Kristallnacht, November 9-10, 1938.
The Blau residence, Hamburg, Germany
My aunt tante Rivkah Jenny Marmorstein relates what she and her family lived through:
On the evening of Kristallnacht, the Nazi Sturmabteilung - SA Paramilitary appeared at their home and demanded the men of the family. My aunt, who was a young girl of 18 at the time, watched in fright as they strode through her home as though it was their own, looking for great-grandfather Dr. Yirmiyahu Armin Blau. Luckily, he wasn’t home at the time, however, they took her brother Walter Benjamin Blau, and said they were going to come back for him later. Her older brother was my Zaidy Moshe Yehudah Blau. For the time being he was safe, studying in the Mirrer Yeshiva in Mir, Poland.
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| Members of the SA and the Kraftfahr-Korps [motor corps] march Jewish men through the streets after their arrest during Kristallnacht. Erlangen, Germany. November 10, 1938. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Stadtarchiv und Stadtmuseum Erlangen |
Walter, or Binyomin Zeev, was a 20 year old healthy male when he was taken away and placed in a concentration camp. They asked his mother to bring his clothing to the police station since ‘he was needed for work’.
In the meantime, great-grandmother Ella Leah Blau somehow managed to get the message to her husband that he should go and hide as the Sturmabteilung wanted to arrest him. They did come back for him again, but Armin quite naturally stayed in hiding for a long time (presumably with non-Jewish friends) until he felt the danger had passed.
Great-grandmother Ella Leah worked non-stop to get her son Walter released. After several months of working in a concentration camp, the Germans agreed to release him on the condition that he never return to Germany again.
To secure his release, my great-grandparents arranged for him to live with relatives in Holland, Hugo and Herta Lesser who lived in Amsterdam. The plan was to prepare him for living on a Kibutz with the intention that he would move to Eretz Yisrael and join a Kibutz.
Walter was finally safe in Holland, but not for long. Before he had a chance to immigrate to Eretz Yisrael, the Nazis invaded on May 14, 1940, and as they rounded up the Jews for concentration camps, Walter was taken again and brought to the Mauthausen extermination camp. Nazi records indicate they performed medical experiments on him. He was killed July 3rd, 1941.
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| Walter Benjamin Blau Hamburg, – Mauthausen, |
After Kristallnacht, my great-grandparents knew their end was near if they stayed in Germany, and their only hope of survival would be to leave. But how? All the doors were closed, Jews were considered persona non grata, with almost no country willing to let them in.
They applied for visas to the British Mandate of Palestine, the United States, and England. They wrote many letters to friends and acquaintances to secure guarantees for entry visas. Their ultimate desire was to settle in Eretz Yisrael.
Three months before the start of World War II they received entry visas for England under a special emergency application which stated that great-grandfather Armin’s teaching skills were needed in London.
The first one to get a visa was Tante Rivka. She was afraid to travel alone to a new country as she generally never traveled alone. But she knew it was either life or death, and she knew she was leaving to save her life. She traveled on the Cunard Shipping Line from her hometown Hamburg to Southampton, England. She was met there by her first cousins, children of Cily and Achim Kopel. Soon both of her parents arrived in London.
