Relative luck
Total destruction and a little bit of luck
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“Not one piece remained intact in our home. All the dishes broken, edibles flung onto the floor, flour, sugar etc., all scattered, part of it trampled on, like cake etc., you can't imagine.”
Ludwigshafen/New York
Richard Neubauer was lucky. When, during the November pogroms, throughout the night from the 9th to the 10th (later known as “Kristallnacht” or “Night of Broken Glass”), Nazi thugs destroyed the property of his relatives in Germany, he was already in safety in New York. In this letter, his brother Fritz describes to him in vivid detail the horrific destruction wrought upon Jews and their belongings and the terror caused by the brutality. The Neubauer brothers had inherited the Neubauer Print Shop in Ludwigshafen. Due to the destruction of the free press through its forced conformity under the Nazis, the print shop had lost all its business. Thanks to some lucky coincidences, Fritz, his wife Ruth, and their two children were in possession of train tickets making it possible to legally cross the border into Switzerland. Ruth had managed to salvage them from the wreckage of their furniture.
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Institution:
Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin
Collection:
Otto Neubauer Collection, AR 25339
Original:
on the days before
Curated by Leo Baeck Institute – New York | Berlin © 2018 Leo Baeck Institute
Website and exhibition design by C&G Partners
