[The following is told from the perspective of a twelve-year-old German Jewish boy named Herbert Karliner in 1939. His story covers his family’s experience during the infamous Kristallnacht, and their subsequent attempt to flee the country on the S. S. St. Louis, hoping to take up as refugees in Cuba. Here, he relates a tragedy that had befallen a family member while the family was still in Germany.]
Even Herbert’s closest friends – two non-Jewish brothers – turned on him and began calling him a “dirty Jew.” When Herbert’s father, Joseph, learned what had happened, he took Herbert and confronted the boy’s dad, who was a friend of the family.
”My boy didn’t do anything wrong,” Herbert’s father told the friend. “Tell your sons to leave him alone.”
The friend replied, “I’m sorry, Joseph, but I can’t do anything. If I try to stop them, other people will give me hell, and then the police will come and pick me up.”
Herbert knew how true that was. His uncle Paul had made a critical remark about Hitler that someone overheard, and the next day he was taken to a concentration camp in Dachau, Germany. A few weeks later, an SS officer showed up at the door of Herbert’s aunt, handed her a small box, and said, “Here, you can have your husband back.” Inside were his ashes.
Source:
Zullo, Allan, and Mara Bovsun. “Is There No Country in the Entire World That Will Take Us? Herbert Karliner’s Story.” Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust. Scholastic, 2004. PAGE. Print.
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