Ernest Heppner

(Victim)

November 9, 1938

    I remember it being only 5:15 in the evening.  I was very nervous at that time.  The anxiousness flowed over me for the past 24 hours.  After I heard the news about the shooting in the German embassy in Paris, I was worried, mainly because the teenage boy that shot the German official was a Jew…just like me.  That one night will stay in my memories, and the things I witnessed on November 9th to November 10th will remain crystal clear.  I did my daily routine that day. I came home from a dreadful day at school, like usual.  I was very glad that the bell had rung and I was able to leave the place where I was unwanted by the individuals that surrounded me. Later on, I arrived at home and washed the dishes, in which my father made me do every day or two, especially if he had a long day at work.   I would also continue to finish my homework, in which I was pleased with.  Not having many friends sort of made me enjoy doing my homework.  After all, I had to get work done that day as usual, since I wished to go to college the following year.  It was a typical Wednesday.  I had just finished writing a two-page essay that was due the next day and I was getting ready to go to bed.  But once that clock struck 11:17 pm, my life was about to change.  It was a calm night, but I suddenly started to hear yelling out on the streets and I heard very loud, unfamiliar uproar.  I glanced out the window of my bedroom, only to see a German teen, roughly around my age, participating in what seemed like an insane event.  The teen fired a stone he had picked up on the side of the street at my window.  It was hurdling towards me at a high speed, so I instinctively flopped on the ground, knowing that there was most likely more to the absurd occurrences.  I carefully walked down the stairs, making my presence practically unknown.   I peered over the stair railing only to see Nazi storm troopers stealing many of my family’s precious valuables.  My father was yelling at the young men that had barged into the house, “Get out of here you rotten sons of bitches!”  The German teens ignored my father and just continued to loot various items.  My father even took a few blows to the head because of what he was bellowing to the two men.  I watched for a few minutes from behind the stair railing, knowing to stay silent.  I did not want to get involved with this.  That night was bazaar.  From the corner of my eye, I noticed my sister and mother looking at what was happening from behind the kitchen doorway, crying.  They remained silent, but it was not hard to tell that they were ridiculously upset.  Right after I looked at my sister, what seemed like a million rocks rocketed through the five windows that were on the two sides of my living room.  My father and I dove to the ground at the same time and my mother and sister shrieked.  We were all in the middle of a nightmare that night.  I remember eyeing the clock, probably about a half hour after this occurrence started…11:51 pm.  That time was the one of the worst moments of my life.  At 11:52 pm, I sneaked around with a few Nazis (that did not see me), only to see my family’s synagogue burned to the ground.  At that moment, I did not feel complete.  What kind of people would do such a heartless act like that?  I did not let my emotions get the best of me.  I knew that if I said something to them, I would be brutally hurt, arrested, or even killed.  I was extremely happy that the torture was over, that there was no more harm and no sounds of shattering glass.  My father was extremely angry the following day, and I did not know why.  I asked him why he was so angry and he told me he had to pay a fair amount of money, since the Jewish people in Germany got fined one billion marks to pay for the damage in the event.  Later on in the month, my father was able to get only two tickets to leave the country, and right away he gave one to my mother.  Who was going to get the other one?  I suggested that I should get it because of the bullying I had to face.  I also did not want to live in a country that would allow such things to happen.  My father handed me the ticket.  

Leaving Germany

Three months later, my whole family went to the ship terminals.  A kind man led my mother and I to the ship that was on the tickets.  My mother and I boarded the ship and sat down towards the back, so we were able to say our final goodbyes.  This was the saddest time of my life.  I felt selfish and I suddenly got a feeling of guilt rise over me.  I chose to take the final ticket, leaving the rest of my family helpless.  I knew that something bad was going to happen in the future.  Someone had told me a few weeks before I fled that the Nazis did that to warn the Jews about the future.  My family was stuck there in Breslau, Germany.  The motors of the ship started turning and the ship slowly started to slowly started to move away from Germany.  I screamed, “Goodbye, I love you!” to the rest of my family.  Those were the last words that I said to them and I never saw my family again (died in concentration camps).