September 18, 2005
By Rabbi Jacob G. Wiener
About two weeks after Kristallnacht, my father and I returned to our house in Bremen. During that fateful night, my father had fled over the roofs and had been hiding with family in Hamburg. He was lucky, for if he had been found at home, he would certainly have been taken and sent to a concentration camp like my brother and all other men. I had met my father again in Hamburg when I was released from imprisonment in Würzburg.
Our house had been demolished inside, but we made it as best as could be, a place to sleep and live in. The mood in Germany was tense. One never knew what would happen next. The Nazis had stopped the persecution of Jews (temporarily), already a day after Kristallnacht. But Jews were never sure what the next day would bring.
One evening in January 1939, we had retired for the night and were about to fall asleep. Suddenly, we heard someone call “Josef,” my father’s name. I did not want to get up, pull aside the window blinds, and look out to see who the caller was. Always scary things happened at night.
But after several repeated calls, I decided to see who it was. There was a man in civilian clothes standing on the other side of the street, waving to open the door. The Nazis often disguised themselves as ordinary citizens to make believe that all citizens went along with them.
I opened the door and asked the man, “What do you want from us?”
“Just let me search through your whole place.”
“Do whatever you must do,” I said.
While I stayed at the door, he turned over everything from top to bottom. Then he came back. “What did you find? And what were you looking for?” I asked.
“We were looking for your brother,” he said.
“Don’t you know that my brother was released from Sachsenhausen concentration camp and sent to the Hamburg Hospital?” I asked. “I thought you were so smart and knew all that.”
“Sorry, thank you,” he said and left.
This was one of their scare tactics. The Nazis hated the daylight, and most of their crimes were done in the middle of the night.
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