I was able to have a sefer Torah written, as I had intended when I witnessed its protection on Kristallnacht
Of course, the seforim store was busy all year round, not just before Succos, and my father also published his own edition of the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch. During World War I, my father had served in the Wehrmacht, the German army. During his service he had met many “lands-Yidden” [country Jews] and they’d tell him how lucky he was to live in a large community, “because if you have a sh’eilah, you can ask a rav.” He made a neder at that time that he would have the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch translated into German for the benefit of these Jews in far-flung places. In 1936, he fulfilled his promise by publishing the Kitzur in German. It was available in a series of 12 small pamphlets and was reprinted in Basle after the war.
Back then, I attended the Hirsch Realschule, one of the Jewish schools of Frankfurt. The school building was next to a non-Jewish gymnasium, or high school. When both schools finished around the same time, the non-Jewish students would chase the Yidden and beat them up. I was chased many times — that was just the norm. So at some point we began to finish school a quarter of an hour earlier, giving us a chance to get out of the way before the gymnasium finished.
Stone-throwing was normal too. The Hitlerjugende (Hitler Youth) were untouchable. They used to say that not even their parents dared object or touch them as long as they were wearing their brown uniform shirts — so they would wait to give them a beating until they had gotten into pajamas.
One of the first decrees of the Nazi party once they were in power was to forbid shechitah. So from 1933 until we left Germany, we had no meat, only fish. Of course, no one dared defy the law.
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