Kristallnacht and how the Kindertransport saved Rolf Heymann’s life Part 1 — Kristallnacht

This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Roger Marsh of the ‘Action Desk — Sheffield’ Team on behalf of Rolf Heymann and has been added to the site with the author’s permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Kristallnacht and how the Kindertransport saved Rolf Heymann’s life Part 1 — Kristallnacht

Transcribed By
Roger Marsh

Introduction
I have had the privilege of transcribing this story from three tapes, provided by Rolf, of interviews that he has given on Radio Sheffield the story has been supplemented by additional information that Rolf as provided.

The interviews were:
- Interview with Rony Robinson 1997
- Two interviews with Jack Shaw on ‘The Sunday Breakfast’ programme, one of which was on Holocaust Sunday 2002

It is strange how history and fate has shaped one’s life.

My Jewish roots in Spain
I am a tiny bit Spanish. My Jewish roots in Europe date from the time when the Jews entered Spain with the Moors in about 800 A.D. The Jews had always got on well with the Moors and they formed a strong Jewish community in Southern Spain. This community flourished until the time when El Sid drove the Moors out of Spain in about 1400 A.D. This resulted in the Spanish kings coming back on the throne. The Spanish Kings were not happy with the Jews and the Jewish religion in Spain; they gave them four options:
1. Go back to Africa with the Moors
2. Become Catholic
3. Join the Spanish army
4. Or be killed

So my ancestors must have decided to join the Spanish army.

In those days Spain was always at war, fighting with France and Germany and my ancestors must have travelled with the Spanish army through France and then on to Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany stopping at Cologne (Köln) where it straddles the River Rhine before settling down to the Germanic way of life.

My father in the First World War:
My father Philipp Heymann was born on August 24 1894.

Like the Jewish people in Britain fought for the English against the Germans, in World War One, Jewish people in Germany including my father and grandfather fought against the British. They were proud of fighting for Germany. There was no Nazi movement at that time and it was like the other wars that they had in those days.

I still have my father’s ‘Dog Tag’. The information contained on it reads:
Philipp Heymann, Cöln a/Rhein, 24-8-94, 1.ERS. BATL. J.R.138, 4 KOMP. NR. 639.

The ‘Dog Tag’ is made from zinc and is oval in shape, perforated through the centre line so that it could be broken in half in the event that the soldier was killed. The information is duplicated on each half of the tag; half would remain with the body the other half being returned to the soldier’s family.

I did not find out until much later that my father had been a hero in the First World War and this was to have significant implications in my life. He had in fact won the Iron Cross 2nd Class, not the 1st Class that would have been the equivalent to a British VC.

He was blown up in the trenches, at Vimme Ridge in 1915, shrapnel hit him and God knows what else, but the doctors patched him up and sent him back to the Russian front.

I remember my father telling me that he was only 19 years of age when he had his foot shot off. He was lying in a shell crater for three days with everyone around him dead. He had lain there for three days with nothing to eat. The only thing that he had was a cigar butt that he chewed for three days over and over again. My father told me that his leg became rotten, in those days they all had axes, even British soldiers had axes; he actually chopped the bottom part of his leg off. Then the Russians found him, because the Russians fought the Germans in the 1914-18 war, and they took him to a Russian field hospital where he had his leg amputated below the knee.

In those days, even though the war was still continuing they had repatriation, my father was no good for fighting any more, so the Russians sent him back to Germany. By this time gangrene had set in so they had to amputate his leg above the knee and following that, he spent a year in German hospitals.

Karpen Village pre World War II:
The war was still on when my father was invalided out of the army, he was only 20 years of age at the time. He returned to the family home in the village of Kerpen, located 11 miles to the southwest of Cologne.

The family lived in a very large farmhouse, where I was to be born on November 11, Armistice Day, in 1928; it had 16 rooms and was located in the centre of the village.

My grandfather was a horse breeder not racing horses but horses for the farm. My father was his only son but due to the injuries that he had received in the war, was no good for carrying on the family business, so my grandfather sent him to Cologne and there he became an interpreter in the German Foreign Office.

By 1930, after my mother Herta had married my dad, and my granddad had died, the breading of horses had already finished. My mother opened a general sweet shop, that included a library, and she sold everything just like a village shop. As a result our family was well known in the village.

We went to kindergarten from 4 to 6 years of age, but I cannot remember that much about going to school prior to 1938. However, one of the other boys in our village that I did not take much notice of, was to become the grandfather of World Champion Formula One racing driver Michel Shoemaker.

From the age of five years onwards, I became aware that Jewish boys in Germany were different from the Christian German boys in our village. This became apparent to me when from six or seven years of age, I started getting beatings from the members of the Hitler Youth movement. I could not understand why, but I knew that I went to a special Jewish school for about 30 to 40 other Jewish children and the other kids from the village went to a Christian school. I knew that someway or other, Jews were not liked but I did not know why until I spoke to my mother and she explained why I was getting the beatings. So then I knew that together with all of the other Jewish children in the village, I was different.

In 1937 my father died from the wound that he received in the First World War. The gangrene that had resulted in the amputation of his knee had lain dormant and 20 odd years later had reactivated again and was the cause of his death.

In a way it was fortunate that my father had died before the main trouble so he missed what was to follow, and he did not have to suffer what we had to go through and at least he did not have to see our house being smashed up and everything else that happened. However this increased the responsibility for my mother, as a widow, to bring me up in circumstances like these.

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) The November Pogrom:
I was eight years of age on November 10 1938, the day after was to be my ninth birthday and so we were looking forward to that. But in our little village just outside of Cologne, we knew that something was going to happening because we had had a warning from one of the neighbours.

I remember that next door to our farmhouse was the village Smithy. This Christian family of the Smithy were very good friends of ours, and the Smithy had come to our farmhouse to warn my mother that there would be some trouble that night as regards our house and all the other houses where Jewish people lived. He said, “Go into the farmhouse, put up the shutters to all the windows and hide in the cellar.”

When the Smithy had gone, my mother told me that we would have to go into the cellar and spend that night down there. My mother locked all the shutters to the windows and took me into the cellar. I was hiding in the cellar with my mum and my aunty. Being forewarned, my mother had anticipated the trouble but as a lad of eight years, you do not know much of what was going on, all I know is that I was absolutely scared stiff.

We sat down there and nothing happened for a few hours and I must have fallen asleep. It was some time during the night when all of a sudden, we heard this terrible noise of the shattering of wood and smashing of glass. Even though we had put the shutters over the windows an axe came smashing through each shutter and the noise was just terrible. Shutters had protected each window and although they did not break into the house every shutter and the glass in every window had been broken with their axes.

The thing that I remember is that I was so frightened; I honestly thought that they were going to come into our house and kill us. I could not remember but my mother told me afterwards that I had asked her at the time, “Are they going to come in and cut off our heads?” I was only eight years of age and I was absolutely terrified there in the cellar, just my aunty, my mum and me. I was so afraid in fact I have never been so frightened in my life before or since. There in the darkness of that cellar, the fear was just incredible to the extent that I defecated in my trousers. That is what I thought but after they had smashed all of the windows they left us alone and nothing further happened that night.

I will always remember the next day it was eight o’clock in the morning of November 11, 1938, which was my 9th birthday, when my mother took me to school.

The local Synagogue, with the school built on the side of it, had been burnt to the ground so that only the shell remained. So there was no school left. The roof had collapsed, the whole inside had gone, and they had thrown all the Hebrew Scrolls all over the place and everything was strewn in the street. As a little lad I just could not believe what I saw; it was so terrible to see.

Our Synagogue, was just one of 101 Synagogues that were destroyed that night, together with almost 7,500 Jewish businesses.

We then came away from the Synagogue and went to look for some of our Jewish friends and neighbours, in our little village there were 133 Jewish people in a population of about 2,000. We started going to the houses where all our Jewish friends lived, every door of every Jewish house that we went to was open and there was nobody there. The Hitler Youth must have gone through all their homes. There was only one other Jewish family that was still left in the village. That meant that there were only six of us left out of 133 Jewish people and we never saw the others again. They must have gone to the concentration camps. They did not start the mass killings so early but they had just taken them away and the houses were empty.

Even in 1938 the Nazis had taken them away. I found out afterwards that that there were only six of us from our village that had survived the war and that included my mother, my aunty and me. The other family that survived was a widow and two sons, their father who had lost his arm had also won the Iron Cross in World War One, and they went to the USA. That night Jews had been physically attacked and beaten resulting in 91 deaths and 26,000 Jews had been arrested and sent to concentration camps.

All of my school friends had disappeared and I never saw them again. After Kristallnacht I never had any contact with anyone from the village, and naturally with the Synagogue and school being burnt down, I had to go to school in Cologne.

All of the glass breaking and it being scattered all over the streets from our houses, businesses, schools and synagogue was probably where the name Kristallnacht came from. Kristallnacht turned out to be a crucial turning point in the policy of the German Nazi Party regarding the Jews and can be considered to be the actual start of what is now known as the Holocaust.

I am proud of my father’s bravery in World War One because it is my belief that the reason that the Nazis spared our two families and did not take us away from our village to the concentration camps, was for what he and the other family’s father had done for Germany. They had both fought for the Germans in the First World War 1914-18 and had both been awarded the Iron Cross. I still have the bullet that shot my father’s foot off.

So I have to thank my father for my being here today. It was almost the Nazis being decent, which they sometimes were at first, and you just cannot imagine that, but afterwards as the war progressed it did not matter what you or your family had done. If you were Jewish it would not save you.

In our little village there was no one that we could make a complaint to. In this little village where we lived there was just the nazi party and the local policeman who was there to maintain law and order. Each place had a nazi party and there were approximately a hundred in the Nazi party in our village, but we dare not say anything to them or things would be worse.

The local authorities told us to get out of Germany if we valued our lives and to get out as soon as we could.

Pr-BR

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.