Thread by @AJRefugeeVoices

Isca Wittenberg's father Georg Salzberger was a Frankfurt rabbi:

"#Kristallnacht. We had a Jewish youth centre next to us. Huge glass windows. That was all smashed up. My parents weren't at home. We 3 girls were next door when this youth home was completely smashed up…"

1/9

"We were sitting pretty anxiously at on our own at home while this was going on. My middle sister, the calm one, said, ‘Let us knit or crochet or do things while this is going on.’ To try to calm us down until our parents came back again. But these were really terrible times…"

"In the night the synagogues were put on fire. No one came to put them out. People just stood around & watched. No police, no interference whatsoever. Then my father was taken to Dachau. He tried to hide but the SS tried to hunt where he was. They came day & night…"

3/9

"…wanted to know whoever called us on the telephone, hunted down those people. Our telephone was cut off. The people downstairs committed suicide. People knocking on the door all the time, waiting. The SS pointing at the picture of my eldest sister & saying 'he looks like that'"

"My father said, ‘I can’t do this to my family. I'll report myself.’ He went to the Gestapo & Dachau 4 days later. We as a rabbi’s family were a particular target too. They came one night, banged on the doors, said ‘You children, you’ve got to learn how to work!’"

5/9

"They made us get down the big Talmud volumes, forced us to throw them down into the yard from the third floor, threatened to take my mother away. My mother, who proved herself to be very courageous said, ‘No, you have no permission to arrest me.’ Which at that time they didn’t."

"She said, ‘I’m ringing the police.’ They left, but cut us off from telephone or any communication. Very dangerous. They frequently came into the house searching for papers, for addresses of other people and so on. My father was in Dachau. He was not a particularly strong man…"

"Standing in icy cold weather through the nights & beaten up extremely badly. There was a famous Jewish opera singer, they asked him to sing when they were beating up & making them do all sorts of things my father never talked about. He sang ‘In diesen heil'gen Hallen.’ Mozart."

After Georg Salzberger's release the family emigrated to Britain where he became the first rabbi of the ‘New Liberal Jewish Congregation’ (later @BelsizeSqSyn). The photos show the Salzbergers in Britain, ca1943 + Frankfurt, 1930 + Isca in 2006.

More: ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/RefugeeVoices/…