Thursday, 10th November 1938
Report
Started at 7 o’clock in the morning, a continual bugle call from the fire brigade, a commotion amongst the people, what is going on, where is the fire. After an hour everybody knew, the Jewish Tempel are burning so that no conspiracies could take place there. The Schmalzhoftempel was diligently bombarded with stones by HJ [Hitler-Jugend]-lads (white shirts), inside the Tempel it was already burning; the fire brigade was also present, who however merely had to protect the neighbouring houses, therefore (as at all Tempel) was not itself permitted to extinguish the Tempel fire.
Half an hour later:
XIII. Neidlinger Hauptstraße. 30-50 HJ-Kinder [Hitler-Jugend children] armed with iron bars went from Jewish shop to Jewish shop and first chopped up the company signs then tore off the scroll bars with much shouting, and it succeeded, one felt as if one were amongst savages, such shouting rang out, they wanted to say thereby that even children can do it. However, they had obtained long iron bars from their homes for this purpose, as already mentioned. These were already made available on Wednesday evening. In contrast the SS and SA obtained explosives for the Tempel. Many people who were watching made the following comments, "How can one let such 13- to 16-year-old lads do that, which will produce grown-up people by other means and dispossess Jewish shops, what will become then of such children when they become men?"
At the same time at Hufelandgasse XII., guardroom, a military vehicle, full of old Jews is being ordered by a only a very young SS man, field uniform, as follows, "Jump down from the vehicle, nothing more will happen than that you could break your feet, but that wouldn‘t do any harm at all." Then one saw very old men jump down, could hardly stand up again, yet were pushed rapidly into the guardroom by the SS men; the people who saw that shook their heads and one heard quietly say, "Awful!"
Corner of Arndtstraße–Meidlinger Hauptstraße the first shop broken into had already been plundered through the work of the HJ, a lorry drove by and men with SA armband stripes loaded up what they could and drove away with it. In the afternoon one already saw SA guards standing in front of the broken-into shop in order to request the people to move on. A few minutes away is the Turnertempel, it was burning fiercely until the evening, but the coffee house owner will not have been very pleased as very many windows of his premises, which is opposite the Tempel, are shattered due to the heat. The swastika flag was already flying over the ruins of the Tempel some days later, about to build homes or barracks, as the signs show. This is already so at the Storchentempel as well as at the Turnertempel. Today there are no more Tempel. Which has now happened in the homes.
Some evidence
Mother, c. 40 years old, with her 9-year-old son just at breakfast, all at once four Party men burst in, drag woman and child into the bathroom (the husband was already taken to Dachau some months earlier), lock them in there, wreck the furnishings of the home – not one object remained spared –, unlocked the bathroom again, took the 9-year-old lad, placed him in the bath, ran cold water onto him, they held the woman, smeared his face with soap and gave him then the soap to eat with the sentence, "Judenbengel, bite it off!"
He had to do it, earlier they gave the child no peace. The woman’s face was smeared with dirt, chased her through the rooms so that she could see the men’s rage, took the key to the home from her, sealed it and chased her onto the street with another Jewish party, just as they were, without coats, the child quite wet.
Reporter: Robert Steiner, 38 Rue Bisson, Paris XXe.