This Week

Night Of Broken Glass

BROKEN GLASS,
BROKEN DREAMS

FOR MARIANNE WILDSTROM, KRISTALLNACHT

MEANT HER LIFE WOULD NEVER BE THE SAME.

HARRY KIRS BAUM
Staff Writer

agogues and homes in
Germany on Nov. 9-10, 1938.

day after Kristallnacht (Night
of Broken Glass), she entered
that scary train car. Today, she
looks back on her experience
with little emotion, telling the
story matter-of-factly. But her
eyes still show the fear of the
teen-aged Marianne Spiegel.
After a long marriage to the
late Jack Wildstrom, this moth-
er of two, grandmother of four,
works as an indemnification
counselor with Holocaust sur-
vivors at Jewish Family Service
in Southfield. Since 1965, she
has assisted survivors in filing
restitution claims, a job she
finds satisfying.

Iff arianne
The Return
Wildstrom
Too
scared to take the street-
remembers
car home from the train sta-
hunching down
tion, Wildstrom left her two
in her seat on the train ride
suitcases there and walked the
from Munich, Germany, to
three miles to her house.
her hometown of Furth, near
"That's when I found out
Nuremburg. Alone and afraid,
my
father had been taken to
the statuesque 14-year-old
Dachau,"
she said, referring to
tried hard not to be noticed
the
German
concentration
by the drunken Brown Shirts
camp.
and Nazi SS officers in her
Her mother told Wildstrom
compartment.
what happened: The Gestapo
"It was the most horrendous
had rounded up the town's Jews
train ride I've ever taken in my
at 5 a.m. and marched them
life," said Wildstrom, now
E across town where they spent
76. The officers had been in
2
Ff; the whole day.
Munich celebrating the
During the walk, her grand-
anniversary of the Beer Hall
mother
looked at the early
Putsch, when Adolf Hitler
5 morning western sky and said
made an unsuccessful attempt
to her mother, "Look how
to overthrow the German
bright the sky is."
government and landed in
2̀ ) Her mother guessed it was
jail. After Hitler finally took
the sunrise, but it was actual-
power in 1933, it became a
ly burning synagogues,
Nazi day of celebration.
Wildstrom
said. Furth had a
"They were drunk and
Jewish
orphanage,
hospital,
boisterous, and they were
elementary and high school as
singing all the Nazi songs
well as four synagogues — a
about killing Jews,"
large central synagogue and
Wildstrom said. "No one
three smaller ones nearby. All
talked to me, thank good-
were destroyed on
ness. I don't know what
Kristallnacht.
they would have done if
Her family stood in line
they knew I was Jewish."
the
next day while the
Marianne
Wildstrom
as
a
student
The day before, the head-
Germans
selected all men
nurse,
1938.
mistress at her boarding
over age 17 for work or the
school in Munich told
concentration camps.
Wildstrom and her class-
Wildstrom's older brother,
Wildstrom rarely refers to
mates that the Gestapo had
Frank Spiegel, 18, was safe,
her wartime experiences. It
ordered everyone not born
having found passage already
there to leave within 24 hours. takes some prodding to get
to the United States. Her
her to talk about
Wildstrom, now a
younger
brother, Werner, was
Kristallnacht,
the
coordinated
Farmington resident, bor-
days
short
of his 17th birthday.
attack
incited
by
the
Nazis
rowed train fare from an aunt,
So their father was selected for
against Jewish businesses, syn-
and on Nov. 11, 1938, the

o

,

44

11/10
2000

28

Marianne Wildstrom with a memorial book about the Jews who
died from Furth.

Dachau, where he worked as a
slave laborer for 33 days.
"He returned very ill, like a
broken man," Wildstrom said,
but he had a new sense of
urgency about getting every-
one to safety.
Before then, he only

thought of finding freedom
for his children. He wondered
how he could learn a new lan-
guage and make a living to
support a family, she said.
"But all that changed after
Kristallnacht."
Her father applied to the