LOOKING BACK Burned Into History Continued on preceding page w/purchase of two or more B & D vertical blinds. Your Choice SIDE-CAR RETURNS or MATCHING VALANCES NEW Offer good through 11/18/88 Previous orders excluded 21728 W. Eleven Mile Rd. Harvard Row Mall Southfield, Ml 48076 Hours: Mon.-Sat. 10-5 Thursday 10-8 Free Professional Measure at No Obligation Free in Home Design Consulting 352-8622 New Rochester Hills 651-5009 JEWISH ENSEMBLE THEATRE • • • • • 0 • • • introduces a staged reading BIG AL BY SUSAN NANUS Thursday, November 10, 1988 - 7:30 p.m. December 15, 1988 -7:30 p.m. Half A Man By Esther M. Broner February 16, 1989 - 7:30 p.m A Kind of Madness By Nickki Harmon New plays by new and established playwrights Directed by: Evelyn Orbach Performed by: Professional Actors Admission $5 per performance Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit 6600 West Maple Road, West Bloomfield • 661-1000 This Program has been made possible through a grant by the Irwin and Sadie Cohn Fund for Visiting Scholars. Fashion, Services Fabulous Treats! Orchard Lake Rd. North of Maple, West Bloomfield 58 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1988 there was a shtiebel where I had my bar mitzvah," he said. "I could hear the destruction — people breaking windows, pews and tearing up the Thrah. I was only an ear witness. I wouldn't dare go down to see what was happening. "The next morning, the super warned us not to go out into the street. The Jews were in danger of arrest. "We lived on a main thoroughfare of the second district and you could see store windows were broken. Orthodox people lived on the side streets. The Nazis broke into apartments, destroyed crystal, threw furniture out the closed windows and rip- ped open feather beds and pillows, shaking the feathers out the window. The feathers were blowing around the streets." Later that afternoon, Keats said, two tall Nazis came ask- ing for his ailing father. "I told them I was his son. They searched the closets for valuables. I had some silver mark pieces I offered to them. They took the money, then told me to come with them." At the entrance to Gestapo headquarters, Keats and the other arrested men passed a phalanx of Viennese who beat them with their fists. Keats spent two nights in a local jail, then was put on a train to Dachau. "We were squeezed in, 10 to a compartment, which held eight people, forced to look at an exposed light bulb," Keats said. "If you dared to look away or blinked, you were beaten. "For some reason, I caught the attention of an SS officer, who began beating me about the head with his leather gloves. He must have had a heavy object inside them because the blows came fast and hard, rupturing a blood vessel in my eye:' After five months in Dachau, Keats was released. His mother had obtained for him an immigration permit for England. Keats never saw his parents again. The Nazi pogrom was set off by the assassination of Ernst vom Rath, a minor func- tionary in the Germany Em- bassy in Paris. His assassin, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish student in Paris, had acted to avenge his parents' Andrea Jolles is a freelance writer in New York. This article was made possible by a grant from the Fund for Journalism on Jewish Life, supporter by the CRB Foundation of Montreal, Canada. Any views expressed are solely those of the author forced emigration from Ger- many to their native Poland. Vom Rath's murder led to the organized riots of Kristallnacht. For many Jews, Kristallnacht was a portent of the future. They joined long lines at the consular offices in a desperate search for visas. The lucky ones got out. Most did not. - Fred Grubel was arrested after Kristallnacht. He spent five weeks in Buchenwald. A lawyer preparing to take his bar exam when Hitler came to power, Grubel in 1934 became the director of the Jewish community organiza- "For some reason, I caught the attention of an SS officer, who began beating me about the head with his leather gloves." tion in Leipzig. Four years later and newly married, Grubel wanted to emigrate. "But not without money," he said. "I was waiting to have enough money to make the proper deal to get out- side." As chief adminitrator, Grubel oversaw an organiza- tion in charge of schools, welfare, immigration advice, training for jobs outside Ger- many — normally state-run programs now prohibited to Jews. "At 10 o'clock on Nov. 9, I got a phone call telling me the synagogue was burning," he said. "The next call was that the community council had tried to save the Torahs and they were manhandled. I called the police to say the Nazis were vandalizing the synagogue. The police asked if I was Jewish and when I said 'yes,' the phone was disconnected. "Early in the morning the door opened. Two gentlemen in uniform were standing there. They had called a locksmith to unlock the door. They said I should come with them. "They took me to the office of the Jewish community center where I turned over the keys. They took me in a car and we passed the main synagogue, which was still smoking. I saw for the first time the rage of the German people and how they felt about the Jews." Grubel was sent to Buchen- wald, where the barracks were just being built. De- 4 I ii