out. Then, in late August 1939, with my first birthday looming, Mama was anxious to return to Tomaszów Mazowiecki to mark the occasion. Papa’s parents, Emanuel and Pearl, hadn’t seen me since my birth. Nor had Mama’s family. She wanted to show me off and try to heal divisions. Mama kept pushing Papa to leave and they argued.
“Who is going to look after the store while we’re away?” Papa complained.
Mama was insistent. She had a premonition. Something told her we had to leave immediately. Her arguments were so persuasive that Papa relented. His younger brother, whose name I can’t recall, had also moved to Gdynia, and Papa convinced him to hold the fort while we took a series of trains south.
As a major port, Danzig was a key strategic target for Hitler’s armed forces on September 1, 1939, the day their blitzkrieg began. Squadrons of Stuka dive-bombers attacked a flotilla of Polish warships in Danzig Bay. The aircraft roared over Gdynia’s waterfront, one of them scoring a direct hit on Papa’s clothing store. My poor uncle was killed. He was one of the first civilian casualties of the Second World War. It could so easily have been us.
The German army, the Wehrmacht, swept through Poland at such a pace that it had reached Tomaszów Mazowiecki by September 6, 1939, just three days after the conflict escalated into a world war. My parents’ hometown was attacked on land and from the sky. We were living with Mama’s mother and her family at the time.
Tanks from two German Panzer units bombarded a lightly armed Polish infantry division while Stukas terrorized civilians. The Stukas were fitted with sirens called Jericho Trumpets, which screamed as they plunged into vertical dives. The sirens’ wail intensified as the planes accelerated and amplified the panic of those in the line of fire. Just as they did in the battle for Old Testament Jericho, the trumpets shattered the psychological defenses of their victims. Bombs fell near my grandparents’ home with some fatalities, but we all escaped injury.
The battle for Tomaszów Mazowiecki was brief and one-sided. The Polish defenders fought with courage, destroying twenty-one German tanks and killing 100 enemy troops. But they were quickly overwhelmed. After 770 men were killed, and more than 1,000 wounded, the Polish division retreated, abandoning Tomaszów Mazowiecki’s civilians to their fate.
One of the Germans’ first acts was to demand from Jewish leaders one million zlotys in hard cash from the local bank. That’s the equivalent today of five million dollars. When the men failed to raise the money in time, they were gunned down.
Within a week of occupying Tomaszów, the Germans inflicted another taste of the future. At first, the soldiers abused Jews by hacking off the beards of the religiously devout, often tearing at flesh in the process. They used knives or bayonets to lop off the side curls that traditionally dangled in front of the men’s ears. They were shredding the self-esteem of our most venerated people and undermining the fabric of our civic society.
Sidling up to German soldiers, clusters of Aryan Poles looked on with approval as Jews were humiliated. The Nazis ascended to power in Germany by legitimizing the muscle of the mob and appealing to thug mentality. Immediately after the invasion, they likewise encouraged anti-Semitic Poles to give vent to their most base instincts. Other Poles watched and concluded that adopting German attitudes offered them the best chance of survival within the growing boundaries of Hitler’s Third Reich. And they joined in.
Seven days after seizing control of Tomaszów, the Germans rounded up 1,000 inhabitants, targeting the intelligentsia and professional classes. Three hundred of them were Jews. Rabbis, lawyers, teachers, doctors — the very fiber of our society. They neutralized the brightest minds who might possibly have been a threat. It was a form of decapitation. Cutting off the head to get rid of the brains, so lessening the chances of rebellion. As far as the Germans were concerned, the only Jew with a purpose was one with a skill or strength to work for the Nazi war machine. They were lining us up for slave labor.
Ninety Jews were imprisoned at Buchenwald near Weimar, 170 miles southwest of Berlin. Buchenwald was one of Germany’s first concentration camps and a test bed for Hitler’s Final Solution. Of the 300 Jews arrested in Tomaszów Mazowiecki on that day, September 13, 1939, only thirteen survived the Holocaust.
The Germans were just getting started. A month later, on October 16, they burned down the Great Synagogue of Tomaszów Mazowiecki. Then, another month later, they razed the town’s two remaining places of Jewish worship. Jewish businesses were ordered to display the Star of David. Many families were evicted from their homes to make way for the Germans who would rule over us.
The early days of occupation set the tone for my childhood. The events of 1939 molded my life, just as they did for every Jew on earth. So did the ensuing liquidation of the Jewish ghetto. I’m not claiming that my experiences are the worst of the Second World War. But the scenes I witnessed were some of the most depraved in the history of humankind. Because I was a child, and it was so long ago, I don’t remember the specific dates or details of all that took place in front of my eyes. Names from the past that were once familiar have faded from my memory. Although their faces have not.
Still, everything I do, every decision I make today, is forged by the forces that surrounded me in my formative years. I believe in God. According to our Torah, the scriptures that guide us, we understand that God taught humanity the difference between good and evil. We believe that God gave us all free will. One of the consequences of free will is that humans can choose to follow a dark path.
No child should see what I have seen. No child should be starved or tortured or treated like a subhuman. My childhood was stolen from me as soon as I learned to communicate. Perhaps the innate innocence of youth enabled me to live a full and relatively happy life. But I took my experiences and used them as fuel to move forward. Children the world over are resilient and, given a fair wind, can rebound from the darkest of experiences.