On November 9, Hitler used as an excuse the killing of a German diplomat in Paris to show the "spontaneous" planned assault on the Jewish Community. It was to show the world once and for all what he intended to do to the Jews of Germany and to see if anyone in the world would react. Thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses were destroyed and approximately 20, Jewish men were rounded up and sent to concentration camps on that day merely for the crime of being Jewish.
Augsburg sent about men to Dachau on November 10, This section is being created to tell the story of what happened. There are about a half a dozen of these men who are still alive, and I hope to get their stories posted. Here is a partial unofficial list of names of people who were arrested that night.
Please email me with the names of any more people or of any corrections. It relates the 24 hour period from the time his father goes to sleep in his bed in Augsburg until he goes to bed the next day in Dachau. It was November 9, and my 18 year old father and his family went to sleep in their apartment in Augsburg as usual after hearing on the radio that a 17 year old Jewish boy shot a German official in Paris.
His aunt who was to die a few years later in the camps answered the door. They entered the room and woke him up, telling him to get dressed and go with them. His parents now joined his aunt silently in the doorway as he passed by in his Lederhosen Bavarian leather short pants. As my father went to the local police station he passed the Synagogue while it was still smoldering. He saw all of the lines of fire hoses on the ground. The fire engines were watering down the surrounding buildings and were letting the Synagogue burn in a rather controlled and strange fashion.
He was the first person brought to the police station and had no idea of why he was arrested. At first he thought it might be for kissing an Aryan girl or some violation like that. But when he saw more Jewish men being brought into the cell, he knew something else was up. He had just turned eighteen years of age that summer, so he was the youngest and probably the shortest man arrested.
