Kristallnacht memories still vivid to survivors — Two Omahans lived through the anti-Jewish riots in Hitler's Germany
The night the rifle butts pounded against his family's door, 16-year-old Joe Boin knew life as he knew it was over.
Soldiers dragged him from the house, knocking his screaming mother and sisters away. The soldiers took him to a marketplace in his hometown of Cottbus, Germany. There, they viciously beat Boin and dozens of other Jewish men. A mob spit on the men, hurled stones and insults at them, urged the soldiers on.
The crowd cheered and Boin watched helplessly as the soldiers pushed old men into a synagogue, then set it afire.
That night, 70 years ago on Nov. 9, the world began to shatter for Boin and millions of other European Jews. Soldiers and civilians torched thousands of synagogues, demolished Jewish homes, beat thousands of people, murdered 91 Jews, and hauled Jews away to Nazi concentration camps. The night of state-sanctioned anti-Jewish riots came to be known as "Kristallnacht," or "The Night of Broken Glass."
It was a foreshadowing of the Holocaust that was to come.
Boin, 85, and Bea Karp, 76, are among of a handful of Omahans still living who witnessed Kristallnacht. They are part of a dwindling number, about 35, of Holocaust survivors left in Omaha, once home to nearly 200 survivors.
The survivors' memories will be central to a commemoration this weekend of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1938. The free event, scheduled for 5 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. Sunday in the Joslyn Art Museum's Witherspoon Hall, will include film, music, photography and the testimony of people who lived through the terror.
The event is sponsored by the Institute for Holocaust Education, an Omaha division of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith.
"It's about Kristallnacht, but it's also a way to honor our survivors," said Beth Seldin Dotan, director of the institute. "This generation is dwindling, and it's very important to remember what they went through."
Boin and Karp spoke in separate interviews Friday in their Omaha homes about that night and what it meant to their lives.
Boin, a widower, is a retired locksmith. He and his late wife, Lilly, lived for 20 years in Jerusalem, before following their children, Gustav Boin and Heni Bond, to the United States. Joe and Lilly Boin moved to Omaha about 15 years ago after their daughter moved to Lincoln.
Joe, whose given name is Joachim, lives at the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home. He zips through the halls in a motorized wheelchair festooned with Husker, U.S. and Israeli flags and a toy license tag that reads "2Fast 4U." He joshes the staff frequently and regularly.
"Hey," he barked Friday at a woman pushing a tall cart stacked with trays. "You got a permit to drive that thing?"
She laughed.
"I live life looking forward," Boin said. "It's been a wonderful life."
Looking backward, he has seen life as ugly as it gets.
Before Kristallnacht, Hitler's Germany was difficult but bearable for Boin's family. He and his two sisters couldn't go to school any longer. Jews in the small city of Cottbus had to wear yellow Stars of David. People spit on them in the streets, called them "Dirty Jews." They were warned to stay in at night, because Jews were disappearing in the dark. A friendly Christian family next door did the Boins' grocery shopping for them.
Boin, whose father had fought as a German soldier in World War I, said his parents believed that things might not get worse, although relatives warned them to leave while they could.
Then came Kristallnacht.
"This night we came to realize that we had no chance to survive," Boin said. "We expected much worse to happen."
The soldiers let Boin go after Kristallnacht. But he was only free for about a month, just long enough to turn 17. A Jewish doctor fixed his hip, broken in the Kristallnacht beating, enough that Boin was able to work on forced labor crews. He was sent to a succession of concentration camps, including the notorious Auschwitz.
Amazingly, Boin's immediate family all survived. He escaped from a labor camp when it was bombed by Russians. A Jewish major in the Russian army helped him flee to Holland.
The lessons of Kristallnacht and the Holocaust remain relevant today, Boin said.
"We thought the world would intervene, but it didn't lift a finger," he said. "The same thing happened in the old Yugoslavia. It's happening in Darfur. The world hasn't changed."
Karp, then 6, lived in Karlsruhe, Germany, in 1938. Their family had lived in Germany since the 1600s. As Hitler's Germany grew hostile to Jews, an uncle argued that they should leave, but Karp's father wanted to stay.
After Kristallnacht, there was no escaping.
On that night, noise from the street awakened the family. Karp watched from the apartment window as her father rushed out to try to save religious articles from their burning synagogue.
He came home weeks later, muddy, bloody and sick. He recovered. But he did not survive the Holocaust. He was killed at Auschwitz. So was Bea Karp's mother. Bea and her sister were freed from a concentration camp in France by a French Jewish organization.
Like Boin, Karp still wonders, how could people have let Hitler come to power? How could the world have let the Holocaust happen?
"It is so important to vote, to take an interest in government, to not be prejudiced, to respect other people's views," Karp said. "You don't have to agree, but have respect."
