"Unbridled violence" - is she talking about Jews killing Palestinians?

Defaming Germans continues unabated!

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A shattered childhood My friend Hedy was yanked from her bed on Kristallnacht by Nazi Blackshirts, and began the long, terrible journey to a good life in the United States

by IRIS WINSTON, Ottowa Citizen, November 11, 2006

Childhood ended for Hedy at 6 a.m. on Nov. 9, 1938, in Vienna, Austria. That's when she woke to the menace of eight Nazi SS troopers circling her bed. She pulled the down-filled cover closer, cringing under the hostile stares of the threatening group towering above her.

The commander of the Blackshirts grabbed the featherbed. She burrowed further into the scanty protection of her covering. He grabbed the corner of her nightdress. It ripped as she pulled away, clutching the edge of the mattress.

"She's not worth the trouble," said one of the other Blackshirts — a man who had been a friend of her father's before Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. "She's just a kid. I'll get you way better stuff than her."

His words were enough to deflect the Nazi leader and save Hedy from almost certain rape. He gave the order to leave her bedroom. As they turned away, Hedy pulled the featherbed over her head and lay trembling under the covers.

Later, the SS troopers marched out of the apartment with the keys to the family's store down the street. When Hedy emerged, she learned that the rest of her family had been held at gunpoint. She saw the devastation the Blackshirts had left behind. The jumbled contents of every drawer and cupboard lay on the floor. Any spaces were filled with the remnants of the dishes, glassware and ornaments they had smashed, the pictures they had defaced, the upholstery they had slashed.

She found out later that they had looted the store even more thoroughly, filling three large trucks with stolen stock. The shards of glass from the smashed shop windows and door were all that remained inside.

This was Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, the unbridled violence, vandalism, robbery and looting that followed Hitler's order to destroy every Jewish home and business across Germany, Austria and Sudetenland.

Times had been bad enough for Jews in Nazi Germany and German-occupied lands before Kristallnacht. For two years, Hedy's parents had sold pieces of their furniture to buy food at exorbitant prices, during the few hours that Jews were allowed to shop. Restrictions constantly escalated for the people the Nazis called Untermenschen. They were not allowed to walk on public sidewalks or speak to anyone. Strict curfews and segregation regulations limited their movements drastically. Hedy and other Jewish children of school age were no longer allowed to attend school. Later, they were required to wear labels — yellow stars of David sewn on their clothes.

It counted for nothing that Hedy had been born in Austria or that her father had served in his country's military and been decorated during the First World War. Jews were no longer welcome in Vienna. After Kristallnacht, it was unsafe for them to go outside.

Neither was it safe for them to stay in their homeland. But leaving depended on the will of the state and the willingness of other countries to accept refugees. Britain eased immigration restrictions after Kristallnacht, but the United States established strict quotas. Some other countries refused to accept Jewish refugees at all.

Hedy's older sister, Trude, was already in the U.S. Shortly after graduating from medical school, she had married a fellow graduate. As an American, he was able to take his bride back to his native New York.

Hedy's older brother, Alexander, was one of the 30,000 Jews the Nazis arrested and tortured on Kristallnacht. A few weeks earlier, his fiancée, Renée, a dress designer, had been granted a visa to enter England, thanks to the efforts of an influential client. By February 1939, Renée had secured visas for him and her mother and the two eventually escaped through Switzerland to join her in Britain.

Meanwhile, the rest of Hedy's family had applied for permission to leave Austria and go to the U.S. Hedy's other brother, Otto, was first. Entry was easier for able-bodied young men ready to serve in the U.S. forces.

Alexander, now in the British army, contacted his parents, begging them to send Hedy to safety in England. At 15, she was still eligible for a place on a Kindertrain — the rescue effort that transported 10,000 children to Britain in 1938 and 1939 — if her brother sponsored her and her father signed the release papers.

In August 1939, less than a month before the Second World War began, Hedy and her parents walked to Vienna's Westbahnhof, all three terrified that this supposedly temporary parting would be permanent. As it turned out, Hedy and her mother were eventually reunited in New York, but she never saw her father again. Because he had been born in Poland, he did not qualify for entry to the U.S. soon enough. His last journey was to the Auschwitz death camp.

Hedy climbed aboard the Kindertrain clutching a small suitcase in one hand and a tiny bag of food in the other. As soon as she and the 600 other terrified youngsters were aboard, the train was sealed.

So began the journey into the unknown, in what must have seemed a mobile prison to its young occupants. Just outside the city limits, the train slowed to a halt. Nazi soldiers unsealed the train and stepped aboard, bayonets drawn. They marched down the aisles, snatching every morsel of food from the traumatized youngsters. No sustenance for children with a large "J" stamped on their passports. The marauding soldiers grabbed small bracelets and necklaces from tiny wrists and necks.

More than half a century later, Hedy still bears the physical mark of that particular piece of malicious cruelty. The thin, gold chain of the tiny locket she wore cut into her neck as the Nazi soldier tore it off. So much for the precious photographs of her parents.

Their damage done, the soldiers stomped off the train and resealed it. Some 36 hours later, it reached The Hague. The young passengers staggered out to the station platform and toward the boat that took them to Harwich, England.

Alexander stood on the dock waiting for his little sister. Half hugging her, half holding her up, he led her to the coach that would take the travellers and their sponsors on the last leg of the freedom journey. A few hours later, Hedy was safe in bed in the South London apartment Alexander and Renée — married as soon as they were reunited in March — shared with her mother,

Ernestine. Exhausted, Hedy slept for the next 24 hours, waking in time to say goodbye to her brother before he returned to his regiment.

Life was still hard for all of them, but they were free of the constant persecution and fear of post-Anschluss Austria. Renée worked long hours in the local dress factory and longer hours at home while she and Ernestine tried to rebuild a dress-design house like the one they had once had in Vienna.

Hedy helped when she could. One assignment was to sew the many seams and massive hem of a splendid red velvet coat that Renée had designed for film star Hedy Lamarr.

She posed in the coat in the hope that the producers of Gone with the Wind would recognize that she was the perfect choice for Scarlett O'Hara. Both garment and star made a lasting impression on Hedy. She changed her name from the original Hertha to Hedy and was even more determined to go to the U.S.

Armed with an affidavit from her sister, Trude, confirming their relationship, and her passport — still the document with the large "J" on it — she sought an entry visa from the U.S. consulate. While she waited at Southampton to sail to New York, she was interned as an enemy alien until she was finally allowed to board a transatlantic vessel.

As soon as Hedy arrived in New York, Trude enrolled her young sister in school. But Hedy could not settle into high school. Instead, she pretended to be 16 and found a job in a blouse factory. A week later, she was made forewoman of her section.

Unwilling to spend the rest of her working life on a factory floor, she registered for night school, then took college entry exams and was accepted for Hunter College with a 90-plus average, eventually completing a business degree at Rutgers University.

By this time, she was married, had helped put her husband, Marty, through optometry school after he returned from war service and had a son and a daughter. By 1960, she had set up a small accounting practice in her home.

In 1968, Hedy answered a job advertisement calling for an auditor at South Jersey National Bank. The initial response was that this was "not a job for a woman." Characteristically, Hedy fought back with a reminder about new legislation against discrimination. Some 18 years later, she retired as vice-president of the bank.

The long journey that began on Kristallnacht had taken her so far geographically and emotionally. Through it all, she has proved that she is a survivor. Now 82 and a widow after 53 years of marriage, Hedy still runs her accounting business. Feisty as ever, she still speaks out for the causes she believes in. She has much to say about human rights, is keenly interested in politics and works tirelessly in support of the candidates she favours.

Hedy's childhood ended in 1938. Her extraordinary spirit gave her the strength to build a successful life over the ashes of a cruel past.

IRIS WINSTON is an Almonte writer.


BETTMANN-UPI Berlin store windows were smashed on Nov. 9, 1938, the Night of Broken Glass, the unbridled violence that followed Hitler's order to destroy every Jewish home and business in Germany, Austria and Sudetenland.