Berlin, October 28, 1938: Betty Bloom's father Joseph Schütz is deported back to Poland as part of the Polenaktion:

"Unfortunately, at 6am, there was a knock on the door & two Gestapo officers marched in & arrested my father. He didn't even have time to say goodbye to us. They took him down the stairs. He was on the first transport of Polish Jews to—you know—deported from Berlin to a place on the Polish border. The Poles wouldn't let him in. They were left there in October without any clothes, without anything, without any heating, for months. They couldn't go back; they couldn't go forward until the Poles eventually relented & let them into Poland.

My father made contact with his family. In Poland he went first to stay with his mother in a place called Nowy Sącz, not far from Jaslo near the Czech border. I don't know how long he was there for. We had one or two calls from him. I had a cousin left in Berlin who sent parcels to my father because she was in hiding but she managed to send parcels to my father which I've never forgotten.

I know he ended up in Buchenwald eventually because a survivor from Buchenwald made contact with my mother & came & told her that he was with him in Buchenwald in '44. At the end of '44, beginning '45. I assume he was in the death march from Buchenwald to Bergen-Belsen. 15 years ago my husband & I went to Auschwitz. We searched the records in Auschwitz but found no record of my father. I don't know the exact date that the Red Cross contacted us & informed us that the last record they have of my father is in Bergen-Belsen in January 1945, which to us was the worst news we could have had. Because to survive from '38 to '45 & then to die like this.

Now after these deportations to Poland was the Kristallnacht because one of the people whose parents were deported—you probably know his name, a young man, Grynszpan. He was so angry that he killed a German in Paris which gave the Nazis the excuse for for Kristallnacht.

Following Kristallnacht, I was very aware of what's going on because even at 7 or 8, at the end of our road, there was a display panel for Der Stürmer—the Nazi magazine. I read it. I read anything I could read. They made, there was a sign on our shop saying "Kauft nicht bei Juden", don't buy from Jews, even before my father was deported. So, I was well aware of what was going on. So then my mother's brother was sending his children to England, on the Kindertransport. And my older sister Ruth started to say we must do the same."

Betty Bloom

Memories

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