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 --- 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.