Klaus Langer's Diary Entry on Kristallnacht, November 11, 1938

November 11, 1938

The past three days brought significant changes in our lives.  On November 7 a German legation member was assassinated in Paris. He died two days later.  The day following, on November 10 [sic], came the consequences. ¹ At three o’clock the synagogue and the Jewish youth center were put on fire.  Then they began to destroy Jewish businesses. During the morning, private homes also were being demolished.  Fires were started at single homes belonging to Jews.  At six-thirty in the morning the Gestapo came to our home and arrested Father and Mother [. . .] Mother returned after about one and a half hours.  Dad remained and was put in prison. In the morning I went to the Ferse home. Bobby was at the synagogue and at the youth center in the morning and saw how they burned. Later we went to the day care center where the children had been brought from the community home, which they had to flee during the night.

We [. . .] returned to our neighborhood by two o’clock.  Not far from us we saw a gang vandalizing a home, throwing things out of the window. When I went around the corner and looked up my street there was nothing to see. It looked peaceful. I, therefore, returned directly to our house.  when I turned into the front yard I saw that the house was damaged. I walked on glass splinters. In the hallway I met Frau Baum, who lived upstairs. I ran  into our apartment and found unbelievable destruction in every room. It was the same in the apartment of the caretaker below us. Mother and Grandmother were there.  My parents’ instruments were destroyed, the dishes were broken, the windows were broken, furniture upturned, the desk was turned over, drawers and mirrors were broken, and the radio smashed. The kitchen and the bathroom were untouched.  The upstairs room also was left alone, including my father’s cello. The cellar also was not disturbed. The apartment of the caretaker, Bachrach, was in much worse condition.

In the evening, mother brought gold and other valuables for safekeeping to Christian acquaintances.We wanted to spend the night at home, but the caretaker, Frau Bachrach, urged us to go to her relatives, the Herzfelds, where we spent the night. I read until late. In the middle of the night, at 2:30 A.M., the Storm Troopers [Sturmabteilung, or SA, also known as the Brownshirts] smashed windows and threw stones against store shutters. After a few minutes they demanded to be let into the house.  Allegedly they were looking for weapons. After they found no weapons they left. After that no one was able to go back to sleep. Everyone sat in one room. I tried but could not sleep. After a while I went back to where they  were sitting and found they had dozed off. The time passed terribly slowly. Then we thought there was still another person in the house who was making noise. Finally, at 5 A.M. I saw a policeman outside who walked back and forth. I shall never forget that night.

The next day, rumor had it that children under sixteen years of age would also be arrested. I wanted to flee and ride my bicycle to Christian friends of my parents who lived in the Rhineland. Mother objected, however, and I remained at home, of course. The next night we all wanted to sleep at home, but we were too upset. At nine-thirty at night we went to the Kosmanns’ where the gangsters had already been, that is, they had destroyed everything. We had calmed down somewhat and slept there quite well.

Books could be written about all that had happened and about which we now begin to learn more. But, I have to be careful. A new regulation was issued that the Jews in Germany had to pay one billion reichmarks for restitution. What for? For the damage the Nazis had done to the Jews in Germany. I shall return to that subject later. My room will stay as it is. I am not going to go to school as long as Dad is not at home. I now want to get to Erez Israel as quickly as possible, maybe with the first Youth Aliyah. ² The plan for making aliyah was made some time ago. The Bund of course has come to a standstill. Its leaders were arrested. ³

• 1In late October 1938, about sixteen thousand Polish Jews were expelled from Germany. They were sent to the Polish border town Zbąszyń, where Polish authorities refused to allow them to enter Poland. They remained between the two borders for days, before many of them were placed in a Polish camp in Zbąszyń. On November 7, 1938, a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan, whose family was among those expelled from Germany, shot a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath, as a public protest against the treatment of the Jews. This was the alleged catalyst for Kristallnacht. (Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. 1, 267-68.)
• 2, or Erez Israel (literally “the Land of Israel”), is the Hebrew term referring to the Jewish homeland in Israel. At the time that the diary was written, the state of Israel had not been established. Throughout the diary, Langer uses the terms “Erez,” “Erez Israel,” and “Palestine” interchangeably. (Zapruder, fn 9, p. 452).
• 3Alexandra Zapruder, ed., Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust, 2nd edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015) 19–21.