Socials studies

A Family responds to Kristallnacht

Marie Kahle (a teacher), her husband (a university professor and Lutheran pastor), and their

sons witnessed the events of Kristallnacht in the city of Bonn and the effects those events had

on their Jewish neighbors and colleagues. Marie Kahle wrote about the choices she and her

family made the next day:

On 10 November, 1938, at 11:30 in the morning, the wife of a Jewish colleague came to me and

reported that both the synagogues in Bonn had been set on fire and that SS men had destroyed

the Jewish shops, to which I replied: “That can’t be true!” She gave me a manuscript to keep,

her husband’s life work. Then one of my sons brought the same news.

My third son immediately went, without my knowing it, to a Jewish clockmaker’s shop,

helped the man’s wife hide a few things and brought home a chest with the most valuable

jewelry and time-pieces. Then he went to a chocolate shop, warned the owner and helped her

move tea, coffee, cocoa, etc. to a room in the very back of the building. While three SS men

were destroying everything in the front of the shop, he slipped out the back door with a suitcase

full of securities and rode home with it on his bicycle. Later on, he spent weeks selling these

hidden things to our acquaintances and thus made money for the two shop owners that the

Gestapo knew nothing about. A Jewish colleague of my husband’s stayed with us all day long

on 10 November and thus avoided being arrested.

From 11 November on, my sons worked furiously to help the Jewish shopkeepers clear

out their shops. I couldn’t take part in this myself because I did not want to endanger my

husband’s position. I could only visit the poor people. During one of these visits, my eldest son

and I were surprised by a policeman, who wrote down my name. The consequence was a

newspaper article . . . for 17 November 1938 headed “This is a betrayal of the people: Frau

Kahle and her son help the Jewess Goldstein clear out.”

On the basis of this newspaper article, my husband was immediately suspended and he was

forbidden to enter . . . the university buildings. My eldest son was also forbidden to enter the

university. He was convicted by a disciplinary court. . . . During the night, our house was

attacked. Window panes were broken, etc. . . . The police came a short time later but went away

again immediately. One of the policemen advised me to look out into the street: there, we

found written in large red letters on the pavement: “Traitors to the People! Jew-lovers!” We

washed the writing away with turpentine.

However, since the people were constantly coming back in their car, I openly rode away

on my bicycle. I did not want to be beaten to death in front of my children and I was also only a

danger to my family. I found shelter in a small Catholic convent, where the nuns were kind

enough to look after me and my youngest child. During the interrogation by the Gestapo a few

days later, I was asked whether I knew the license number of the car whose occupants had

made the attack. When I said “no”, I was released. As I came out of the Gestapo building, this

same car stood in front of the door. I even recognized the driver.

Particularly important in this whole period was a visit in 1939 by a well-known

neurologist who, as Reich Education Director . . . was well up on Jewish matters. He told me,

on two afternoons when we were alone, what would happen to me and my family along the

lines of “Jews and friends of Jews must be exterminated. We are exterminating friends of Jews

and all their offspring.” Then he said that I could not be saved, but my family could. When I

asked what I should do, he gave his answer in the form of a couple of stories in which the wife

committed suicide and thereby saved her family. Then he asked: “How much Veronal [a

sleeping pill] do you have?” When I answered, “Only two grams,” he wrote me a prescription

for the quantity that I was lacking. I carried the Veronal around with me for a few days, but

then decided not to die, but instead to try to escape abroad with my family.

In four months, only three of my husband’s colleagues dared to visit us. I was not

allowed to go out during the day. When one evening I met a colleague’s wife and complained

that no friends or acquaintances had dared to visit me, she said: “That’s not cowardice; we are

just facing facts.”

Soon after, the family left Germany.