Special Report

ON 'HE COVER

Eyewitness Accounts

Still among us in Metro Detroit are a number of Jews who witnessed

Kristallnacht as children or teenagers. Sometimes by themselves, but usually

with their families, all of them got out of Germany or Austria prior to Sept. 1,

1939, the start of World War II.

Individuals who shared their memories with the Jewish News were Margot

(Fink) Efros, 81, of Huntington Woods; Ruth Adler Schnee, 85, and Edith

(Gruenbaum) Maniker, "70ish," both of Southfield; and Eric Billes, 83, and Hans

Weinmann, 82, both of West Bloomfield.

The Star of David atop the Zerrennerstrasse synagogue in Pforzheim lies bent over the cupola as a result of the

burning of the German synagogue on Kristallnacht, Nov. 10, 1938. The cornerstone for the synagogue was laid on
June 3, 1891, and the finished building was dedicated on July 27, 1892.

'We Were Lucky

Dachau

Eric Mlles and his wife, Doris, return almost every year to Vienna
to visit the graves of his mother's parents and their righteous
Christian friends.
On Kristallnacht, "we heard broken glass from a Jewish home
being trampled by Nazi horses," Billes said. "We were lucky that we
were spared that. It happened that the ground floor of our building
had a branch office of the Nazi party."
The next day, as usual, Billes went to his all-Jewish gymnasium
(school), but the principal sent students home. "As I was going
down the street to the streetcar, I saw big trucks with SA [Nazis]
taking Jewish men to prisons or concentration camps. I saw mobs
breaking the stores' glass. I saw a synagogue on fire. But no one
bothered me — I was a little kid."

Germans required Jews to pay for the damage on Kristallnacht. With the family's bank account already taken, "one
day, there was a knock on our door and a little guy with boots came in and put tags on our furniture," confiscating it
for the Nazis, Billes said. Noting that "his family has a complex story, but a lucky story," the Billeses used contacts
to leave Austria and eventually arrived in Detroit, joining an immigrant uncle and aunt. Billes and his brother, Bruce
Billes of West Bloomfield, are both retired dentists. Their parents, Dr. Bernard Billes and Cecilia Billes, are buried in
Detroit. In the photo, above, Eric Billes holds a sign from a Vienna street named for his father.

Kindertransport Escape

Edith (Gruenbaum) Maniker was saved by the Kindertransport — the rescue by
train of 10,000 Jewish children who were ransomed by the British people. She
is retired from various jobs and lives with her husband, Art, a retired engineer.
The Gruenbaums lived in Leipzig, Germany, during Kristallnacht. "Our syna-
gogue was across the street. It was not burned down because it would have
burned [nearby] German homes," Maniker said. "But everything inside the syna-
gogue — the Torah, the prayer books and tefillin — were thrown into the bonfire."
The spared synagogue served as a museum for several years but "it's now
a synagogue again with a rabbi," she said. "The congregation is made up of
Russian Jews."
Although Maniker's parents, Trudy and Abraham Gruenbaum, did not survive
the war, she still has her sister, Paula (Gruenbaum) Balkin, in West Bloomfield.
"My sister and I came to the U.S. in 1947, after stopping off a few days to
stay with a relative in New Jersey," Maniker said. They joined an aunt and an
uncle who came to Detroit "way before the war." The sisters have a cousin in
Tennessee, just 7 months old at the time of Kristallnacht, who also went to
England on the Kindertransport.

Al2

November 6 2008

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Ruth Adler Schnee, a German-born Jew, ran a design firm in Detroit
ith her late husband, Edward Schnee.
Kristallnacht was "particularly rough" in Dusseldorf, where Adler
Schnee grew up, because
that's where the funeral for
Nazi diplomat vom Rath
was held.
"One of my girlfriend's
parents was shot in the
hallway of their home
because they tried to resist
the Gestapo," Adler Schnee
said.
The Adler family already
was making arrangements
to leave Germany when the
father, Joseph Adler, was
taken to Dachau.
Months later, "my dad
appeared in his prison
clothes," Adler Schnee
recalled. "He was so weak
we could hardly recognize him. He was all skin and bones and had
no teeth ... I just remember the joy to see him."
The Adler house was ruined during Kristallnacht. "The door had
been ripped off, the windows were totally crashed and all our furni-
ture had been thrown out on the street. The kitchen cabinets had
been torn out of the walls. My mother's beautiful Limoges china was
totally wrecked ... a heap of broken china and crystal. My parents'
paintings had been destroyed with knives."
Adler Schnee's resourceful mother, Marie Adler, had everything
almost restored by the time the family crossed the border into
France in February 1939 and arrived in New York on March 4. Two
vanloads of furniture and books shipped ahead of their departure
were intercepted by the Nazis in Cologne, and many valuable items
were pilfered. The family finally settled in Detroit. Adler Schnee's
brother, Charles Adler, is living in Oak Park.
"Thank God we came with our lives, and we came with a few of
the wonderful things to remind us of the old days," she said.