I remember Kristallnacht very well.  I was in student lodgings in Hamburg together with five or six other Jewish kids.  We didn't know what would happen.  We actually played Monopoly that night!  And I went to bed and about half past four in the morning there was a knock on my door, the landlady - my mother had phoned her at 12.30 in the morning wanting to speak to me, and I went to her place and answered the phone and mother said 'Father's gone away', which was code for 'has been arrested' (we spoke in code in those days).  And then she says 'gehen spazieren undefined undefined' that means 'Go for a walk' - four o'clock in the morning, you know.  Which meant, get lost, make yourself scarce.  Which I did, I got dressed and went out and did go and walk the streets, sat on park benches, went round department stores, just to get lost in the crowd.  What turned out was that in fact as usual, everything happened earlier and the Jews were all arrested and rounded up, including old people, kids, everybody, and were made to stand in the central square of the town for a few hours where they were abused, spat upon, the rabbi was made to stamp on the Torah scrolls and various other terrible things.

 

And then after a few hours, round about four in the morning, the women and the older people - the kids were sent home, that's why my mother phoned me - the men including my father, were marched to a sort of auditorium which ironically had been presented to the town by a Jewish benefactor, and were kept there and then sent to Dachau concentration camp later the same day.  He was there about five or six weeks.  He was a church man, he never talked about it, very introspect, morose, he changed completely.