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My
dear ones!
You
have probably already heard of my fate from Cilli. On October
27 of this year, on a Thursday evening at 9 oclock, two men
came from the Crime Police, demanded my passport, and then
placed a deportation document before me to sign and ordered me
to accompany them immediately. Cilli and Bernd were already in
bed. I had just finished my work and was sitting down to eat,
but had to get dressed immediately and go with them. I was so
upset I could scarcely speak a word. In all my life I will
never forget this moment. I was then immediately locked up in
the Castle prison like a criminal. It was a bad night for me.
On Friday at 4 o'clock in the afternoon we were taken to the
main station under strict guard by Police and SS. Everybody
was given two loaves of bread and margarine and was then
loaded on the freight cars. It was a cruel picture. Weeping
women and children, heart-breaking scenes. We were then taken
to the border in sealed cars and under the strictest police
guard. When we reached the border at 5 o'clock on Saturday
afternoon we were put across. A new terrible scene was
revealed here. We spent three days on the platform and in the
waiting rooms, 8,000 people. Women and children fainted, went
mad, people died, faces as yellow as wax. It was like a
cemetery full of dead people. I was also among those who
fainted. There was nothing to eat except the dry prison bread,
without anything to drink. I never slept at all, for two
nights on the platform and one in the waiting room, where I
collapsed. There was no room even to stand. The air was
pestilential. Women and children were half dead. On the fourth
day help at last arrived. Doctors, nurses with medicine,
butter and bread from the Jewish Committee in Warsaw. Then we
were taken to barracks (military stables) where there was
straw on the floor on which we could lie down....
H.J.
Fliedner, Die Judenverfolgung in Mannheim 1933-1945 ("The
Persecution of the Jews in Mannheim 1933-1945"), II,
Stuttgart, 1971, pp. 72-73.
*
This was the first deportation of Jews from Germany on October
27 and 28, 1938, which involved Jews holding Polish
nationality. The Poles refused to allow the Jews to enter
Poland, and they were concentrated near the border city of
Zbaszyn. |
