| An address delivered at the INTERFAITH SERVICE OF REMEMBRANCE AND RECONCILIATION KRISTALLNACHT , NOVEMBER 9, 1938 at Temple Emanu El, Reno, Nevada on November 9th, 1998 |
| Testimony | Harry W. Gluckman, Survivor Witness |
| Psalm 23 | Bishop Phillip Stallings |
| Address | His Eminence, Cardinal Cassady, Rome |
| El Male | Rabbi Avraham Keller |
It has been said that everyone has a photographic memory. Some of us simply do not have film. I was blessed with both. I came here to Reno today to share a movie of that day, and the events that happened on November 9, 1938, a film that has been constantly running before my eyes for 60 years.
First there are a couple of things that you should know about me. One, is that I was born in Germany. The second is that I am ------------(muffled - hand over mouth).......i guess you didn’t hear me? I can speak this word out aloud here today, I am Jewish - but when I was a boy in germany you did not dare say that aloud, because you would have voluntarily been signing your own death warrant.
I lived in Stuttgart, in Southern germany. A lovely city, greatly similar to those other beautiful cities built on seven hills, Rome and San Francisco. The beauty had faded somewhat by 1938 as the Aryanization of property of Jews had begun, and we were left without our family's business and homes. Only germans of pure Aryan blood could be citizens; all others were now declared "Stateless". I brought my passport today - actually my late father's passport - stamped with the red "J", to show you today.
As my next door neighbor and classmate and I came out of our apartments the November 9 morning to begin our bike ride down the long sloping hills to our school, built next to our Synagogue, which we now had to attend because Jews were banned from attending public school. We saw flames in the center of town and smoke rising into the sky from what we saw immediately was our Synagogue.
I had just celebrated my ninth birthday, and the curiosity of 9 year old boys cannot be satisfied from such a distance, so we quickly pedaled our bikes downtown to the Gartenstrasse.
Today I can still vividly remember standing in front of my Temple and my Jewish School on that terrible morning, watching the assembled populace carrying out of the Synagogue everything that was movable, from books to chairs, cushions, Talissim, (Prayer Shawls) Kipot, (Skull Caps or "Yarmulkes") desks from our school, everything including the holy Torah scrolls and every Machsoret (Prayer Books) in the building. All were stacked in the middle of the street, and it was one of the policeman standing nearby, laughing, who came and set fire to the entire stack with his cigarette lighter, as his colleagues and all bystanders laughed and celebrated, and continued bringing more loot from the Synagogue to brighten the flames. Some were singing the devils own theme song, the Horst Wessel Lied (Song), as the House of G-d burned - one of 191 Synagogues destroyed on that day.
My school friend and next door neighbor, whom i coaxed into coming along to observe this nightmare with me, became frightened, wet his trousers, and quickly exited this unforgettable scene on his bicycle. Curious and horrified, i stayed and watched for a while longer, almost hypnotized. I left when it became too painful to watch more, as the mob dragged our Rabbi from the building. A few weeks ago I had the opportunity of saying Kaddish for him and the others, when i stood in front of that now reconstructed Temple building, while i was in Stuttgart for the purpose of interviewing a former officer in hitler's SS.
As I returned to my home I saw troop carriers, each staffed by several Brown Shirts, fully armed, stopping at each home where Jewish families resided, taking away the man of the house for deportation to Dachau, the first of the notorious concentration camps. The scene in towns and cities all over germany that day resembled the events of more recent memory during the terrible Los Angeles riots. Hordes of people, enthusiastically encouraged and assisted by the local police, roamed from one Jewish owned business to the next, breaking windows, stealing what they could, and then torching the building. Almost 800 Jewish owned businesses were looted. Some 30,000 Jews were arrested, many to simply "disappear".
I always wondered what the word "survivor" really signified, as we are all survivors of something, or we would not be here today. It was my dear friend, the late Father Francis Maynard, editor of the monthly magazine "The Way of St. Francis" who said that "in the sense of these events, G-d selected you to be spared from this 'Shoah', this great destruction, to keep telling the story". It is an emotional exercise I must go through each year, perhaps to honor the memory of those who were unable to share my good fortune to escape at the last possible moment in September 1940, before the gates of that man made hell slammed shut with a final clang that was to sound the doom of all who remained behind, including my beloved grandparents and more than sixty other members of our family.
At this scene, which i see before me as if it were a continuous film, unfolded, i do not recall seeing anyone who resembled a "nazi". I must reiterate once again that "it was
The people i saw on November 9, 1938 were THREE NAZIS in uniform, about 15 local policemen, druggists, grocery clerks, businessmen, haberdashers, day laborers, plumbers, carpenters, doctors, lawyers, housewives and mothers, none of them in uniform, except for the nurses and members of the local clergy.
The two little neighbor boys who attempted to kill my two year old sister with rocks on the head the following week were NOT nazis. They were germans, one of them the son of a minister who lived in the apartment upstairs from us. The boys who would no longer allow my friends and me to participate in the soccer contests in the neighborhood, and instead peppered my neighbor and me with stones as we went by on our way to school were NOT nazis. They were germans. The four boys who tied my friend to a tree in my back yard were NOT NAZIS, THEY WERE GERMANS. (excuse me for shouting, but i wanted to be sure you could hear me) Thank G..d my Dad was able to climb up and cut him down before the press had a chance to write that the "Nazis killed him".
It was these same germans who went on to be ultimately responsible for the death of over 12 million people, the murder of Six Million of our people, One Million Jewish Children. Some of these germans perhaps also became members of the National Socialist Party, which came to be known as "Nazis".
It was the german army, the german air force, the german nation, who invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, NOT the nazis. It was the same german army that later invaded almost all the other neighbors of germany, and it was in fact THE GERMANS who committed all of the unspeakable atrocities against all of mankind.
I want to sincerely and respectfully request that you please not dishonor the memory of our murdered Six Million by spreading this shameful falsehood and unforgivable omission of the true historical facts. Please allow them to thus finally find their well deserved rest.
Thank you and SHALOM,
Harry W. Gluckman
Photographs are from the Archives of the U.S. Holocaust Museum
Copyright 1998 Harry W. Gluckman
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Last updated 11/21/98 (rge)