24 hour Jewish pogrom

Half past 6 in the morning: SA and civilians making a noise at the door, "Jews open up, house search”. Everything is ransacked, the furniture is smashed to pieces, nothing is found, penknives are confiscated as weapons. On the street: these are completely dead. SA and SS as well as riff-raff rule the streets. Jewish shops are plundered, afterwards these have to be barricaded, they are sealed up, so that people will not steal from them. All the Jews who can be seized are arrested, whether on the streets or in their homes. Anyone who was amongst the lucky ones still to be free tried to find safety with Christians, of whom there were very many who had sympathy with the Jews. We go on further, we hear the detonations which stem from the fact that all the Tempel are being blown up, and what was left afterwards was nothing but rubble and ash. The mob is to be seen everywhere with joyful faces, they have after all accomplished a great deed. The families are robbed of their homes. 16 people squeezed into one room, in order to dwell like this for three days. What money and jewellery a Jew owns was taken away. Taking earrings out of the ears of small children was not shirked, or the last RM. from women’s handbags. My acquaintances, who managed to have themselves released from prison, could not report enough about the suffering they had to bear although they were at the front in the World War and had experienced many such things and claimed unanimously never to have seen such inhumanity. The following events occurred in a cellar in which the Jews were accommodated: women aged 50-55 had to strip naked in order to perform a dance, demonstrated to them by the SA, for the men who had been locked up with them. Sick women had to relieve themselves ‘coram publico’ [in public] in front of men and children on the W.C., of which there was only one for 200 people. Children aged from one month to two years received nothing to eat for two days as they were locked up with their parents.

I could continue this report for hours yet.

Reporter: Fritz Grünwald, 15 Rue Geoffroy Marie, Paris