ATTENTION
Herr A., a Dutch businessman who owns a company in Berlin and who arrived here directly from B. on Thursday the 10th November, reported the following:
Members of the Gestapo forced their way into the home of factory owner Gustav Michaelis, proprietor of the carpet factory Michaelis & Berend in Nowawes, and asked him whether he owned any weapons. Because he remarked that many years ago he had given a pistol to his chauffeur, the chauffeur was brought in who confirmed what his boss had said.
When the Gestapo men nevertheless prepared to take Herr M. away, his wife explained that the chauffeur’s statement had proved that her husband had told the truth too and there was no basis to arrest him. At which M. himself said to his wife, “You must know the reason I am being arrested is only because I am a Jew.”
On the basis of his explanation he was led away amidst insults. Dr. Rawack, his son-in-law, was also arrested.
Herr A. also reports that in Potsdam not only the rabbi Dr. Schreiber but also all the male Jews registered with the community have been arrested.
On the operation itself Herr A. reports that he had already ascertained early on Thursday when he entered Berlin that from Steglitz onwards all the window panes of Jewish-owned businesses had been smashed. This Zertrümmerungsaktion is said already to have taken place during the night of Wednesday to Thursday at about half past two. However whilst one had been content with “merely” smashing window panes in the morning, in the afternoon a new operation began in which the businesses were wrecked and everything was looted.
SA men in plain clothes were involved in this operation who wore civilian jackets but SA trousers and used iron bars and crowbars to carry out their attacks on the businesses with the cry “Juda verrecke!” . They were usually accompanied by a representative with a list.
The press has already named a large number of the businesses that were destroyed.
In general the public expressed its horror at these events, and comments could be heard such as, “That’s now our culture today”, or “That’s how our money is wasted.”
The Christian employees of Herr A.’s firm went to the Arbeitsfront to point out that the business had already been sold to an Aryan. They were then told that they should do everything necessary to arrange for the Jewish employees to leave the business immediately. There was a desire on the part of the Arbeitsfront to do everything to “cross this business off the list”, thus evidence of the fact that the Zerstörungsaktion had been carried out according to precisely predetermined lists.
The fact that the Mikosch and Weiss-Czardas restaurants were attacked earlier, and also the well-known children’s ready-to-wear clothing business of Arnold Müller, one owner of which, Metzger, is a Swiss national, shows that the property of foreign Jews was not spared.
Nothing happened to the well-known laundry company F. V. Grünfeld, although at first the crowd was said to have attempted to attack this business too. However as is well known the firm was recently arisiert.
Even cars owned by Jews were stopped and the windows smashed. The cars of Jews in the Berlin area are recognisable as they carry numbers starting with 350,000.
