Kristallnacht: Night of Broken Glass

There's a story in my family about my grandfather. Memory doesn't serve me on whether or not it, in fact, took place on Kristallnacht, or I always think about it around Kristallnacht because of the imagery. Either way, it's one that I always think of today. But I don't think it's ever been put down. So I'm doing that today.

My grandfather's name was Baruch Wasser. Most people, however, knew him as Bernard Wasser. In all the pictures I've seen of him, he reminds me of Telly Savalas, only with a softer expression in his face. I'm not sure he ever had hair. He had eyebrows, that I can see. He was born in Prussia, and raised in an Orthodox family. He was a talmudic scholar, and part of a very loving family. In his early adolescence, however, the Russian armies were forcibly inducting young boys, Jewish boys, into the army. It was certain death and, despite the implications of what it meant, his father sent him away, knowing it was likely neither would see each other, or speak, again. And, so it was.

My grandfather ended up working on my grandmother's family estate. They were a very wealthy, well-respected, non-Jewish German family. My grandmother was an athlete. She was a horseback rider, and was on the Olympic gymnastics team. She was slated to win gold for Germany, and, knowing her and her determination, she would have, had she not dropped out in protest of Hitler turning that year's Olympic games into a propaganda opportunity.

My grandfather, and grandmother, became part of the resistance. There are many stories about how they, together and independently, worked against the Nazi regime. Let's leave it at the point where my grandfather was being actively sought after by the Gestapo.

He had, eventually, begun a business in the textile industry in Berlin, and had a small apartment. Many of his colleagues and clients, Jewish and non-Jewish were, in fact, assisting him with the resistance. And, unanimously, they all loved my grandfather, as he was an exceptionally kind man.

By this time, my grandfather still had very high regard for the level of observance he was raised with, but he wasn't actively Orthodox. The times weren't conducive to it. It was also a safe presumption that, at this stage in his life, his father had long passed away.

One night, in the middle of the night, my father was awoken by a figure at the foot of his bed. He looked up, and it was his father, shaking him, in yiddish, telling him, "Baruch," to go to shul. "Get up, get your talit and tefillin, and GO TO SHUL."

"But, it's the middle of the night!" Why he was arguing with the ghost of his father in the middle of the night telling him to get up and go to shul, I couldn't tell you, but he resisted, and ultimately listened. He took his talit, his tefillin, and went to the closest synnagogue. Of course, this was breaking curfew, and risking his life to go to a Jewish synnagogue, but, when your dead father comes back to tell you to do something, no matter how resistant you were at the beginning, you do it.

He went, recited the Shacharit service, and went back to his apartment. Well, almost...

As my grandfather approached his apartment building, one of his friends ran out, grabbed him, and pulled him into an alley, embracing him, as though he, himself, had seen a ghost.

"Bernard! Oh, Bernard! Thank goodness! You're alive!!!!"

"Yes... of course, I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"You mean, you don't know? You didn't run?"

"Run? Run from what?"

"Bernard! The Gestapo just raided your apartment! Get out of here!! RUN!"

And, so he did.