Socials studies

The Night of the Pogrom

Hugo Moses described what he experienced on Kristallnacht and in the days that

followed:

On the evening of 9 November 1938, the SA brown-shirts and the SS black-shirts met in

bars to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of [the Nazis’] failed putsch in Munich. Around

eleven o’clock in the evening, I came home from a Jewish aid organization meeting and I can

testify that most of the “German people” who a day later the government said were responsible

for what happened that night lay peacefully in bed that evening. Everywhere lights had been

put out, and nothing suggested that in the following hours such terrible events would take

place.

Even the uniformed party members were not in on the plan; the order to destroy Jewish

property came shortly before they moved from the bars to the Jewish houses. (I have this

information from the brother of an SS man who took an active part in the pogroms.)

At 3 a.m. sharp, someone insistently rang at the door to my apartment. I went to the

window and saw that the streetlights had been turned off. Nonetheless, I could make out a

transport vehicle out of which emerged about twenty uniformed men. I recognized only one of

them, a man who served as the leader; the rest came from other localities and cities and were

distributed over the district in accordance with marching orders. I called out to my wife: “Don’t

be afraid, they are party men; please keep calm.” Then I went to the door in my pajamas and

opened it.

A wave of alcohol hit me, and the mob forced its way into the home. A leader pushed by

me and yanked the telephone off the wall. A leader of the SS men, green-faced with

drunkenness, cocked his revolver as I watched and then held it to my forehead and slurred:

“Do you know why we’ve come here, you swine?” I replied, “No,” and he went on, “Because of

the outrageous act committed in Paris, for which you are also to blame. If you even try to move,

I’ll shoot you like a pig.” I kept quiet and stood, my hands behind my back, in the ice-cold

[draft] coming in the open door. An SA man, who must have had a little human feeling,

whispered to me: “Keep still. Don’t move.” During all this time and for another twenty minutes,

the drunken SS leader fumbled threateningly with his revolver near my forehead. An

inadvertent movement on my part or a clumsy one on his and my life would have been over. If I

live to be a hundred, I will never forget that brutish face and those dreadful minutes.

In the meantime, about ten uniformed men had invaded my house. I heard my wife cry:

“What do you want with my children? You’ll touch the children over my dead body!” Then I

heard only the crashing of overturned furniture, the breaking of glass and the trampling of

heavy boots. Weeks later, I was still waking from restless sleep, still hearing that crashing,

hammering, and striking. We will never forget that night. After about half an hour, which

seemed to me an eternity, the brutish drunks left our apartment, shouting and bellowing. The

leader blew a whistle and as his subordinates stumbled past him, fired his revolver close to my

head, two shots to the ceiling. I thought my eardrums had burst but I stood there like a wall. (A

few hours later I showed a police officer the two bullet holes.) The last SA man who left the

building hit me on the head so hard with the walking stick he had used to destroy my pictures

that a fortnight later the swelling was still perceptible. As he went out, he shouted at me:

“There you are, you Jewish pig. Have fun.” . . .

Towards dawn, a police officer appeared in order to determine whether there was any

damage visible from the outside, such as broken window glass or furniture thrown out into the

street. Shaking his head, he said to us, as I showed him the bullet holes from the preceding

night: “It’s a disgrace to see all this. It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t had to stay in our

barracks.” As he left, the officer said, “I hope it’s the last time this will happen to you.”

Two hours later, another police officer appeared and told Moses, “I’m sorry, but I have

to arrest you.”

I said to him, “I have never broken the law; tell me why you are arresting me.” The

officer: “I have been ordered to arrest all Jewish men. Don’t make it so hard for me, just follow

me.” My wife accompanied me to the police station. . . .

At the police station, the officers were almost all nice to us. Only one officer told my

wife: “Go home. You may see your husband again after a few years of forced labor in the

concentration camp, if he’s still alive.” Another officer, who had been at school with me, said to

his comrade: “Man, don’t talk such nonsense.” To my wife he said: “Just go home now, you’ll

soon have your husband back.” A few hours later my little boy came to see me again. The

experiences of that terrible night and my arrest were too much for the little soul, and he kept

weeping and looking at me as if I were about to be shot. The police officer I knew well took the

child by the hand and said to me: “I’ll take the child to my office until you are taken away. If the

boy saw that, he’d never forget it for the rest of his life.”

After several weeks in prison, Moses was released, thanks to the wife of an “Aryan”

acquaintance. Soon after, he and his family managed to leave Germany. Moses told his story

for the first time in 1940, just a year and a half after the pogrom. He refused to reveal the name

of his town or the identities of those who helped him, because he did not want to endanger

those left behind.