home and slowly we overcame our anxiety about appearing in public, our dread at walking down a busy street and saying anything. They showed us pictures of Jewish houses and synagogues that had been burned in Germany, which they had themselves taken in border towns.
The night we left on the spotlessly clean Dutch ship was dark and rainy, and it was hard for us to say goodbye to our friends. A final expression of good wishes, a tearful glance, and we were alone. Two days later we had a last view of the English coast in the brilliant sunshine. Farewell, Europe, adieu, Old World …
We passed by the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour on a sunny summer morning. We had found our way to our new home in the land of humanity, in the land of freedom. Like a bad dream, the time of subjugation and deprivation of rights lay behind us. We felt that this country, which welcomed us with open arms, should and must become a new homeland for us poor refugees. We wanted to do everything we could to become good and respected citizens; we wanted and had to forget all the tribulations behind us.
In conclusion, I want to emphasize that every word in my account is the simple truth. Hatred has not guided my pen, only the truth and the courage to tell it. Everything that I had in the way of notes and letters was destroyed or taken away by unfettered beasts on that terrible night. My desk was smashed and senselessly ransacked, and I destroyed the rest so as not to compromise anyone. If I constantly emphasize that with few exceptions my earlier Aryan friends and acquaintances were good and generous to us right up until our departure, that means that in their hearts a large part of the German people did not approve or participate in the anti-Semitic pogrom. Were it otherwise, I could not write these lines today on my way to the land of freedom without concern for the lives of those dear to me. Then those unfortunate fellow Jews who are now still having to maintain their miserable existence in Germany would certainly no longer be alive.
If the majority of the more mature German people had even a fraction of the regime’s anti-Semitism, if the pogrom mood into which the German people is whipped up from time to time did not scare off the more rational part of the population, the last Jew would have left Germany long ago. The government agitates and stirs up the people until bloody violence takes place somewhere, and then sanctimoniously declares that this is the ‘voice of the people’ and that the government has never told anyone to kill even one Jew. This tactic has long since been seen through by everyone. An employee of my tax office who wears the party insignia told me, when this subject came up as I was consulting him about my taxes: ‘All this has the mark not of the devil’s cloven hoof but of Goebbel’s clubfoot!’
On the other hand, the young people are contaminated from the outset. The poison systematically injected into them leads them to become liars, thieves and murderers. The youths who were sent into Jewish synagogues and homes on 11 November 1938 to finish off the destruction started by their fathers and brothers are called by Adolf Hitler ‘Germany’s pride and hope’.
New York, October 1939
Germany has now long been engaged in war; six years of a mad dictatorship have isolated the country from all the world’s civilized nations. Just as on 10 November 1938 Jews sat in the dark with their dead among the ruins of their homes, millions of their tormentors now sit in the darkness of their cities and wait anxiously for the bad news from all over the world. The stocks of food and clothing that had been foolishly destroyed a year earlier are now desperately needed by the famished and freezing people. God’s judgement has struck this country, and the angels of law and justice have turned away in horror from this country that six short and yet infinitely long years have cast back into the darkest time of the Middle Ages. God’s punishment will be severe, but just …
(These lines are in the form of a diary begun on the sea voyage to the USA. My intention was to provide a true and accurate description of the events and experiences for my children. I do not intend to publish these pages from my diary.)
Should these lines nonetheless some day be published, then it should be under the pseudonym ‘Spectator’. I expressly ask this because I know that every word of the truth that is published abroad will necessarily have terrible consequences for my Jewish brothers in Germany. And so I ask that my [American] place of residence not be mentioned, for I am sure that even here there are countless informers.
Notes
1 1. In the German Reich, on 27 and 28 October 1938, Friday and Saturday, 16,000 Polish Jews were taken into custody pending expulsion and transported to the Polish border.
2 2. Two lines from the poem, ‘Hoffnung’ (‘Hope’) by Emanuel Geibel, 1815–1884.
3 3. On 11 November 1938, education minister Rust instructed the rectors of German universities to immediately suspend Jewish students and deny them entry to the universities; the same decree prohibited Jewish children from attending German schools.
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