USHMM, cou r tesy of Na tiona l Archives and Reco rds Adm inistra t ion, Co l lege Park

More
Survivor
Impressions

Rabbi Samuel Jakob Rose, chief rabbi

of the American zone of occupation in
Germany, and a survivor of Dachau,

examines one of the newly printed vol-
umes of the Talmud in 1947. This was

the first edition of the Talmud to be

printed in Germany after Kristallnacht.

csr

Hans Weinmann is a speaker and docent at the Holocaust Memorial
Center, where he has interviewed more than 110 fellow survivors.
Married to Sylvia, he's a retired automotive engineer who also
served in World War II.
The Weinmann family lived
on the outskirts of Vienna.
"We were aware of what was
going on [during Kristallnacht].
My parents, me and an older
brother, Ernest, were all in our
apartment at the time. Two
Gestapo agents came ... and
arrested Father and took him
to the Dachau concentration
camp.
"My mother [Gretel pro-
tested, 'Do you realize this
man was an officer from the
Austrian army in World War
I?" Weinmann's father, Gustav,
was-disabled, with a number of
decorations from the Kaiser.
He worked as a civil service employee, a fairly prestigious position
in the Austrian social structure.
"We were the only Jewish inhabitants in a four-story building,"
said Weinmann, who suspects the Nazis were tipped off by a neigh-
bor wanting to expand into their space.
His father was eventually released under the condition that he
and his family leave the country within three months — others had
only 30 days.
"Almost all Jews were trying to leave Germany then. They needed
a sponsor to sign an affidavit that the person would not become an
economic burden," Weinmann recalled. "My father had already tried
to purchase a visa from Cuba."
"After the release, he intensified his efforts to get out. We had
no relatives. My father went to phone books to copy names of oth-
ers with the same last name as ours. He wrote letters to people in
English, but got no response."
In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Britain allowed children no
older than 17 to enter as transmigrants. "My parents applied, and
my brother and I were able to leave on the Kindertransport in June
1939," Weinmann said, referring to the escape of 10,000 Jewish chil-
dren to Great Britain.
With his sons safely in England, Weinmann's father was able to
get an affidavit for himself and his wife to leave in November 1939,
going first to New York and then Detroit. Hans and Ernest eventually
reunited with their parents here.

'Like A Torna

Margot (Fink) Efros, the widow of Leonard, a salesman, was born in
Bingen on the Rhine, Germany. Nathan and Meta Fink, and their chil-
dren Margot and Werner (only Margot survives today) were among
200 Jewish families living among 5,000 residents.
"Werner and I went by train to Mainz, to a private Jewish school.
On that day [Kristallnacht] ... someone met us at the train station
and told us they had set the synagogue on fire in Mainz and we
should go home," Efros said.
"A Christian man who lived downstairs rented space from us for his
men's clothing store. He told the mob to leave him alone, so our house
was not disturbed," she said. "But they arrested my father and most of
the Jewish men in town, and
I think took them to Dachau. I
saw a mob dragging one young
man down the street.
"We had relatives that
lived on the same street as
the synagogue, and they
rented the bottom to a Jewish
family. A few days later, the
downstairs was completely
smashed. It looked like a tor-
nado had gone through, with
everything chopped up into
bits and pieces," Efros said.
The Fink family eventually
found a prominent judge in
New York to vouch for them and left Germany a week before the war
started. Some 40,000 Jews were still on the waiting list.
She retains this special memory following Kristallnacht:
"I remember a small little Orthodox group that met in a house
somewhere. The man in charge of the Torah put it in a laundry basket
with a lot of laundry on top, and it was never found by the Nazis on
Kristallnacht. It was concealed.
"When my brother had his bar mitzvah in January 1939, they
brought that Torah and opened it up on the dining room table in our
house. Anyone who knew it was his bar mitzvah came from near and
far and crowded into our house. It was the first time there was any
kind of service."

Regarding Kristallnacht and its emo-
tional impact on Jewish German sur-
vivors that I have talked to: As the
subject is raised at the anniversary
of Kristallnacht, it brings back very
frightening and disturbing memories
of what the survivors experienced
and of what they lived through after-
wards.
Many have spoken of the feel-
ings of betrayal by their friends,
neighbors and their communities.
Their neighbors were, typically,
bystanders as they were beaten and
jailed and as Torahs, holy books and
synagogues were burned. The hor-
rifying memories have never left
them. As the 70th anniversary of
the Kristallnacht approaches, survi-
vors' memories are reawakened and
intensified.
However, an important develop-
ment is now occurring that is of con-
solation to many survivors. Many
German Jews are being asked to
return to Germany to speak to their
original communities about what
they went through. Memorials are
also being established to remember
what was done to the local Jewish
populations. Those who are able to,
or who want to, are returning and
are speaking in their former local
communities as well as at schools
about what they went through.
Grandchildren of the perpetrators
are being made aware of the his-
tory of their local communities and
are being sensitized to what their
ancestors did. Survivors report that
the younger generation of Germans
has a great thirst to know what
happened as well as a great sense
of remorse for what happened.
Survivors report feeling a great
sense of gratification that their his-
tories are being remembered and
that there is a sense of remorse for
what was done to them by their for-
mer local communities.

- Charles Silow, Ph.D.

director,

A collection of quilt squares made by Kindertransport survivors
and/or their family members capturing their memories of that time
has been installed recently as a permanent exhibition in the Harry
& Wanda Zekelman Institute of the Righteous at the Holocaust
Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. For more information, call the
HMC at (248) 553-2400.

Program for Holocaust

Survivors and Families

West Bloomfield

More on Holocaust: pages A14, A33, C3,
C4, C6

November 6 a 2008

A13

