Pogrom of November 1938 in north-west Germany
Ainslie Hepburn • November 11, 2024
During the late evening of 9 November 1938, word came through to Nazi leaders in Germany that the German diplomat Ernst von Rath had died in Paris after an assassination attempt on him by a young Polish Jew, Herschel Grünspan. A chaotic night of revenge and retaliation against all Jewish communities in Germany followed that would change their lives for ever.
Synagogues were burnt and destroyed, Jewish homes and properties smashed, and Jewish businesses wrecked. The attacks were led by paramilitary forces of the Nazi party, aided by members of the Hitler youth and German civilians. Local authorities looked on and did not intervene. Fire brigades were ordered to protect only neighbouring – non-Jewish – buildings.
In Jever, the synagogue was set alight at about 2.30am. The home of one of the leaders of the community, Hermann Gröschler, was trashed by Hitler youth who took away the family's linen, stole works of art, silver, and clothes, and arrogantly smoked Hermann's cigars in front of his wife, Anne, whom they treated offensively. All the local Jews were arrested and taken to the nearby prison.
Similarly, in Wilhelmshaven the synagogue was burnt, Jewish property demolished, and Jews arrested. Henny and Hermann Hartog, together with their eleven-year old daughter, Inge, and Henny's father, Adolf Scheuer, were taken with others to the Jahnhalle – a large hall for local events.
Parallel actions took place in Aurich. While the synagogue burnt, members of Hermann's family were arrested during the night and taken to the agricultural auction hall known as the Bullenhalle. Many of the Jews in Aurich were quite elderly but even so they were rounded up and driven through the streets to the hall with only makeshift clothing. There, they were subjected to insults, abuse, and violence.
On the morning of 10 November, the women, children, and elderly men were allowed to go back to their homes – which they often discovered had been wrecked during the night. For many women, one memory of that night was of feathers floating from the duvets that had been slashed by the Nazis.
Hermann Hartog was not allowed home. With most of the other Jewish men in Wilhelmshaven, he was marched through the streets to the railway station – past the still-smouldering synagogue and the ranks of hostile civilians.
The men were put on a special train that took them to Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin. On the way, the train stopped to pick up other Jewish men – including those from Jever and Aurich. At Sachsenhausen, there were more than 6,000 Jews from the larger area, and they all became subjected to a terrifying regime where they were controlled with dogs and whips. None of them knew whether they would ever be released.
Henny returned to her home in Wilhelmshaven with Inge and her elderly father. The following day, Hermann's sister, Berta, visited her from Aurich on the bus and the two women shared their traumatic experiences and talked together about how best to organise and re-establish their households with none of their menfolk at home. Henny found Berta to be 'very melancholy' - and no doubt she felt the same herself.
(the photo shows the ruins of the synagogue in Jever on 10 November 1938)
On Monday 19 April 1880, Emily Louisa Brown started her first day at school. She walked from her home at 45 St Alban's Street to Walnut Tree Walk School, which was just a few yards away round the corner in the neighbouring street. She was 5 years and 10 days old. 45 St Alban's Street was a two-storey house and the Brown family occupied one floor, with the Apps family living in the other half of the house. Both Emily's father, Benjamin, and Maynard Apps worked as carmen, possibly for the nearby Bethlem Lunatic Asylum (now the Imperial War Museum). Maynard's wife, Caroline, worked – probably from home – making artificial flowers. On the day that Emily first went to school, she left her younger sisters, Sarah and Mary Ann, at her home with their mother, and joined Alfred and Arthur Apps (7 and 5 years old) at school. There were children of a similar age in every house in the street so she must have already known many of her fellow pupils. Four months later, on 19 August 1880, she was joined at school by her sister, Sarah Maria, who was then just a few weeks away from her fourth birthday. The school was a typical three-storey building built in red brick, similar to many others built by the School Board in London. In most such schools, the youngest children were taught on the ground floor and the top two floors were used by the older boys and girls. There were estimated to be about 100,000 poor working-class children in London at the time that the Board was set up in 1870 and it was hoped to create enough school places for them. Although schooling was not compulsory nationally until 1880, the London School Board passed a by-law in 1871 requiring parents to send their children to school between the ages of five and thirteen. The Board aimed to provide modern, high-quality schools and it was partly due to the provision of such schools that by the end of the 1880s, there were school places in London for more than 350,000 children. Nationally, the curriculum for the teaching in schools could be quite narrow. The government's requirements very much focussed on the traditional 'three Rs', but the London Board attempted a more liberal standard of education and included elementary science, history, singing, geometry (for boys) and needlework (for girls) amongst those subjects taught. After leaving school, Emily put her needlework skills to good use and worked as a mantle maker, sewing women's outer garments similar to a cape. (photo shows the school logbook entry for Emily's school admission)
A few years after Ethel May Smith was escaping on her bicycle from the family and societal pressures of the east of London, a young man in very different circumstances was grateful for the two wheels of his bicycle to be able to get away into the countryside with his friends. Herbert Sulzbach – unlike Ethel May – was born into a very rich family. He was the son of a banker in Frankfurt, Germany, and benefited from a privileged home life, an excellent education, and an assured lifestyle. But this brought its own expectations of success that he did not always feel able to meet. In April 1911, when this photo was taken, Herbert was seventeen years old. His father already owned one of the first Adler cars and Herbert was entranced by the possibilities of travel. He thoroughly enjoyed the car rides into the neighbouring forests with the family's chauffeur, Herr Blank. Later, Herbert would himself own cars that he would drive with great enthusiasm through Germany and Italy. (And in the First World War he would hanker after being able to fly aeroplanes.) But in 1911 he was just pleased to get out of Frankfurt on his bicycle and enjoy the nearby countryside. He and his friends would get up early and by five o'clock in the morning they would be ready to cycle into the surrounding woods. Herbert was not an academic scholar, and he did not enjoy banking, so cycling into the localities where he and his friends could enjoy the flowers and the healing powers of nature was a welcome and powerful release from family expectations. He particularly remembered his early morning forays into the forests in May, listening to birdsong. Herbert would ride also to school at the Goethe Gymnasium on his bike, and many years later he recalled first the anxiety, and then the thrill, that he felt at the time seeing his girlfriend, Mieze Kindervatter, riding her bike towards him from the opposite direction. In later years, after he had fought in the First World War, he felt trapped in the world of banking where he then found himself – so got on to his bike to visit his parents and talk with them about his future employment prospects. For young people in the early years of the twentieth century (in different countries) a bicycle represented an existence independent of their family, the possibility of different – and more radical – prospects, and an exciting new future. (the photo shows, left to right, Hans, Hedwig, Hertha, Karl, and Herbert Sulzbach in Frankfurt April 1911)
The bicycle became a powerful symbol of independence and liberation for many young women in the early years of the twentieth century. I will never cease to be amazed that my grandmother, Ethel May Smith, chose to have a studio photograph taken of herself standing proudly at the side of her bicycle – which she presumably wheeled into the studio. But this picture speaks volumes of the young woman that she was – and the example that she gave to her granddaughters. Ethel (later called Hettie by her husband, but I don't know what she was called as a girl) left school at the age of about twelve and worked as a shirtmaker – specifically as a collar-maker. When she was 15 years old, in 1901, she was working as a 'shirt machinist' and living at 57, Commerell Street in Greenwich. The following year, the pedestrian tunnel under the Thames was opened, connecting Greenwich to the Isle of Dogs. Although cycling in the tunnel was prohibited, Ethel rode her bicycle under the river - from her home near the entrance, to her work in a factory on the north side, where she eventually rose to supervise machinists in the collar-making section. In her occasional free time from the factory, Ethel rode her bike away from the poor streets of Greenwich into the nearby Kent countryside, where she no doubt met with other bicycle enthusiasts. Cycling was an absolute craze during the early years of the twentieth century – and Ethel relished the freedom that her bicycle gave her, as well as the freedom of the clothes that had been adapted for the female cyclist. Although an extravagant hat seems to have always been part of her outfit. Ethel's enthusiasm for two- or four-wheeled vehicles met that of a young police officer from the area, Wilfred Percy Reeve. I do not know whether or not they belonged to any of the many cycling clubs that sprang up on the edges of south-east London at that time but they both had an energetic approach to life and a dashing bravura that challenged many of the accepted conventions of society. Bicycles – and later cars – were a way whereby they each tried to escape the restrictions of their lives. Ethel May Smith and Wilfred Percy Reeve were married on 22 January 1910 in Ethel's local church – All Hallows, East India Dock Road, in the heart of London's dockland. (the photo shows Ethel with her bicycle, posed for a studio photograph)
They had arrived in Aix in a hurry – by train from the south-west of France. As soon as they were given permission to leave their refuge in the little village of Arette, Henny and Hermann had made arrangements to travel to Marseille to try to expedite their emigration to the USA. It was April 1941 and they were very apprehensive – partly because of the enormity of the possibilities and partly because they feared that their paperwork was incomplete. They had not even had the chance to inform their young daughters in England about what they were doing. They decided not to try to find accommodation in Marseille because the city was already crammed with others trying to leave, and also because of the extra expense there. Instead, they found a room in Aix en Provence, at 16 rue de la Couronne – about half an hour away from Marseille, and close to the Jewish community and synagogue there. They had permission to be away from their refuge for four weeks but this extended to seven as Henny went from one official to another, from one committee to another, to gather the required documents. Meanwhile, Hermann took his place at the synagogue, taught and gave lectures, and played the harmonium there. Henny was eventually successful in acquiring the many necessary papers, and was given a provisional visa for herself and Hermann to travel to America – provisional on obtaining the tickets for the ship from Marseille to the USA. Neither of them had any money for the fare (which was hundreds of dollars), fewer ships were risking the journey across the Atlantic, and America was just announcing completely new rules for immigration. So, for Henny and Hermann, emigration had become an impossibility and they made their way back to Arette. Hermann recognised what was at stake during their visit, and on the first day that Henny left Aix to go the American Consulate in Marseille, he wrote to his daughters, 'Your mother is so courageous and has supported me so well and strongly in every emergency. She never despairs and bears all difficulties and emergencies with me. You must never forget that, no matter what fate brings, and what else happens with us and you.' Henny and Hermann returned to their good friends in Arette but they were never able to emigrate, and they never saw their daughters again. (photo shows the front door to 16, rue de la Couronne, Aix, where they rented a room)
It wasn't an April Fool's joke. Part way through Adolf Hitler's speech to a massed crowd of 80,000 people in front of the City Hall in Wilhelmshaven, the radio transmission abruptly failed. Those listening throughout Germany on their radios feared that their Führer had been assassinated but the truth was more prosaic – Hitler was delivering such a vitriolic speech that the radio engineers and their superiors considered it would be better if the rest of the world did not hear it in case foreign nations viewed it as war provocation. It was 1 April 1939 and Hitler was in Wilhelmshaven to launch the new German battleship, ' Tirpitz '. Named after Grand Admiral Alfred Tirpitz, who was the architect of the German Imperial Navy, the hull of the battleship was launched by his grand-daughter with great ceremony at the Wilhelmshaven navy dockyard. On the same day, Adolf Hitler was awarded the Freedom of the City at a grand ceremony in the City Hall after his speech in the square outside. Henny and Hermann Hartog were not in Wilhelmshaven during Hitler's visit. Hermann no longer had a job as a Jewish teacher there, and since ' Kristallnacht ' they had not been allowed to live in their apartment in the city because it was not owned by a Jew. So, they had returned to Hermann's home town of Aurich, where his sister owned the family home, and they were busy doing everything they could to escape from Germany. Later that month, Henny travelled to see her family in Frankfurt – partly to say goodbye before leaving the country, and partly to prepare a new home for her father in her uncle's house. The battleship ' Tirpitz ' was sunk by the British Navy on 12 November 1944. On Thursday 6 February 2025, almost 86 years after the City's award to Adolf Hitler in the Main Aula of the City Hall, I stood in the same building and the same place as him – at the invitation of the City of Wilhelmshaven - to tell the story of Henny and Hermann Hartog. There was a maximum capacity audience and the empathy from the people of Wilhelmshaven was heart-warming. (the photo shows Hitler outside Wilhelmshaven City Hall on 1 April 1939)
My grandmother, Ethel Chapple (née Fryer), worked as a domestic servant before she was married. Like most others, she changed her position every two or three years – there was considerable demand for their services as the nineteenth century changed into the twentieth. Many of the houses where Ethel worked belonged to members of the clergy. In the spring of 1901, on Sunday 31 March, a national census was undertaken. This date was exactly one week before Easter Sunday. As it happened, Ethel was in her employer's house that day – the Vicarage of St Bartholomew's Church at Areley Kings in Worcestershire – where she worked at different times as a housemaid and parlourmaid. If the census had taken place two weeks earlier (three weeks before Easter) it is unlikely that she would have been there. The Sunday three weeks before Easter has traditionally been when Mothering Sunday has been celebrated. My grandmother told me how she was always allowed the day off from work for Mothering Sunday, so that she could go home to visit her mother. Areley Kings is about fifteen miles south of Ethel's home and I do not know how she made the journey, or if she was allowed slightly longer in order to be able to take the train. Ethel's home was in an isolated hamlet in Broad Lanes, near Bridgnorth, in Shropshire. She told me that as she walked along the narrow lanes closer to home, she would always pick a bouquet of spring flowers from the hedgerows to take as a gift for her mother, Hannah. In return, she knew that when she arrived home she would find that her mother had baked a simnel cake for them all to share. The simnel cake was baked to a traditional recipe passed on from Hannah's mother – and later to me. It was a fruit cake with a layer of almond marzipan across it midway. On the top was another circle of marzipan, decorated with eleven balls of marzipan - and this had been toasted in the oven or under a flame. The eleven balls of marzipan represented the eleven disciples who were loyal to Jesus. When Ethel left to return to work, she always took a generous portion of the cake back with her. Every Mothering Sunday, while Ethel was at home, the family attended the celebratory service at their nearby church. The Church of the Holy Innocents at Tuck Hill stands in an idyllic setting on the top of a hill and in spring-time is surrounded by drifts of daffodils and a glorious mass of wild spring flowers. It was a magical time for Ethel when she was pleased to be able to go home, and she kept the memories alive throughout her long life. (the photo shows the Vicarage at Areley Kings where Ethel worked as housemaid and parlourmaid)
In March 1942, Hermann Hartog was working as an agricultural labourer for a local farmer in Arette – François Casabonne. It was an unusual arrangement as François had offered employment to Hermann, a refugee Jewish teacher, in order to have him released from a labour camp. While Hermann was willing to work in whatever way helped François, both men also enjoyed talking together at the end of the day and sharing their thoughts. It was clear to François that Hermann and his wife needed some space where – like every other villager – they could grow some vegetables to supplement their food rations. There was a corner of a field that François owned that was both unproductive and also unsuitable as pasture for his cattle - a triangular space, at the side of the road up to his farm, and close to the steep edge of the field where he kept his cows. He offered it to Hermann and Henny as a garden, dug it over for them, and left them to cultivate it. The Hartogs were delighted with this opportunity, and deeply grateful to François for his kindness and generosity. Henny was enthusiastic about the garden's possibilities and wrote to her daughters in England, 'By chance, we got a piece of earth from a good farmer where Vati works, which he dug over for us, and it will be a beautiful vegetable garden, because vegetables are rare here. I have a lot of work to do before it is alright, but I enjoy it and I work in it like a peasant woman. I have already planted peas, garlic, lettuce. Now come onions, carrot, spinach, cabbage, radishes, beans, potatoes, beetroot. I am already looking forward to the harvest.' Henny often worked late into the evening in the garden and enjoyed it, although the work exhausted her. She quite soon discovered that her initial programme had been quite ambitious – especially for someone with no gardening experience at all. The land had previously been part of a meadow and she and Hermann were faced with a constant battle against weeds and vermin. As François remembered many years later, 'Hermann trapped the moles in my fields but he did not destroy them in his own garden because he thought that they were good for aerating the soil.' The garden gave Henny and Hermann a physical activity that they shared with all their neighbours in the village, and it was a also a clear symbol of the kindness, generosity, and friendship of the brave people in Arette who tried to give meaningful help to two refugees. (the photo shows François Casabonne making cheese outside his farmhouse, in about the 1970s)
Neustadtgödens is a small town in north-west Germany, about 20km south of Jever, where in the 1920s and 1930s Hermann Hartog worked as the Jewish teacher. He also had the care and concern of Jewish communities outside Jever and so regularly visited Neustadtgödens to teach the children there and also on occasions to take services at the synagogue. By the 1920s, the Jewish population had diminished to about 28 people (about five per cent of the town's population) and Hermann was visiting to teach just four children. The Jewish community in Neustadtgödens struggled on for a few more years under an increasingly powerful Nazi presence in the area. In 1936, the synagogue was issued with an order to close by the local Nazi authorities, who alleged an unstable roof and disrepair. Although this was subsequently proved untrue, the community had by then become so reduced that there were insufficient members – only twelve - to maintain the building. On 15 March 1936, a final 'celebratory' service was held at the synagogue. The rabbi of the province, Samuel Blum, attended and Jews came from far and wide for the occasion. The synagogue choir from Jever attended under the direction of Hermann Hartog and the soloist from Jever, Rudolf Gutentag, sang. Dr Blum gave a sermon and chose from Psalm 43 as his text: ''What are you grieving for, my soul? And why are you so restless within me?” Memories of the event have been passed down over the years, and it has been said that the singing rose the roof and that it was a magnificent and joyous occasion – albeit a farewell. The synagogue was packed and music and singing filled the building. Two years later, the synagogue was sold to a non-Jewish carpenter from Wilhelmshaven. So, when the pogrom against the Jews took place in November 1938, the synagogue in Neustadtgödens was not burnt down – to have destroyed the property of an Aryan would have resulted in claims for damages. But the local Jewish men were still arrested on that night, and their money and valuables were confiscated before they were taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, along with other Jews from the area. Today, the building that was once the Jewish synagogue still stands in Neustadtgödens and is cared for by curators from the Schloss Museum in Jever. It has been transformed into a powerful reminder of the Jewish heritage of the town and informs the visitor of its history. (the photo shows the synagogue as it is today)
On Thursday 10 March 1921, Henny Scheuer married Hermann Hartog in Frankfurt am Main. Their civil marriage was followed by a celebration in the synagogue on the following Sunday, 13 March. Henny was aged 23 and Hermann was 34 years old. Hermann was a Jewish teacher and cantor from the north-west of Germany. He had been born in Aurich, a small town close to the border with the Netherlands, and at the time was working as a teacher in the thriving city of Jever. After their marriage, Henny and Hermann made their first home in Jever – at Schlosserstraße 23 Henny came from a wealthy Jewish family and was well-educated, as far as the expectations of the time allowed. She had been to a finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland, and was not only well versed in organising a Jewish household with a kosher kitchen, but was also proficient in French and English, playing the piano, and other social niceties. We know that she took a considerable amount of money, as well as a quantity of linens and jewellery, into her marriage. Her wealth and social standing, as well as her clear intelligence, married well with Hermann's intellectual and educated accomplishments and strong family background. They remained a united and loving team throughout their lives. Hermann was acutely aware of the moral strength of the woman he had married, and made sure that their daughters recognised it, too. In May 1941, when he and Henny were struggling to find a way to find safety for their family, he wrote to them, 'Everything is very difficult for us here, even more difficult than in the village. But your mother is so courageous and has supported me so well and strongly in every emergency. I have to write this to you without her knowing it, so that you can keep in mind for your whole life what kind of mother you have. She never despairs and bears all difficulties and every emergency with me. You must never forget that, no matter what fate brings, and what else happens with us and with you. You are not so small any more and must already understand that. May God protect all four of us and bring us together again!' Henny was, indeed, a rock for their family. When she and Hermann were eventually deported from their safe-seeming village in France, their neighbours bore witness to her courage, her smile and encouragement for her husband – and to Hermann's own strength of resolve. Henny and Hermann Hartog had a strong and remarkable bond that sustained both them and their daughters through some of the darkest years of the 20 th century. (photo shows a copy of Henny and Hermann's marriage certificate)
In early March 1913, Herbert Sulzbach – the son of a very rich banker in Frankfurt, Germany – failed the Abitur , his final school exam. Since he didn't plan to go to university, and his employment was assured in the family bank, this was of no great consequence for his career. However, the six month world tour promised by his father was downsized to a shorter three-month visit to Italy, Sicily and north Africa with his private tutor as a result of this academic failure. The tutor, Dr Bernhard Löffler, was ten years older than Herbert, and the two young men set out on their trip on 23 March 1913. They travelled via Trieste to Venice, where they stayed for a few days at the Hotel Royal Danieli on the Grand Canal before continuing to Algeria – by sea, in a violent night-time storm. Their ten-day visit to Algiers was hectic, as they explored the local sights, including being transported on one excursion 'on two really obstinate Yemen animals'. Herbert recorded it all in long letters to his parents, 'Then in the evening we went with the hotel waiter to the town, first to the casino and then to the gaming rooms to play roulette, where I won 21 – 28 francs, and then lost them all again. On the twelfth was a ball to which we were invited, which went on until early morning.' Not surprisingly, they ran out of money – spending a fortune shopping for carpets and pictures, buying champagne, and losing at roulette. But a quick cable to Herbert's father ensured further funds and they were able to continue their journey to Constantine, El Kantara, and Biskra. Somewhere along the way, they caught two fenek foxes, which they fed with snakes and lizards in their hotel rooms. They later presented these to the zoo in Frankfurt. And so their journey continued – a rich boy's initiation into travel, the wider world, and different customs. It was a privileged world that would soon disappear, but it taught him about human experience, different ways of thinking, and the foibles of the human character. That entire world collapsed within a few years, but Herbert Sulzbach took from it the excitement of a journey, empathy with others from a different culture, and the need to adapt one's experience to communicate with people who held different view-points, beliefs, and expectations. Others would later benefit from the lessons he learnt on those travels. (the photo shows Herbert Sulzbach with his bicycle - decorated for Margueritentag in 1910)