These restricting new laws didn’t seem to have had a profound impact on Lutz’s enjoyment of life, partly because he was well protected from adverse events by his parents, and being young he was easily able to adapt his own social life accordingly. However, he was aware at that time that Liesl’s parents (her architect father was Aryan, her mother Jewish) were forced to observe the anti-intermarrying laws resulting in their immediate divorce. The Eichbaums learnt about the increasingly threatening and divisive activities of Hitler mainly from the newspapers, and to a lesser extent from the radio. As a teenager growing up in these times, Lutz was aware of an insidious rise in tension and increase in restrictions when out in public areas, and he noticed the proliferation of Nazi flags waved in the streets and displayed in people’s windows; also the foreboding anti-Jewish slurs and yellow ‘Stars of David’ painted on abandoned shops and buildings. His non-Jewish friends and acquaintances were afraid of getting into trouble if they associated with him so they tended to keep their distance. Lutz was inclined to accept his parents’ interpretation of events and naturally, as their only son, they were keen to protect him from the intensifying intolerance and its sinister implications. However, Fritz and Gretl could not prevent their son from experiencing some victimisation first hand.
There were many theatres and an opera house in Nuremberg and, before the cultural restrictions were imposed, Lutz used to enjoy live entertainment. He remembers the last occasion, attending the opera with his school friend Franz to see a performance of ‘Die Fleidermaus’. Although he wasn’t particularly musical, this was a favourite opera of his and he waited for the curtain to rise in happy anticipation. It was a full house and Lutz noticed many Nazi officers seated in front of him wearing their distinctive swastika-emblazoned uniforms. Unfortunately for Lutz and Franz, Adolf Hitler was also in attendance that night, and before the curtain went up an announcement was made that all Jews should leave the opera house immediately. Lutz and Franz had no choice but to join the bewildered and humiliated crowd of outcasts and they quickly left the opera building.
Shortly afterwards Lutz encountered this prejudice face to face. He was walking alone when a Nazi soldier stopped him on the footpath and asked him for street directions. Lutz immediately and helpfully described the route, then mid-sentence the soldier asked him if he was Jewish. On hearing his answer the soldier’s tone turned cold and he said, ‘ I don’t want to know the way’ and briskly walked off. Lutz could have been mistaken for being non-Jewish because of his fair hair and blue-eyed looks; he certainly didn’t conform to the ridiculous caricature of Jews as depicted by German propaganda. At fifteen, Lutz and Trudi were spending much of their spare time together. She was slim and dark-featured, and although having a serious side to her nature, was quick to laugh at Lutz’s jokes. They enjoyed each other’s companionship and spent many hours walking around the streets of Nuremberg, their preferred walk taking them up to the circular tower, capped with a peaked turret; it was a main feature of the city landscape. Their relationship didn’t last long as Lutz had to leave Germany about six months later. Lutz never saw Trudi again. After the war he discovered through a mutual acquaintance that she had been transported to a concentration camp. She survived this experience but tragically, shortly after her release, Trudi committed suicide.
The Growing Terror
The terror was stepped up with fresh business boycotts, which prevented people going about their daily work, and a prominent synagogue was deliberately destroyed by fire. Businesses were closing down or owners were being extorted to sell their livelihoods at a fraction of their worth. Unemployment among Jews was increasing rapidly, which was exacerbated by Nazi decrees that led to a significant proportion of civil servants being dismissed from their jobs, which were subsequently filled by Aryans. This included lawyers, doctors and then teachers as well as lower status workers.
Public degradation and harassment reached a climax with one particular episode that brought the reality of anti-Jewish hostility directly into every Jewish home. It occurred shortly after the annual Nazi party meeting held in Nuremberg. This was the infamous event of Kristallnacht on 9 November 1938. The Nazis retaliated violently following the shooting death in Paris by a young Polish Jew of one of their officials, the German Embassy’s Third Secretary. The entire Jewish community was blamed as a pretext for the Nazis to begin their ferocious campaign to rid Germany and Austria of their Jewish population. The reprisals fired off throughout Germany, resulting in synagogues being set aflame, businesses destroyed and Jews humiliated, injured and killed.
Lutz and his family were aware of the increasingly hostile activities of the storm-troopers or ‘Brownshirts’ as they marched through the streets of Nuremberg, singing anti-Jewish songs and shouting out racial slogans. Their own business and home had been attacked on previous occasions by Hitler youth who threw stones at the windows and painted anti-Jewish vulgarisms on the adjacent walls.
The Brownshirts arrived at the Eichbaums’ home early one morning. The family could hear the storm-troopers wreaking havoc from a long way off, then the approach of stomping boots before they eventually arrived at their door. They had hoped to be spared in spite of hearing otherwise; word had quickly got around that no Jewish family in Nuremberg would escape the violence of the Nazis’ retribution. There was shouting and loud knocks at the door, stones were being thrown at their ground-floor windows. They had no choice but to accept the inevitable and open the door. The troopers burst past them scarcely giving the family a second glance. They wore uniforms boasting a swastika on the right arm and knee-length boots – six or seven of them carrying an assortment of tools – hatchets and axes. Lutz had been told to stay in his bedroom but he insisted they stay together; his parents had assured him that everything was going to be all right. They were all ordered to sit in the living room. They dared not show fear, not any emotion, just silently watching as the troopers went to work smashing mirrors, crockery and glass. The invaders moved on down the corridor checking each room until they came to Lutz’s bedroom. There was a mirror in his room and from their designated position on the couch they could hear as it was smashed to pieces. Ten minutes later the storm-troopers had completed their mission and moved on to the next Jewish household.
Afterwards, as Lutz’s father was sweeping up the debris, pieces of broken glass and crockery strewn around their home, Lutz must have wondered whether they would ever be able to put back the shattered pieces of their lives; certainly things would never be the same again. Lutz watched silently, staring dazedly as his parents cleared up the mess.
This event was a definitive turning point for the Eichbaum family – indeed for all Jewish families throughout Germany. The situation was about to get much, much worse and their days together were numbered.
After the raid Lutz’s father telephoned Theo and Adele as well as a few of their closest friends. It seemed that everyone had fared differently. The Eichbaums were surprised that they seemed to have got off relatively lightly and they hugged Lutz in their relief.
Lutz and his family’s experience of this night seemed somewhat different to his friends’ accounts. He remembers the storm-troopers arriving in the morning whereas most of the damage seemed to have been done during the previous night. It is probable that by the next morning the storm-troopers had run out of some of their vengeful steam and that saved Lutz and his family from a much worse experience.
The next day the school was closed, and they discovered the result of the night’s vandalism and looting, Jewish stores and cafés smashed and synagogues still burning; the almost deserted streets smouldered with the reek of smoke.
Lutz’s friend Liesl described her experience of being herded into the market square with hundred of others,