Exhausted Jewish refugee children after their arrival from Germany at Harwich, Essex
When Hitler rose to power in 1933, Feige Mendzigursky, who lived in Leipzig, Germany, was eight years old. Though nationwide attacks on Jews, boycotts of Jewish businesses, and book burnings had become common, she remembered little except Nazi flags flying everywhere and ‘the SS parading, you know how they did with their goose steps...’. But she wasn’t particularly frightened.
Two years later, the Nuremberg Laws, based on Germany’s meticulous birth, baptismal, marriage and death records, classified people as full, half, or quarter-Jews – those with a single Jewish grandparent. In addition to prohibiting marriage between Jews and non-Jews, they also revoked the citizenship of full Jews and those with Jewish spouses.
In 1938, when Feige was 13, arrests and detentions in German concentration camps had become common. Like any preteen, however, she was more concerned with school, sports, and friends. After Germany annexed Austria, however, the situation deteriorated further. In late October, the SS abruptly deported thousands of Jews with Polish passports to the border. Denied entry by the Poles, they were stranded in no-man’s land, living under deplorable conditions. When Hershel Grynszpan, a German-born Jew living in Paris, learned that his parents were among them, in reprisal, he assassinated a German diplomat.
In retaliation, Brown Shirt storm troopers, Hitler youth, and civilians, armed with axes, sledgehammers, crowbars, and bombs went on a Government-approved, nationwide rampage of destruction. They not only closed Jewish schools and organisations, but also plundered and torched hundreds of synagogues, stores, and businesses. In addition, they dragged scores of Jews from households, hospitals, orphanages, and old age homes, trampling or beating them in the streets.
Others were arrested. ‘We had moved to a different flat [where] over the bathroom was a tiny, little attic,’ Feige recalled. ‘One day we heard the Nazis coming up the stairs... and my father hid in this attic. ... he came down eventually when we thought the danger had passed, and a few days afterwards they still got him and that’s when they sent him to Buchenwald.’