Testimonies from Germany

On the night of November 9, the Nazi regime organized violent attacks on Jews and their property throughout Germany– like at this clothing store in Magdeburg (photo). At least 400 Jews were murdered or driven to suicide. Thousands of stores, apartments, cemeteries and synagogues were damaged or destroyed. About 30,000 Jews were subsequently sent to concentration camps. The writer, translator and librarian Josepha von Koskull witnessed the pogroms in Berlin.

“Close to the bank where I worked was the clothing district, the headquarters of Berlin’s ‘Haute Couture,’ which was very important before the war and did a lot of exporting to the Nordic countries. Most of the owners of these fashion houses were Jews. When I came out of the bank building at six o'clock, I heard wild screaming and shouting. People were plundering the fabric warehouses of the clothing stores. It made me sick, but I still had the instincts of a journalist: I had to be there when something so exciting, so unusual, was happening in Berlin.

When I think back on it today, after surviving the horrible war years in Berlin, the looting doesn’t seem so gruesome anymore, but back then it made a hellish impression. SA men threw down whole bales of cloth from the top floors – the most beautiful colorful silks blowing down like long flags in front of buildings, and the jeering crowd stood below and snatched them up. People could be seen packing the bales onto taxis and driving away with their booty. Sometimes someone would throw a bucket of water down to scatter the crowd, then the SA men threw down the typewriters, which shattered into pieces. The police stood by idly.” Read more

Like most German cities, Leipzig was severely destroyed during World War II by bomb attacks from the United States and Great Britain. Four years after the war, bricks from destroyed houses were still piled up in front of the St. Thomas Church, the famous workplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (photo). About 6,000 people died in the bombing. Elke Rau, a vocational school teacher describes her experience as a child during the heaviest air raid on the city.

“I was five years old in December 1943 and can only remember a few events from those early childhood days. One of them is the bombing of Leipzig on December 4, 1943, the third birthday of my younger sister, who was in bed with mumps.

My mother had baked a cake on the evening before and then waited for my father to come home from work – he was a musician, so not until 1 a.m. At about 4 o'clock, when the air-raid alarm went off, they were in their first deep sleep and didn’t hear it. I was the first to wake up and was horrified to see the burning curtains in the bedroom flapping through the broken window panes. My parents quickly wrapped us in blankets and carried us down the four flights to the air-raid shelter where the door was already locked. When we knocked loudly and in panic, the air-raid warden let us in, scolding us for being late. He was very angry when my parents asked to go back up to the apartment. All four of us were only wearing sleepwear and the carefully packed air-raid shelter suitcase was still on the 4th floor. A long 20 minutes passed before our parents were back at our sides! What we didn’t know while waiting in cellar: They had saved the house by going back upstairs. Together with a few other residents, they had been able to extinguish the fire bombs that had just hit.”

Click here for Elke Rau’s full report (in German).

With their arms crossed in front of their chests or their hands in their pockets, five GDR opposition activists show their silent protest as they are photographed during a raid by East German secret police. In November 1987, they were printing an underground magazine when they were surprised by the Stasi. They were arrested, but released a little later following widespread protests. The printing press had been smuggled to East Berlin by a politician from the West German Green Party. In an interview, civil rights activist Stephan Bickhardt recalls how the opposition got their hands on the printer as the Stasi watched.

"Heinz Suhr was a Green Party representative in the Bundestag at the time and brought three printing presses over in his car - paid for by Jürgen Fuchs and Wolf Biermann. Then they had the great idea: ‘Come on, let’s drive by the Bickhardt’s place, they live on the first floor, so we can quickly pass the presses through the window. Then they rang my doorbell - and Wolfgang Templin [...] ran into our apartment and said: ‘Open the window! Printing presses are coming!’

And then I said: ‘Wait a minute, let me take a look at this first. When I opened the window, I saw at least 20 Stasi people hanging around in cars - Wartburgs, Trabants and many more. And then I said: “No, out of the question!”

Click here for the entire report from Stephan Bickhardt und his wife, Kathrin (in German).