Indoctrination and Discrimination from "Testimony of the Human Spirit"
Transcript
Speaker 1
In Germany, they first came for the Communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me. And by that time, no one was left to speak up.
Speaker 2
I was born in a very, very small village in southern Germany called Cronheim. My family was a middle-class Jewish family, steeped in tradition. My father was a traveling salesman. He would come home every Friday in time to observe the Shabbat.
Speaker 1
Both of my parents’ families had lived in Germany for many generations. They considered themselves very patriotic and thought of themselves as Germans of Jewish faith. We lived in a very large apartment. My father played the violin, and he used to play and sing to me sometimes. And I used to crawl into his bed, and he used to read to me when I was little.
Speaker 2
On Jewish holidays my father would go to synagogue in a top hat. My father was not only the President of the congregation, but he became the Cantor. Both for Shabbat services and for the high holidays. In fact, I have a drawing that I made as a little boy of my father standing, blowing the shofar on Yom Kippur. I soaked up whatever he did.
Speaker 2
I remember when Hitler seized power, listening to the radio and listen to his speeches. I was all of seven years old, and I would say to my parents, “why can't we leave? Why? Why do we have to live in this country where things are going to go from bad to worse?”
Speaker 3
Adolf Hitler, leader of the right-wing Nazi party, was appointed Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Within weeks of taking office, he arrested 30,000 of his political opponents, suspended civil liberties, and ended democracy in Germany.
Speaker 2
My parents felt that in Germany, the most cultivated country in Europe, we were where Beethoven, Guerta, and Shiller came from. That they wouldn't put up with thugs like Hitler for very long that it was only a question of time when they would get rid of him.
Speaker 3
“A reasonable anti-Semitism must lead to the expulsion of the Jews,” Hitler told the German public. In April, he ordered the national boycott of all Jewish businesses.
Speaker 1
Signs started to appear in the stores, “Don't buy from Jews. The store belongs to a dirty Jew. Stay out. Citizens, protect yourselves. Don't buy from Jews.” The smaller businesses, whose customers were then only Jews because the others stayed away, just couldn't last very long. They went out of business. My father, together with his brother, had a store. Theirs was a well-known and successful store and the Nazis wanted it, so they came to you and said we're buying your business. They gave you a pittance. And you were out.
Speaker 3
In 1935, Hitler intensified his persecution of the Jews by passing the Nuremberg Laws. Which stripped them of their rights, their job, their citizenship. As Jewish parents struggle to survive life for their children became increasingly difficult and isolated.
Speaker 2
Somehow we thought we were safe in Cronheim that it would never happen to us here. We went to school as we did every other day, and as we came. And to the top of the stairs, where the door goes into our classroom. We saw on the non Jewish children lined up on either side of the door. And as we try to enter. They suddenly pounced on us, physically started to kick us and beat us and spit on us. These were the our classmates, our playmates, the the kids that we had grown up with. And then we saw it was the teacher who was telling them what to do. That he had instigated this. It was a 180° turn overnight and suddenly the world changed. There were no other Jewish schools anywhere near where we lived, so our parents sent us to Nurnberg and there there was a large Jewish school where my parents had to pay for my keep. Nuremberg was the town where the Nazis held their annual huge political rallies.
Speaker 1
I saw Hitler once in the front row of a crowd that was yelling and screaming in frenzy. The place was swarming with uniforms SA, SS, and the Hitler Youth. And the flags were flying these long German flags.
Speaker 3
As a whole, battalion came marching forward. There were dozens and dozens of flags. It was very, very impressive. And for me, very, very scary. There were songs. [Speaking in German]. When Jewish blood splashes from the knife, things will be twice as good.
Speaker 1
Every young German boy or girl had to be in either the Hitler Youth in for the boys or the BDM for the girls. Hitler's first and foremost aim was to capture the youth.
Speaker 3
The Hitler Youth had gangs who would beat up Jewish children for fun. They just were outright wishes. My sister was beaten up quite badly. Anybody who would have wanted to help her would have been beaten up too.
Speaker 1
My father had ceased earning money; therefore he couldn't afford to keep me in in Nuremburg anymore, and that's why I came back. Jews were not allowed into any restaurant, in the movie house or in any theater or swimming pool.
Speaker 3
You couldn't go to the pub, you couldn't sit on a public bench. The signs were everywhere. There was no freedom of speech. Houses could be searched without a warrant. Jews were arrested on the slightest pretense. You were totally at the mercy of the Nazis. The only place where I could really run around a little bit was the foreground of the Jewish cemetery. That was really the only place that was left for Jewish children to play.
Speaker 4
On the evening of November 9th, 1938, the Nazis stormed into Jewish homes throughout Germany and Austria. Synagogues were set on fire. Jewish shops were looted and destroyed. 35,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. It was Kristallnacht. A night of broken glass.
Speaker 3
You knew that it was Nazis marching up the stairs by the sound of the boots. My father opened the door. I ran towards the door was yanked away quickly, but I heard them say, “Are you the Jew Heiman?” They pushed him out of the way and started destroying the apartment.
Speaker 1
All of a sudden, a brick came flying through the window and then another. And before I realized what was happening, every window in the house seemed to be smashed in. I ran upstairs, and as I did, smashing the front door. He heard all kinds of horrible noises downstairs. They were smashing up furniture and we were just waiting for them to come up to get us.
Speaker 3
I had a Canary which was a pet of mine. His name was Hansel. And they opened the first day they took the cage and smashed it on the floor. And then they stamped on it. And just to make sure that the bird was dead.
Speaker 1
And we went downstairs. There was a knock on the front door, and there stood the mayor of the village and the chief of police and the chief of police said, Mr. Hubert, you're under arrest.
Speaker 3
I saw them arrest my father, which was a devastating moment for me. All of a sudden, he was totally helpless.
Speaker 1
We had no legal rights or civil rights. There was no point in calling a lawyer because we knew the only crime my father committed was that he was born a Jew.
Speaker 3
If I remember correctly, as they between them, they held on to him and walked him out of the apartment. At that point, I think I clung and started to cry.
Speaker 1
I always looked up to my father as a strong man. He's a proud man. And there he was, being led away like a criminal. It wasn't so much how I felt. Can you imagine how he felt? We didn't realize at the time that was happening in our house was happening in every other Jewish Home in Germany and Austria. It was crystal clear. It was the beginning of the Holocaust.
Speaker 1
It was headlines in the New York Times. It was known throughout the World, German program against the Jews. Yes, there were speeches. The word protest marches. But after a few days it died down. So Hitler knew if the German people didn't object. And if the rest of the world didn't object? He now had a free hand to do with the Jews whatever he wanted. And that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2
There was a line up where this friend that my father had who was not Jewish, who had always worked in the administration of the Police Department. He came over to my father and yelled at him. “What are you doing here? Get out.” Threw him out of the police station and told him to go home. Which saved him from going to concentration camp.
Speaker 1
My father was sent away in the concentration camp of Dachau. We could not imagine what would happen to him, whether we would ever see him again. And then one morning, there was a knock on our front door and when I opened the door, there stood a man I did not recognize. It was my father who had come back from 5 weeks at the concentration camp of Dachau.
Speaker 2
A lot of people have started disappearing, either to concentration camps or they left the country. It became very, very, very dangerous just to be alive there.
Speaker 1
The Jewish population in Germany, whatever was left, was an absolute turmoil.
Speaker 2
We had a quota number to Palestine but did not have an entrance visa, yet our number hadn't come up. You ran from one consulate to the other, trying to apply for visas. Nobody in the world wanted to accept the Jews from Germany. They all had quotas and kept to them very strictly.
Speaker 1
Hitler would have been very happy to let every Jew leave Germany in 1938. He would not have stopped us. The problem was that no country would open their doors for us. No country, and that includes the United States.
Speaker 2
My father had that friend who was able to send him home after Kristallnacht, and he had remained a friend. They had a signal that if my father received a certain phone call that meant his name was on the list to be picked up. When that phone call came, we had to get out. We put on our coats and got on the train for Berlin.
Speaker 1
My parents tried every which way to escape, whether it was to Switzerland or Italy or France. They tried everything. And nothing worked. This letter arrived from Bloomsbury House in London and it says in effect, “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hubert, we are pleased to inform you that you may send a child to England. We can't tell you when that child will leave, but if you agree, have that child ready at a moment’s notice. And I remember sitting around the kitchen table at night. Discussing which of their two children they should save. And it was decided and agreed to by all of us that it should be my sister who should go. Because she was three years older than I. And it was hoped that maybe she stands a better chance of convincing people in England to maybe let me come out.
Speaker 2
My father was able to get a transit visa to England. We boarded the ship and as was custom, they had a band playing. As the ship pulled out of the harbor, they played a Unsere Heimat, which means goodbye my homeland. And my mother burst out crying because as much as she wanted to leave, it was still her homeland. So we stood there at the boat while they were playing this, and here we sailed off into the unknown without any money, leaving everything they had ever known behind them.
Speaker 1
About 3 months later, another letter arrived. With another offer for a child. And this time it was my turn. I went to Munich with my father to the railroad station. And the scene there dozens and hundreds of parents saying goodbye to their children. I do remember it quite well. And when the time came for the children to board that train. I remember standing there on that open platform and my father laying his hands on my head. And giving me the priestly blessing that. He gave us every Friday night after Kiddush. And he looked me in the eye and I looked him in the eye and we said good bye. And he knew, and I knew that we would never see each other again. I was fortunate enough to be among 10,000 children that were saved by the Kindertransport. And if I had not been one of those 10,000. I would probably been one of the one and a half million children who perished in the Holocaust.