November 12, 2025 • 54 mins
We discuss the experiences of Edward Adler, a Jewish man in 1930's Germany, as he describes growing anti-semitism, being forced to build one of the first extermination camps, and his narrow escape after Kristallnacht. And that one time he was a kid and joined the Nazis - before they found out he was a Jew.
Image
Germany - a sign on a Jewish store: Protect Yourselves, Germans, Do Not Buy From Jews.
Yad Vashem Archives
Archival Signature: 3116/50
Sources
RG Number: RG-50.042.0003 Interview with Edward Adler. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn505557
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Robyn (00:00):
But he had the backing of the big industrialists in
Germany.
They were very much in favor ofpower and conquest of other
countries.
Germany, you know.
Today Germany.
Tomorrow the world.
That was the philosophy.
That was their their bigphrase.
We all thought it was a joke.
Ah, it won't amount to nothing.
(00:22):
Just another political party.
Thad (00:31):
So months ago, I remember you running into my office.
Super excited.
And you said, Thad, I'm readinga story about this guy who is a
Jew who stood guard for AdolfHitler.
Today, this is that story.
(00:52):
So who is this guy?
Robyn (00:54):
Well, first of all, I take offense at your reading the
story about, because it was notabout him.
There's no story writtenanywhere about him.
I was reading his transcriptfrom an actual oral history.
So you're not going to findthis in like a published book or
something.
Thad (01:13):
So that's right.
That's right.
He is this is a this is a guywhose oral history is on record
at the Holocaust Museum.
Robyn (01:22):
Yeah, the um United States, one in Washington.
Um the collections are um atthe Shapell Center, but it's,
you know, the one in Washington,do we?
Thad (01:31):
And and you can look you can, in fact, so we're going to
talk about it, but if you wantto, you could go and listen to
this guy's story online.
Right.
Right.
It got uh he talks at lengthabout the thing.
Robyn (01:42):
You can see the interview.
Oh wow.
And I know, and and hear him.
Um, but you can look it up.
It's Edward Adler, um, E-D WA-R-D A-D-L-E-R.
Um, and I mean there's actuallythousands of oral histories
there that um are really goodthere.
Thad (02:02):
Awesome.
All right, so so tell me aboutEdward.
Robyn (02:06):
Okay, well, he was an interesting guy.
He was born in 1910.
But before we talk about hisrole in everything, we need to
talk about where Germany was inlife.
And he actually he actuallysays it too, that in order for
us to understand anything thathe tells us, that uh well this
(02:30):
is what he said, quote, we haveto put this in proper context.
Things were very bad inGermany.
Unemployment was perhaps, I'mnot sure of this now, but I
would say perhaps 20% peopleweren't working, and there was
no jobs to be had, and as timewent on, they became more and
more sympathetic to the Nazimovement.
(02:50):
First, I would imagine, foreconomic reasons, and secondly,
it became very popular to beanti-Semitic because it was the
easiest thing in the world.
If you want to hate somebody,the Jews are always around, they
can be hated.
End quote.
So we're setting it in Germanyin the twenties, which was after
(03:14):
World War One.
And and I want to read a quotefrom a a book called
Appeasement, which you know isnothing about Nazi Germany, but
just to put it in wor the worldperspective of what the world
was like after the first worldwar.
And in the book, it was by uhTim Bovary, and I'm basically
(03:39):
reading this just to get all thestatistics uh right, okay?
So the desire to avoid a secondworld war was perhaps the most
understandable and universalwish in history.
More than 16.5 million peopledied during the First World War.
The British lost 723,000, theFrench 1.7 million, the Russians
(04:05):
1.8 million, the British Empire230,000, the Germans over 2
million.
20,000 British soldiers died onthe first day of the Battle of
the Somme, while the ossuary atDaumot contains the bones of
some 130,000 French and Germansoldiers, a mere sixth of those
(04:29):
killed during the 302-day Battleof Verdun.
Among the survivors, there wasscarcely a soul that was not
affected.
Almost everyone had a father,husband, son, brother, cousin,
fiance, or friend killed ormaimed.
When it was over, not even thevictors could feel victorious.
(04:50):
End quote.
So that's where the world wasat this point.
At the end of the war, they hadthe Treaty of Versailles, which
gave Germany horriblereparations.
I'm sure at length in anotherpodcast, I'll be talking about
the Treaty of Versailles and thewar guilt clause, which
(05:13):
required Germany to pay, youknow, massive reparations for
the war, which of course theythey didn't really have money
to, which created anotherproblem we'll talk about in a
minute.
But uh they uh but it wasFrance that really struggled
with it.
And I mean, it's a fun storythat uh after the
Franco-Prussian War, the Germanwar, like in 1871, the uh the
(05:38):
Germans made the French signtheir uh the treaty that they
lost, the war, in the actualVersailles uh Hall of Mirrors.
And I have the diary of a guywho was actually one of the
German soldiers there in, youknow, this is 1871.
His name is Otto Bertram, butyou know, it's this di it's a
(05:59):
diary that he wrote, and so it'sjust fascinating because, you
know, they went into France,which Versailles is essentially
Paris, it's about 20 miles out,and so went into the capital of
France and forced them to signthis treaty, and it was
humiliating and horrible for theFrench.
So they just were ready to getback at Germany about this, and
(06:20):
the treaty uh, you know, ofVersailles was kind of like
their opportunity to.
Thad (06:26):
So it's kind of like, hey guys, we remember what you did a
few years back, and uh nowwe're back, except the tables
are turned.
Robyn (06:32):
Yes, how the turn tables turn.
Thad (06:35):
All right.
So uh so so Germany was uh wasunder some pressure after the
Treaty of Versailles.
Uh World War I was over.
Um and so the world is like,well, we didn't want to go back
into that, and that's that'swhere we enter this story.
Robyn (06:51):
Well, as he talks about, there was massive unemployment
in the early 1920s.
The Weimar Republic, which wasthe fledgling republic that they
created after the first worldwar, that really, you know,
never really got good grounding,uh, but it had massive
hyperinflation because they likeprinted more money so they
(07:14):
could pay off the reparationsand and that created lots of
problems.
And then of course in 1929,with the stock market crash
around that time, the wholeworld suffered, you know, around
the time of the US stock marketcrash.
Thad (07:30):
That was the Great Depression.
Robyn (07:32):
Yeah, that for America.
Thad (07:34):
Yeah, that would be um and so so that was the Great
Depression for America, andGermany was already depressed.
Robyn (07:40):
Well, Ger Germany, well, here's the thing
offered to help the Germans payfor some of the reparations they
were with with the the techguys.
So, like in the initial quotethat I read, he talks about the
industrialists being um behindHitler.
These are like the tech guysthat we would think of today,
those the billionaires we havesupporting this um this regime.
(08:02):
And so they had investments andstuff, and you know, through
complicated, convoluted economicreasons, um that started to
fall.
The um the German economy did,but the industrialists decided
to back the National SocialistParty against the communists,
who were the other the othermain group.
Thad (08:24):
So you had the National Socialists, and then you had the
communists, and then everybodyelse kind of just caught in the
middle.
Robyn (08:32):
Yes, yes, pretty much.
And of course, we look atGermany at the time and the
politics that were going on, butuh it's like countryside
Germany was very different thancity Germany.
The cities, mainly Berlin andHamburg, the mainly the northern
ones, like Munich was a hotbedof national socialism, it's
(08:55):
southern Bavarian part.
But Berlin, Hamburg, to anextent Dresden, like it northern
cities mainly.
I mean, this is Germany, sonorth and south is like nothing
in relation to Texas.
Um but yeah, but still, theyhad the massive working class
neighborhoods.
I think Berlin, like 35% of thevote or something in one of the
(09:19):
elections was um communist.
They so they had working classneighborhoods and Edward Adler
lived in Hamburg.
Okay, and in Hamburg there waswhat they called the German
October that happened in 1923,which really was was nothing
really, but it they had hoped tohave like a communist
(09:41):
revolution in like the 18, 19,eight, 1918, 1919 time period,
caught there was a communistuprising, you know.
So communists had been tryingto get power.
They had hoped that this wouldbe a thing across the country,
and one took place in Hamburg.
And so he's gonna say he'sgonna talk about it, so I'm
gonna just talk about it throughhis eyes.
Thad (10:02):
Okay.
Robyn (10:02):
Um, okay.
Quote I remember that they, theNazi Party, were then a party
um number 26.
We had many, many politicalparties in Germany at that time,
and they were party number 26.
They had the advantage overother political parties, such as
communists and democrats,because they had a lot of money
(10:22):
backing them, and when theymarched into a certain
neighborhood, they had beautifulshiny boots and beautiful
uniforms, and they marched inmilitary formation, whereas
Democrats and communists at thetime, they were organized, but
they were like a bunch of peoplerunning down the street, as
compared to the well-organizedmarch of the Nazis.
At that time we lived in anarea of Hamburg, Germany, which
(10:45):
was a working classneighborhood.
I would say very largelycommunist, but not necessarily
party members, but certainlysympathizers.
There was one particular day Iremember quite vividly when the
Nazis decided they wanted tomarch down the main street in
our neighborhood, by thethousands, incidentally.
And we we didn't exactly likethis idea.
(11:08):
It was our neighborhood, ourturf.
There was a lot of shooting.
Machine guns had been mountedon roofs, would shoot into the
air, groups and so forth, and itbecame a very bloody affair.
This was only one time.
I guess I'm not quite sureabout the date, but it was 1930,
a very early 1930.
I was involved in many of theanti-Nazi street fights, and
(11:30):
well, I was never a member ofthe party really, but certainly
a sympathizer, end quote.
So that's an example of thetype things that were going on
between uh communists and Nazisthat like I said, so the Nazis
would come up and basically belike, hey guys, here's a gun.
(11:50):
Like it you can have clothesand boots and a gun and
occasionally shoot someone andand here's something to do.
And you know, Adler was he said20 or 21 when this was
happening, and you know, he'sjust like, Yeah, we my friends
and I basically we had nothingelse to do.
I mean, why not?
You get good clothes andsomething to do, and so so he
(12:13):
joined the the the Nancy's?
Well, let me let me tell you,in his own words.
Thad (12:17):
All right.
Robyn (12:18):
Okay.
So he says, quote, a group ofyoung men, friends of mine, we
used to hang around together.
We were quite active in dancingand all this kind of thing.
We decided we're gonna join thearmy.
It was it was not an army.
It was called the the Arbeites,Arbutan.
It this was Hitler's force thatI talked about in uh in another
(12:42):
episode where Hitler brought inand then National Socialists
came in on top of the policeforce.
It was like a it it was adifferent thing.
So he said, I don't recallexactly the name of it.
It was a labor camp in which wehad regular military training,
except for weapons.
That was against the Treaty ofVersailles at the time, which
(13:02):
had been still obeyed then.
We had no weapons, but we wmarched in military formation
and we used spades, shovels asrifles while marching and all
this kind of thing.
We had regular militarytraining.
And at that time that I wentthere, it was nobody asked me if
I was Jewish, and I didn'tmention it.
(13:23):
So we all got accepted intothis camp.
Somehow or other, I I don'trecall how, they found out I was
Jewish.
And I was stationed in EastPrussia, which was um near
Elbin, and which was German, butit had been independent
earlier.
It's an area that's been kickedback and forth between Poland
and Germany for many years.
We marched from Marienburg toElding, which I'd say was about
(13:47):
thirty kilometers and stoodguard for Hitler.
And I claimed to have the verydistinct um I don't know what I
should call it.
I was probably the only Jew inthe world that ever stood guard
for Hitler.
I saw him as close as I see youin front of me right now.
He was making a speech at thecity of Elding, and he walked by
(14:07):
us, reviewing the troops.
He was a little man.
Everyone knows the mustache andhis hairdo, and he looked
perfectly calm, and we stood outthere waiting for him to
finish, which took about threehours.
When he came out and he marchedby us again towards his car,
the man looked and I rememberthis very vividly.
(14:27):
He looked like a maniac.
He talked himself into a totalfrenzy.
I don't believe that he evenknew what he was speaking about
anymore, because he was helooked he looked a person who
has not control over hisemotions anymore.
I was found out somehow orother, as I said before, that I
was Jewish, and I was dischargedfrom the camp.
(14:49):
I must have been in there, Idon't I don't remember exactly,
I'd say close to a year.
This was 1932.
So before Hitler came to powerin Germany.
Nothing much happened between1932 and 1935, except the
regular political marchesthrough neighborhoods, and and
they weren't wanted and soforth.
But in the meantime, the NaziParty grew and grew in
(15:12):
popularity.
A lot of the German fellows,young fellows, that weren't
really anti-Semitic oranti-anything, but they had
nothing to do.
They had no jobs, and here camearound, gave them a beautiful
pair of boots, gave them a niceshirt and pair of breeches, have
a gun in your hip, you know,you can go out and shoot
anybody.
It's okay, you'll get away withit.
Now that became very popular.
(15:34):
End quote.
He said that, you know, thingswere pretty calm until 1935,
when the Nuremberg Laws cameout.
And I think I think it's reallyinteresting that he says this
because he says 32 to 35.
Hitler came to power in 33 inJanuary and, you know, passed
(15:56):
the enabling law.
There was a Reichstag fire,which of course they blamed on
the communists, and a slew oflaws and persecution started.
Adler actually says at onepoint, he thinks the start of
everything was the boycott inApril 1st, 1933, where uh the
(16:16):
Nazis were basically boycottingJewish doors for a day.
It didn't really work verywell, but it was like he's he
says he thinks it was the firsttime it was their attack on the
Jewish economy at all.
But I also find it interesting,many people that I talked to,
read transcripts of say that uhGerman people say that they
(16:40):
placed the beginning of the warand like when things got really
bad in 1942, which of course wasafter the US was in the war,
after um Germany had invadedPoland, and because that's when
the ghettos started and thedeath camps opened en masse.
So it's just it's interestingbecause he says that he points
(17:03):
he puts it at 1933 in April.
Thad (17:07):
So we can see that the Nazis have a prejudice against
the Jews right from the verystart.
But it's not it's not barefacedand horrible right at the
beginning.
It's it's small things.
So they start off by by havingit, like you said, this boycott.
And then slowly ratchet thingsup over time.
Robyn (17:31):
Here's what you have to remember about German people in
general is uh after World WarOne, going back to like, you
know, 19, 18, 19, 19, there wasa legend in Germany called the
stab in the back legend.
So basically, the generals thatwere fighting in the Eastern
Front in World War One,Hindenburg and Ludendorff, they
(17:54):
came back from the war and wasjust like, yeah, Germany was
winning.
We were stabbed in the back bythe people that signed the
treaty, which some of them wereJewish.
So that was like the startingof blaming the Jews.
Adler says everyone knew thatHitler was anti-Semitic because
of Mein Kampf and the things hesaid, but no one ever thought
(18:14):
he'd actually, you know, dosomething about that.
Thad (18:18):
Um, so everyone just thought, oh yeah, Hitler doesn't
like the Jews, but I mean, youknow, that's that's just the way
it is.
No big no big deal.
Robyn (18:26):
Right.
You know, someone comes inpower and doesn't like a
specific group of people, youdon't think, oh, they're gonna
do anything about that.
So it took everyone bysurprise.
Thad (18:36):
Gotcha.
Robyn (18:36):
Even even knowing that he was anti-Semitic.
Thad (18:39):
Right.
Robyn (18:40):
So Adler says in 1935, so at this point he would have
been about 25, the Nuremberglaws were passed.
And he says, quote, September15th, a new law came into being
that a German family could nothave a Gentile maid, and there
were many Jewish families quitewealthy, too, and they had a
maid and a live-in maid.
(19:01):
They could not have a live-inmaid at the age of under 55 for
apparently obvious reasons.
They also at this time took alaw into effect that did not
allow a Jewish person, male orfemale, to go with a gentile
person, male or female.
At that time I was going with anice young lady I had gone out
with for some time, and we werecamping.
(19:22):
I remember very well.
I had a kayak, and we went outcamping near Hamburg, and there
was a fellow next to us, nearus, in another little camp with
a tent.
We slept in tents.
He wanted to make a date withthis young lady that I was going
with, and she didn't want anypart of it.
He reported me to the Gestapo,and I was arrested for going
(19:43):
with a Gentile girl.
I got six months in prison,solitary confinement in 1935.
When I was released, I becameknown as a habitual criminal in
the eyes of the Nazi Party.
I was a habitual criminal.
I never did anything criminalin my life.
But as far as they'reconcerned, being doing something
(20:04):
against the law was enough tomake me a habitual criminal.
So, you know, he so thathappened.
Thad (20:13):
Do you have to be careful who you're dating?
1935.
Robyn (20:16):
1935.
All right.
Yeah, that'd have him checkedout.
Um but it it gets worse.
Thad (20:22):
It does.
Robyn (20:22):
It does.
From six from six months ofsolitary confinement, uh, it's
hard to beat that.
Right.
Um, but so three years later,three years, on June 14th, 1938,
he was married at the time, hada baby, and his wife was
pregnant again.
And he says, quote, we had goneto a birthday party on June
(20:47):
14th.
So some of so some friends ofours who had come home, must
have been about midnight,somewhere around midnight, four
o'clock in the morning.
We had a banging on the door.
And I thought those were ourfriends coming back to continue
the celebration.
I said, Come on, go on home.
It's enough already.
You know, four o'clock AM, Igot work tomorrow.
(21:10):
The knocking persisted.
I opened the door and twoplainclothes men with guns came
into the room.
You're under arrest.
Under arrest?
What for?
I didn't do anything.
No questions asked.
They didn't push us around atthat point.
I was I got I got dressed andthey took us to a police station
(21:32):
in the neighborhood where wewere.
I got into a room perhaps aslarge as this one here.
There must have been two orthree hundred people in there,
and we didn't know what wasgoing on.
What what are you here for?
I don't know.
I didn't do anything.
We didn't know anything.
Nothing.
We had absolutely no idea whatwas going to happen.
(21:54):
All we knew is we were underarrest.
Around seven o'clock or sixo'clock in the morning, they
loaded us all into trucks and ittook took us to a remote train
station in a place calledFulsburg.
It's a it's a name.
It's a suburb of Hamburg.
The trucks were supported bypolice.
(22:14):
Well, the storm troop thestormtrooper cars, not really
police cars.
The private police had nothingto do with this.
They had a car in front of thetruck and a car in back of the
truck, and one on each side withbloodhounds.
To be facetious, they wanted usto make sure nobody got lost.
You know what I mean?
They took us to the trainstation and we were loaded.
(22:36):
We were loaded into regulartrains, not boxcars, as what
would happen later.
We were not in boxcars.
We went in a regular train.
And then, several hours oftrain ride, we didn't know where
we were.
We had no idea what washappening.
And you can imagine some olderpeople, I mean I was just a
young fellow, but there weresome older people started
(22:56):
crying.
What did what did we do?
When we got to Berlin, theyloaded us back on trucks again.
No, no, no, that's not correct.
We went to a town calledOranienburg, which is a suburb
of Berlin.
How far outside of Berlin, I donot know.
The train stopped.
They shoved us all out of thetrain, and we began to march
(23:18):
towards the camp.
We didn't know what was goingto ha to be, we had no idea.
Along the train ride, some, wehad to run.
There was no walking.
One particular incident Irecall, like it was yesterday.
An old man with the name ofSolomon.
I'll never forget.
He must have been well into hisseventies.
He simply couldn't run.
(23:40):
He couldn't run.
He had to walk.
He couldn't run and hecollapsed and he laid in the
road.
And one of the stormtroopers, atall, young fellow, very
slender, very tall, stepped onhis throat.
This is true.
Unbelievable, but true.
Till the man was dead.
(24:00):
We had to pick up the body andthrow him to the side of the
road.
And we continued on into thecamp, where we assembled in a
courtyard.
And a strange incident happenedat that time.
We faced a barrack, a door onthe right, a door on the left.
People went in the left door,came out the right door,
(24:21):
entirely different people.
Their hair had been shaven off.
They had on a prisoner'suniform, the very white striped
uniform.
My number was 6199.
And a strange thing happened,as I mentioned before.
My parents were separated.
I hadn't seen my father.
He was my stepfather, I mustsay, in perhaps eight or nine
(24:44):
years, right after I was barmitbarmit.
My parents separated for aspecific reason, and I hadn't
seen him in all these years.
And I met him, I saw him inthat camp.
It was it was hard to describe.
My father was a very, very bigman.
He weighed 350 pounds.
I introduced myself and hedidn't recognize me, of course.
(25:06):
We became a family again.
While we were in the camp, Itried to take care of him as
much as I could.
There wasn't much that I coulddo at the time, but I just have
to mention all this because itrelates to a very traumatic
experiences in my life.
We worked ten hours a day, if Iremember correctly.
We slept on straw, on strawbacks.
(25:27):
It was it was just a stackfilled with straw.
I guess that's common, youknow, under certain
circumstances.
Many people sleep that way.
We worked ten hours a day on afield that was approximately a
square kilometer, somewherearound that area.
One area of this field wasquite high.
The other was quite low.
The area that had to beleveled, and what was done was
(25:50):
they had tracks running from oneend to the other.
On those tracks were miningcars.
Now, in this country, a miningcar is square.
There's over is a mining car isa triangular shape, steel
mining cars, and each train hadabout ten of those on it.
On each one of those miningcars, stormtroopers stood, and
we had to run from one end tothe other, shoveling the mining
(26:13):
car, filling it with dirt.
If anyone would have told me atthat time I can run 40
kilometers a day, I'd say,you're crazy.
But I did, day after day afterday, for 10 hours.
The food was barely edible, andI remember one particular
incident.
It so happens, I hate broccoli,and they had broccoli soup for
(26:35):
three days in a row.
And for three days in a row, Ididn't eat anything, just dry
bread.
The other prisoners gave mesome of their bread.
They ate the soup, I got bread.
I just couldn't eat it becauseif I would have, I'd gotten
sick.
Psychological, certainly, butat that point, I'm entitled.
I'm gonna stop here because Ijust I know I was talking about
(26:59):
mining cars, you may have gottenlost some.
The significance of this isthat they were using his group
of people to build the firstdeath camp, which was
Iranianburg outside of Berlin.
So all this that he's talkingabout with the mining cars and
running and how it's you knowhigh on one side and low on the
(27:19):
other, they did not know it atthe time.
But this was Jews being used asslave labor to build their own
first concentration camp.
Thad (27:28):
Holy cow.
Robyn (27:30):
Yeah.
And I mean, so yeah, eventuallywe'll we'll get to a podcast
where we talk about a man whowent in the middle of the night,
escaped Ronienburg to go to adoctor who then fixed him up in
the middle of the night.
It's just interesting that youknow you you hear that with the
different stories, differentpeople you interview.
Thad (27:49):
Right.
Robyn (27:49):
So that's what they were using him for.
So I'm gonna continue.
I just needed to explain that.
Thad (27:56):
Yeah.
Robyn (27:56):
Quote At one time they assembled us in a courtyard.
They had machine gun towers allthe way around, and they were
shooting machine gun bulletsover our head, maybe a foot over
our head.
And they said they made a acommander made a speech.
They said that if Germany thisthis was the time Germany was
taking over the Czechoslovakia,it was like 1938.
(28:18):
They said that if Germany getsinvolved in the war, the machine
guns will be lowered and we'reand we're going to kill you all.
We were hoping this wasn'tgonna happen.
Perhaps um perhaps many peoplerecall a Christian pastor by the
name of Niemoller.
Niemoler had been arrested fromthe pulpit in a little church
(28:39):
somewhere in Midwestern Germanybecause he simply did not
believe the Nazi doctrine, andhe was preaching openly against
it, and he was arrested and putin camp.
And it became like aninternational incident at the
time.
I met him in Sachenhausen.
What they did to this man, onehuman being doing this to
another, is beyond description.
(29:00):
This man is perhaps he was inour camp perhaps six months,
aged twenty-five years old.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this,but they literally made him eat
his own waste.
But he lived through it becausehe had strong faith.
I just mentioned this to conveywhat one human being can do to
another.
When you read this in a book,it's one thing.
(29:22):
When you see it and it actuallyhappens, it's quite another.
I assure you.
He was in concentration camps,including Sachenhausen and later
(29:46):
Dachau, where in a futurepodcast I'll talk about how he
used to meet with the commandantand well, the future commandant
that he was, you know, asoldier, it's fine, but what
they would meet and talk.
They actually had high levelNazis come and try.
To get Niemuler to change hismind.
And he, if you go, I think, Imean, his quote's one of the
(30:08):
most famous ones you see around,you know, they came for the
communists, and then there wasno one left when they came for
me.
That that's Pastor Niemuler.
He spent the re the rest of hislife talking about how he felt
he felt bad that the the Germanshadn't done more when they saw
what was happening, and and hehimself had guilt for it.
That he was in concentrationcamps from 1937 to 45.
(30:32):
What made him what made himturn against the Nazis was when
they started oppressing theChristians.
Thad (30:37):
Right.
I mean, uh didn't he originallyin the early 30s, and he
supported he supported theNazis, right?
Robyn (30:44):
So he thought he, like many Germans, thought that and
good that Germany needed astrong leader.
Thad (30:50):
Right.
Robyn (30:51):
Because chaos had ensued in the twenties.
I mean, you know, like wetalked about politics were
everywhere, the inflation,inflation was going crazy.
It was also in Germany, kind oflike in the United States, we
had the Roaring Twenties flapperera, where people were just
like, woo-hoo! Okay, well, thatwas kind of going on in Germany
um too.
(31:11):
If you've ever um seen cabaret,that uh it's it's that kind of
setting.
Thad (31:16):
It was wild.
And the the Nazis were a theythey were they were the
conservatives.
You had you had the the Nazisthat were the the right wing
conservatives, you had the thecommunists that were the the
left-wing liberals, and uh anduh you know looking at the
political system in the area,Russia was was falling to the
communists, and so you know itwas kind of like well we can
(31:38):
either we can either go back togo back to our traditions or you
have to keep in mind they sawthe whole Russian revolution
happen, not not very many yearsbefore that.
Robyn (31:48):
I mean, it was in 1917, so you know, that was fresh in
everyone's mind, and many peoplewere just like, Oh my gosh, we
do not want the communists comein here.
Right.
Um, you know, anything butthat.
Um and so they had that kind ofmentality too.
But also Germany, they wereaccustomed to a strong leader.
There was ever since theconcert of Europe in Vienna with
(32:12):
Metternich in 1848, I won'tbore you with that.
But what came out was thenGermany had a strong leader.
Well, Kaiser Wilhelm II was asuper special case, but you
know, they they were under oneleader, so they were accustomed
to having, you know, they w theyhad a constitutional monarchy
and they were accustomed tohaving a leader at the top, and
(32:34):
so they thought Hitler would bea strong one.
Thad (32:36):
And he was.
Robyn (32:37):
Right.
So I'm gonna talk some moreabout his time in the camp.
Thad (32:41):
All right.
Robyn (32:42):
Uh quote, while in the camp I had pneumonia.
The commander used to come intothe barracks and expect the
sleeping sleeping quarters.
Well, there were no livingquarters.
We only had beds in a barrack.
Other than that, we stayedoutside.
There was nowhere that we couldrelax or assemble.
No way.
He used to hold his nose.
(33:02):
Ugh, these juice stink.
I can't stand it.
This of course was all inGerman.
One time we were assembled, andI always tried to make it my
business to stay in the backrow.
We always had three or fourrows of soldiers.
I tried to stay in the backrow, not to be conspicuous in
any way.
One time it it just didn'thappen.
(33:25):
I was standing on the frontrow, and as the guards walked
by, they stopped in front of me.
And I dreaded that because Iknew this might happen.
And he said to me, Why are youlaughing?
I was in no mood to laugh, Iassure you.
But as far as he was concerned,I laughed.
He said, You're gonna hang.
In two weeks from today, you'regonna hang.
(33:48):
Hanging means, and this iscontinuing his quote, so this is
him explaining it.
Hanging means they tie yourhands, your hands are tied
behind your back, and they hangyou to tie on a pole, a
perfectly plain pole for 24hours.
After that, you can never useyour arms again.
This was supposed to be donesixteenth of September 1938.
(34:11):
Now, I was released on thefifteenth of September.
My father was released first,and I was released about two
weeks afterwards.
The release came about becauseat that time the Nazi government
was satisfied if a Jewishperson could leave the country,
they let you go.
They had no death camps at thetime.
So my wife had been very activetrying to get me out.
(34:33):
The first six weeks she didn'tknow where I was, if I was alive
or anything, and of course shewas pregnant and had a baby at
this time.
There was no communication, butshe kept on working to get us
out of Germany.
She had family in this countryin Providence, Rhode Island.
The papers were all set andready and everything, and she
(34:53):
went and she got me released onthe fifteenth of September, one
day before I was supposed tohang.
How I got from the camp backhome, I don't really know.
I don't even know what I had onor anything.
All I know is that when I camehome, she didn't recognize me
from ten feet away.
She was pushing a baby carriagedown the street, but I was
(35:16):
home.
There were in many incidentsthat I really have to go back to
recall, whether many peoplewere shot during the day when we
worked and worked among othersI many times because you can't
run much and they would theywouldn't let you walk.
They whipped you.
So I recall one time they gotus out of bed at four o'clock in
the morning with water hoses.
(35:37):
The guys had a ball.
They had a wonderful time.
They got us all out with firehoses and water, just for no
reason at all.
And then they wanted some fun,so they got us all out and
standing in the yard, and afteran hour or so we all had to get
back and continue to sleep if wecould on that wet straw.
I will say that during the timewhen the Austrian guards were
(36:01):
on duty, they had German guardsand Austrian guards.
When the Austrian guards wereon duty, it was horrible.
They were the most brutal ofanyone you can imagine, but they
did with us and we had nochoice.
Many people will say, Whydidn't you fight back?
I equate it with the situationin Ethiopia when Mussolini went
(36:21):
into Ethiopia with tanks andthey were shooting slingshots
against the tanks.
We were in the same positionsomewhat.
How can you fight back?
You had nothing.
You had to take it.
Fortunately, I was there foronly three months.
I know people who left whetherfrom well they had no family
left anywhere, or they could notget out.
(36:43):
And some were all killed, ofcourse.
End quote.
So that was his time um in aconcentration camp, which was
before the death camps, and andhe was released.
So I talked some in anotherepisode about Kristallnacht,
which was just a couple monthsafter he was released in 1938.
(37:06):
Which is when the Germans camein and well, a group of them
that had been partying came andbroke into a bunch of Jewish
doors.
It was the night of the brokenglass.
Thad (37:18):
Oh, right.
Yeah, we talked about that um acouple of episodes back on the
the kinder transport.
Robyn (37:24):
Yes.
And we read an account of uh aGerman guy who had lived through
it.
Thad (37:28):
Right.
Robyn (37:29):
But so this is this is Adler though.
We're we're back to Adler.
Back to Adler.
He says, quote, when I came outof the concentration camp, I
had to report to the Gestapo teno'clock every morning, except
Sundays.
You had to go downtown, reportevery morning at ten o'clock, a
sort of sign in ceremony.
(37:49):
They wanted to be sure I wasstill all right, that I wasn't
sick, you know.
They wanted to take good careof me.
Kristonloft happened Novemberninth.
November tenth in the morningwe stayed at my mother's, and my
wife said, I'll go downtownwith you.
We went downtown, we got on astreetcar.
There was all kinds ofcommotion.
(38:11):
What was going on we didn'tknow.
We hadn't no radio or put it onor anything.
There was no television inthose days.
Didn't put a radio, didn'tknow, and everybody was
whispering and pointing.
We didn't have any idea.
We got downtown, and there werea million people.
The city of Hamburg had threemillion people.
(38:31):
It was a very large city.
And in the finest stores, thefinest Jewish stores, the
windows were smashed, and themannequins were laying in the
street, people were burningbooks, dancing around it.
We had no idea what was goingon.
I turned up my collar, I'llnever forget, and put my head
down and said, God, somebodyshould recognize me.
(38:53):
I'll be torn to pieces.
We went to the Gestapo buildingand there were lots of people
loitering outside on the firstfloor.
I said to my to my wife, I'lltell you what, run upstairs and
see what's going on.
We had no idea.
She ran upstairs.
I don't think she ever ran asfast, a flight of stairs so fast
in her entire life.
She came down, she says, and Iwas hiding, incidentally, in a
(39:16):
building, in the basement of abuilding across the street.
She came over and she said,They're all going to be arrested
again.
This was November 10th, 1938.
She said, You have to get outof here.
How can I get out of here?
We're not ready.
I don't have we went back.
Um, no, we went to the Holland,America line, where we already
(39:38):
had made res remade reservationsto come to this country,
America, because my wife tookcare of all of that while I was
still in the camp.
But we didn't have the money topay for tickets anymore because
it was all confiscated.
My father-in-law, who was wellestablished in business, they
had nothing left.
Everything had been taken away.
And at that time, they'dalready been in this country and
(40:01):
we had nowhere to go.
My wife called a very famousbanker with the name of
Wahlberg, W-A-L-B-E-R-G.
He was a very famous banker inGermany.
He called Holland America Line.
He guaranteed payments for thetickets on November 10, 1938.
I took my wife back home to mymother's and at three o'clock in
(40:22):
the afternoon I got on thetrain.
I left for Holland.
My wife had a sister andbrother that lived in Holland at
that time.
She was married to a Dutchfellow, and they moved to
Holland probably three or fouryears before.
I don't know exactly when.
My wife my wife could verifythe date.
The train where I was on, thisis kind of interesting, the
(40:43):
train that I was on stopped inthe city and at the last German
station.
It stopped for five minutes.
They changed train personnel.
The Dutch person now would comeon and then we would go further
into Holland.
And as we were riding along,customs came.
They came into my car, andevery everyone there had their
(41:04):
own room, which I think seatedabout six people.
But it's not the way it is inAmerica.
It's one long train.
The customs came in and theyasked me for my passport.
I showed him the passport, andI must say that on the German
passport, the fort first pagehas a big, great big J on it, a
red J, so that anyone who opensup your passport knows instantly
(41:27):
that you are Jewish.
He looked at it, there was noproblem.
Where are you going?
I said, I'm going to Amsterdam.
No problem.
Okay.
He gave me back my passport andI was very relieved.
I had, you know, really didn'texpect it to be that easy.
Well, a few minutes later, Iwent walking through the train
(41:48):
towards the dining car.
I wanted to get a cup of coffeeor something, and there came a
black uniformed SS.
Where are you going?
I'm just going to get a cup ofcoffee or some tea or something.
Go back to your car.
So you have no choice.
You have to go back.
And mine was a young Americancouple.
I know it was an Americancouple by the passports.
(42:10):
They came and they asked thisyoung couple for the passports.
He says, Americans?
The fellow says, Yes.
We're on our honeymoon.
Okay, and give them back theirpassports.
He came to me.
Passport, please.
I showed him.
He says, Oh, you're a Jew.
You're running away.
Where do you come from?
(42:31):
I said, I come from Hamburg.
He said, You're running away.
You didn't report to theGestapo this morning.
Get off.
I said, I'm not gonna get off.
If they kill me, they kill me,but I'm not gonna get off.
The train stopped and oneminute was like an eternity.
(42:52):
A minute went by.
Two minutes went by.
No, those watches.
I had a watch, you know, in myvest pocket, those days long ago
that ticked.
A minute went by.
Two minutes went by.
Three minutes.
It's endless.
When you wait for one minute togo by, it's an awful long time.
(43:14):
This the train started rollingto a stop.
I was not out.
They came back and I thought,I'm all set.
But they opened the window andthey threw me out the window,
out onto the platform of thetrain.
They held me.
I was searched.
I mean totally searched.
Nude searched.
(43:36):
They said, something's wronghere.
You didn't report to theGestapo this morning.
You're running away fromsomething.
We're calling Hamburg.
Whether they did or not, Idon't know.
At midnight they let me out andI was allowed to go to another
train that went to Amsterdam.
I stayed in Amsterdam andwaited for my wife.
She was not allowed to come.
(43:56):
The American consul wouldn'tgive her the visa at that time
because she had just had a babyand she had veins in her legs
that were very prominent, and hewanted to wait till that
cleared up.
And then he gave her herpassport.
I waited in Holland for sixweeks until we came to America.
End quote.
So Adler came to America andreally he didn't leave at all to
(44:22):
go back to Germany in 1938.
So he wasn't there for the conconcentration camps to get us.
He was already here.
But he did go back.
Years later, some organizationwas having the Jews come back,
the Jewish people who had beenpersecuted during the war.
And so he hadn't returned.
(44:43):
His mother had been shot andkilled by the Nazis in
Treblinka.
And his sister, who was marriedwith two children, was killed
by the Allied bomb planes.
They found her body the nextmorning with her husband and her
young son.
That was a quote from him.
He uh we will talk in anotherpodcast about the bombings, the
(45:05):
Allied bombings over Dresden andBerlin and Hamburg.
But that's what happened to hisfamily that stayed in Germany.
But he went back many yearslater and he said that, quote,
the lady in charge was a very,very nice lady.
You could really see that shefelt what we went through.
And that, I mean, the city ofHam Hamburg had at one time, I
(45:29):
don't know, I think 60,000 Jewsor something like that.
It was a big city, threemillion people.
We had 60,000 Jews.
There was nothing left.
And all the big stores thatused to be owned by Jewish
people are now have now beentaken over by the Nazi Party in
those days, and eventuallyprobably went through
generations of their father andgrandfather and now they own it
(45:52):
or whatever.
And this lady felt sorry forus.
I asked her, what's the purposeof inviting us?
Do you expect anyone that tochange his mind and come back
and live here after living inAmerica for fifty years?
She said no, no, that's notreally the purpose.
It is perhaps to ease ourconscience a bit.
(46:14):
That was her statement.
We stayed there for, I think,ten days.
It was really nice, very nice.
The city of Hamburg is abeautiful city.
It was seventy-five percentdestroyed by the Allies, and
after the war, through theMarshall Plan, naturally
American money, we built it upagain into a beautiful city.
(46:34):
It really is a beautiful city.
End quote.
So that was Adler's experiencegoing back to Germany years
later.
As I said, I was reading thisin an interview from the
Holocaust Museum.
So he gave his whole story,told everything, and the
interviewer had a follow-upquestion.
(46:55):
Well, she had several, but Iwould just I'd like to read to
you um the follow-up questionthat she asked in his response.
She asked him, yeah, so how didthe Jewish people not realize
this was happening?
He said, Well, I was amongthem.
When Hitler was party number26, and we all said, ah, he's
(47:16):
never going to amount toanything.
It's a great big joke.
Doesn't mean anything.
What we did not realize, Idon't think many of the German
people didn't realize, thatthat's not the right phrase
really.
We're all German.
I was German at that time.
What many people didn'trealize, let's just generalize
it, is that they had the backingof the most powerful people in
(47:39):
Germany.
He had the backing, what how hesold them, I have no idea.
I think maybe the backgroundwas money or power, perhaps more
than anything else, power, andthey financed his whole
campaign.
But there was friction as well.
The so called aristocraticGermans, they were not in favor
of Hitler.
(47:59):
And to prove a point, they madeattempts to kill him after he
was the big man, and they allgot killed in the process.
But he had the backing of thebig industrialists.
They were very much in favor ofhim, and power and conquest of
other countries.
As far as the Jews wereconcerned, they said, Well,
maybe it's not so wrong afterall, because there was no
(48:22):
killing at the point.
When I left, we all knew fromthe book Meinkampf that he was
extremely anti Semitic, but wenever thought, nobody thought in
his wildest dreams, that youcan really imagine that anything
could come to such extremes.
Nobody can imagine.
I don't believe that anyone inthe world can visualize six
(48:43):
million people assembled in oneplace.
And he killed six millionpeople.
Six million It's an incrediblefigure.
Along with five millionnon-Jews, such as the Jehovah's
Witnesses, or anyone who didn'tbelieve his philosophy.
Life meant nothing.
It's the most expendable thingin the world.
(49:04):
Life is the cheapest thing youcan get.
Nobody paid much attention toit at that time.
Nobody.
You can't in your wildestdreams imagine that anything
could go to such extremes.
And actually, the extremestarted in 1940 at the Von Sea
conference in Berlin, outside ofBerlin, where Reinhardt
(49:26):
Heydrich was appointed to be incharge of the quote unquote
final solution.
Of course, Reinhard Heydrichwas killed in Ledisky,
Czechoslovakia.
He was assassinated, and as aresult of the assassination in
Ledisky, Czechoslovakia, thewhole town was obliterated.
Today every living thing,totally, every living thing,
(49:50):
every man, woman, and child waskilled in that town in revenge
for Reinhard Heydrich's death.
When Heydrich was killed out,Eichmann took over the final
solution.
At that time, of course, I wasalready in this country.
End quote.
So the only the only otherthing that Adler, well, Adler
(50:14):
has a lot of other things to saythat we'll get to in other
podcasts, I'm sure.
But one of the things that hetalks about that many of the
other transcripts, um, many ofthe other things I've read,
watched, talk about is beingJewish, being Jewish as a
religion versus being Jewish asa nationality.
(50:36):
And I would say a majority ofJewish people in Germany saw
themselves as Germans first.
So it was like, yes, they wentto a Jewish school, yes, they
went to a synagogue, but butthey saw themselves as Germans.
And that's part of the reasonwhy it was so hard for them to
(50:57):
accept that, you know, they weregetting all of this backlash.
Everyone hated the Jews becausethey they felt German.
And and he talks about that alot, but it's it's just
something to keep I mean, that Ithink is interesting and to
keep in mind when you're lookingat what was going on in Germany
at the time.
Thad (51:18):
They didn't see themselves as a completely different
people.
They saw themselves as justbeing one of the one of the
folk.
Robyn (51:24):
I exactly.
And you read a lot of thestories, um, the Hitler Youth,
which I'm sure we'll get to.
There were a lot of Jewish kidsthat wanted to join the Hitler
Youth because their friends werein it.
That kind of kind of likeAdler, you know, he joined the
because yeah, he didn't care itwas a Jew.
Thad (51:45):
It's the end thing, right?
Robyn (51:46):
And you know, there's one point where Adler's like, yeah,
I went home to my mom and toldher that I joined the army, and
she was like, What are youthinking?
And he was just like, Yeah,well, my friends did it.
Of course.
And of course, he was ateenager, like 20 at that time.
Um, but but yeah, most of themsaw themselves just very much
ingrained with regular culture.
(52:08):
They a lot of them went toregular schools, um, you know,
what would essentially be publicschools before Hitler came to
power.
So it it really was shockingfor a lot of them that they
would be taken out anddiscriminated against so much.
Um Adler even talks about hisuh he did uh like a genealogy
(52:31):
thing through the Red Cross atsome point, and you know, he was
like, Yeah, my family went backin Germany at least 200 years.
It's like we're Germans, we'renot Jews, we're Germans, which
just made it so much more messy,very messy and complicated.
Thad (52:47):
That's it's an amazing story.
Robyn (52:50):
I think I think it's very interesting, and I think when
we look at any time in history,I mean, for me, it's like
obviously this time because Iliterally spent years of my life
studying modern German history.
But, you know, you could talkabout you could spend hours just
talking about one of the acts,the enabling act, or the
(53:11):
Reichstag fire, or anything, youknow, that happened in Germany.
You could spend hours on thatone thing.
But the way to really feel andunderstand what was going on is
to, you know, take a person likeAdler and look at his life, see
what actually went on with him,instead of you know, just going
through, I could go with youthrough with you all through all
(53:34):
the laws and all the everythingthat happened structurally in
Germany, you know.
It's kind of like when youlearn all the Civil War battles
and names or something.
You know, you learn all of theupper level stuff.
I can go over all of that withyou, but you don't, people I
think, don't really understanduntil you're able to walk in
another person's shoes and andsee where they're coming from.
(53:54):
So, you know, that's I thinkthat's the best way to approach
really history in general is bylooking at the person.
But he had the backing of the big industrialists in
Germany.
They were very much in favor ofpower and conquest of other
countries.
Germany, you know.
Today Germany.
Tomorrow the world.
That was the philosophy.
That was their their bigphrase.
We all thought it was a joke.
Ah, it won't amount to nothing.
(00:22):
Just another political party.
Thad (00:31):
So months ago, I remember you running into my office.
Super excited.
And you said, Thad, I'm readinga story about this guy who is a
Jew who stood guard for AdolfHitler.
Today, this is that story.
(00:52):
So who is this guy?
Robyn (00:54):
Well, first of all, I take offense at your reading the
story about, because it was notabout him.
There's no story writtenanywhere about him.
I was reading his transcriptfrom an actual oral history.
So you're not going to findthis in like a published book or
something.
Thad (01:13):
So that's right.
That's right.
He is this is a this is a guywhose oral history is on record
at the Holocaust Museum.
Robyn (01:22):
Yeah, the um United States, one in Washington.
Um the collections are um atthe Shapell Center, but it's,
you know, the one in Washington,do we?
Thad (01:31):
And and you can look you can, in fact, so we're going to
talk about it, but if you wantto, you could go and listen to
this guy's story online.
Right.
Right.
It got uh he talks at lengthabout the thing.
Robyn (01:42):
You can see the interview.
Oh wow.
And I know, and and hear him.
Um, but you can look it up.
It's Edward Adler, um, E-D WA-R-D A-D-L-E-R.
Um, and I mean there's actuallythousands of oral histories
there that um are really goodthere.
Thad (02:02):
Awesome.
All right, so so tell me aboutEdward.
Robyn (02:06):
Okay, well, he was an interesting guy.
He was born in 1910.
But before we talk about hisrole in everything, we need to
talk about where Germany was inlife.
And he actually he actuallysays it too, that in order for
us to understand anything thathe tells us, that uh well this
(02:30):
is what he said, quote, we haveto put this in proper context.
Things were very bad inGermany.
Unemployment was perhaps, I'mnot sure of this now, but I
would say perhaps 20% peopleweren't working, and there was
no jobs to be had, and as timewent on, they became more and
more sympathetic to the Nazimovement.
(02:50):
First, I would imagine, foreconomic reasons, and secondly,
it became very popular to beanti-Semitic because it was the
easiest thing in the world.
If you want to hate somebody,the Jews are always around, they
can be hated.
End quote.
So we're setting it in Germanyin the twenties, which was after
(03:14):
World War One.
And and I want to read a quotefrom a a book called
Appeasement, which you know isnothing about Nazi Germany, but
just to put it in wor the worldperspective of what the world
was like after the first worldwar.
And in the book, it was by uhTim Bovary, and I'm basically
(03:39):
reading this just to get all thestatistics uh right, okay?
So the desire to avoid a secondworld war was perhaps the most
understandable and universalwish in history.
More than 16.5 million peopledied during the First World War.
The British lost 723,000, theFrench 1.7 million, the Russians
(04:05):
1.8 million, the British Empire230,000, the Germans over 2
million.
20,000 British soldiers died onthe first day of the Battle of
the Somme, while the ossuary atDaumot contains the bones of
some 130,000 French and Germansoldiers, a mere sixth of those
(04:29):
killed during the 302-day Battleof Verdun.
Among the survivors, there wasscarcely a soul that was not
affected.
Almost everyone had a father,husband, son, brother, cousin,
fiance, or friend killed ormaimed.
When it was over, not even thevictors could feel victorious.
(04:50):
End quote.
So that's where the world wasat this point.
At the end of the war, they hadthe Treaty of Versailles, which
gave Germany horriblereparations.
I'm sure at length in anotherpodcast, I'll be talking about
the Treaty of Versailles and thewar guilt clause, which
(05:13):
required Germany to pay, youknow, massive reparations for
the war, which of course theythey didn't really have money
to, which created anotherproblem we'll talk about in a
minute.
But uh they uh but it wasFrance that really struggled
with it.
And I mean, it's a fun storythat uh after the
Franco-Prussian War, the Germanwar, like in 1871, the uh the
(05:38):
Germans made the French signtheir uh the treaty that they
lost, the war, in the actualVersailles uh Hall of Mirrors.
And I have the diary of a guywho was actually one of the
German soldiers there in, youknow, this is 1871.
His name is Otto Bertram, butyou know, it's this di it's a
(05:59):
diary that he wrote, and so it'sjust fascinating because, you
know, they went into France,which Versailles is essentially
Paris, it's about 20 miles out,and so went into the capital of
France and forced them to signthis treaty, and it was
humiliating and horrible for theFrench.
So they just were ready to getback at Germany about this, and
(06:20):
the treaty uh, you know, ofVersailles was kind of like
their opportunity to.
Thad (06:26):
So it's kind of like, hey guys, we remember what you did a
few years back, and uh nowwe're back, except the tables
are turned.
Robyn (06:32):
Yes, how the turn tables turn.
Thad (06:35):
All right.
So uh so so Germany was uh wasunder some pressure after the
Treaty of Versailles.
Uh World War I was over.
Um and so the world is like,well, we didn't want to go back
into that, and that's that'swhere we enter this story.
Robyn (06:51):
Well, as he talks about, there was massive unemployment
in the early 1920s.
The Weimar Republic, which wasthe fledgling republic that they
created after the first worldwar, that really, you know,
never really got good grounding,uh, but it had massive
hyperinflation because they likeprinted more money so they
(07:14):
could pay off the reparationsand and that created lots of
problems.
And then of course in 1929,with the stock market crash
around that time, the wholeworld suffered, you know, around
the time of the US stock marketcrash.
Thad (07:30):
That was the Great Depression.
Robyn (07:32):
Yeah, that for America.
Thad (07:34):
Yeah, that would be um and so so that was the Great
Depression for America, andGermany was already depressed.
Robyn (07:40):
Well, Ger Germany, well, here's the thing
offered to help the Germans payfor some of the reparations they
were with with the the techguys.
So, like in the initial quotethat I read, he talks about the
industrialists being um behindHitler.
These are like the tech guysthat we would think of today,
those the billionaires we havesupporting this um this regime.
(08:02):
And so they had investments andstuff, and you know, through
complicated, convoluted economicreasons, um that started to
fall.
The um the German economy did,but the industrialists decided
to back the National SocialistParty against the communists,
who were the other the othermain group.
Thad (08:24):
So you had the National Socialists, and then you had the
communists, and then everybodyelse kind of just caught in the
middle.
Robyn (08:32):
Yes, yes, pretty much.
And of course, we look atGermany at the time and the
politics that were going on, butuh it's like countryside
Germany was very different thancity Germany.
The cities, mainly Berlin andHamburg, the mainly the northern
ones, like Munich was a hotbedof national socialism, it's
(08:55):
southern Bavarian part.
But Berlin, Hamburg, to anextent Dresden, like it northern
cities mainly.
I mean, this is Germany, sonorth and south is like nothing
in relation to Texas.
Um but yeah, but still, theyhad the massive working class
neighborhoods.
I think Berlin, like 35% of thevote or something in one of the
(09:19):
elections was um communist.
They so they had working classneighborhoods and Edward Adler
lived in Hamburg.
Okay, and in Hamburg there waswhat they called the German
October that happened in 1923,which really was was nothing
really, but it they had hoped tohave like a communist
(09:41):
revolution in like the 18, 19,eight, 1918, 1919 time period,
caught there was a communistuprising, you know.
So communists had been tryingto get power.
They had hoped that this wouldbe a thing across the country,
and one took place in Hamburg.
And so he's gonna say he'sgonna talk about it, so I'm
gonna just talk about it throughhis eyes.
Thad (10:02):
Okay.
Robyn (10:02):
Um, okay.
Quote I remember that they, theNazi Party, were then a party
um number 26.
We had many, many politicalparties in Germany at that time,
and they were party number 26.
They had the advantage overother political parties, such as
communists and democrats,because they had a lot of money
(10:22):
backing them, and when theymarched into a certain
neighborhood, they had beautifulshiny boots and beautiful
uniforms, and they marched inmilitary formation, whereas
Democrats and communists at thetime, they were organized, but
they were like a bunch of peoplerunning down the street, as
compared to the well-organizedmarch of the Nazis.
At that time we lived in anarea of Hamburg, Germany, which
(10:45):
was a working classneighborhood.
I would say very largelycommunist, but not necessarily
party members, but certainlysympathizers.
There was one particular day Iremember quite vividly when the
Nazis decided they wanted tomarch down the main street in
our neighborhood, by thethousands, incidentally.
And we we didn't exactly likethis idea.
(11:08):
It was our neighborhood, ourturf.
There was a lot of shooting.
Machine guns had been mountedon roofs, would shoot into the
air, groups and so forth, and itbecame a very bloody affair.
This was only one time.
I guess I'm not quite sureabout the date, but it was 1930,
a very early 1930.
I was involved in many of theanti-Nazi street fights, and
(11:30):
well, I was never a member ofthe party really, but certainly
a sympathizer, end quote.
So that's an example of thetype things that were going on
between uh communists and Nazisthat like I said, so the Nazis
would come up and basically belike, hey guys, here's a gun.
(11:50):
Like it you can have clothesand boots and a gun and
occasionally shoot someone andand here's something to do.
And you know, Adler was he said20 or 21 when this was
happening, and you know, he'sjust like, Yeah, we my friends
and I basically we had nothingelse to do.
I mean, why not?
You get good clothes andsomething to do, and so so he
(12:13):
joined the the the Nancy's?
Well, let me let me tell you,in his own words.
Thad (12:17):
All right.
Robyn (12:18):
Okay.
So he says, quote, a group ofyoung men, friends of mine, we
used to hang around together.
We were quite active in dancingand all this kind of thing.
We decided we're gonna join thearmy.
It was it was not an army.
It was called the the Arbeites,Arbutan.
It this was Hitler's force thatI talked about in uh in another
(12:42):
episode where Hitler brought inand then National Socialists
came in on top of the policeforce.
It was like a it it was adifferent thing.
So he said, I don't recallexactly the name of it.
It was a labor camp in which wehad regular military training,
except for weapons.
That was against the Treaty ofVersailles at the time, which
(13:02):
had been still obeyed then.
We had no weapons, but we wmarched in military formation
and we used spades, shovels asrifles while marching and all
this kind of thing.
We had regular militarytraining.
And at that time that I wentthere, it was nobody asked me if
I was Jewish, and I didn'tmention it.
(13:23):
So we all got accepted intothis camp.
Somehow or other, I I don'trecall how, they found out I was
Jewish.
And I was stationed in EastPrussia, which was um near
Elbin, and which was German, butit had been independent
earlier.
It's an area that's been kickedback and forth between Poland
and Germany for many years.
We marched from Marienburg toElding, which I'd say was about
(13:47):
thirty kilometers and stoodguard for Hitler.
And I claimed to have the verydistinct um I don't know what I
should call it.
I was probably the only Jew inthe world that ever stood guard
for Hitler.
I saw him as close as I see youin front of me right now.
He was making a speech at thecity of Elding, and he walked by
(14:07):
us, reviewing the troops.
He was a little man.
Everyone knows the mustache andhis hairdo, and he looked
perfectly calm, and we stood outthere waiting for him to
finish, which took about threehours.
When he came out and he marchedby us again towards his car,
the man looked and I rememberthis very vividly.
(14:27):
He looked like a maniac.
He talked himself into a totalfrenzy.
I don't believe that he evenknew what he was speaking about
anymore, because he was helooked he looked a person who
has not control over hisemotions anymore.
I was found out somehow orother, as I said before, that I
was Jewish, and I was dischargedfrom the camp.
(14:49):
I must have been in there, Idon't I don't remember exactly,
I'd say close to a year.
This was 1932.
So before Hitler came to powerin Germany.
Nothing much happened between1932 and 1935, except the
regular political marchesthrough neighborhoods, and and
they weren't wanted and soforth.
But in the meantime, the NaziParty grew and grew in
(15:12):
popularity.
A lot of the German fellows,young fellows, that weren't
really anti-Semitic oranti-anything, but they had
nothing to do.
They had no jobs, and here camearound, gave them a beautiful
pair of boots, gave them a niceshirt and pair of breeches, have
a gun in your hip, you know,you can go out and shoot
anybody.
It's okay, you'll get away withit.
Now that became very popular.
(15:34):
End quote.
He said that, you know, thingswere pretty calm until 1935,
when the Nuremberg Laws cameout.
And I think I think it's reallyinteresting that he says this
because he says 32 to 35.
Hitler came to power in 33 inJanuary and, you know, passed
(15:56):
the enabling law.
There was a Reichstag fire,which of course they blamed on
the communists, and a slew oflaws and persecution started.
Adler actually says at onepoint, he thinks the start of
everything was the boycott inApril 1st, 1933, where uh the
(16:16):
Nazis were basically boycottingJewish doors for a day.
It didn't really work verywell, but it was like he's he
says he thinks it was the firsttime it was their attack on the
Jewish economy at all.
But I also find it interesting,many people that I talked to,
read transcripts of say that uhGerman people say that they
(16:40):
placed the beginning of the warand like when things got really
bad in 1942, which of course wasafter the US was in the war,
after um Germany had invadedPoland, and because that's when
the ghettos started and thedeath camps opened en masse.
So it's just it's interestingbecause he says that he points
(17:03):
he puts it at 1933 in April.
Thad (17:07):
So we can see that the Nazis have a prejudice against
the Jews right from the verystart.
But it's not it's not barefacedand horrible right at the
beginning.
It's it's small things.
So they start off by by havingit, like you said, this boycott.
And then slowly ratchet thingsup over time.
Robyn (17:31):
Here's what you have to remember about German people in
general is uh after World WarOne, going back to like, you
know, 19, 18, 19, 19, there wasa legend in Germany called the
stab in the back legend.
So basically, the generals thatwere fighting in the Eastern
Front in World War One,Hindenburg and Ludendorff, they
(17:54):
came back from the war and wasjust like, yeah, Germany was
winning.
We were stabbed in the back bythe people that signed the
treaty, which some of them wereJewish.
So that was like the startingof blaming the Jews.
Adler says everyone knew thatHitler was anti-Semitic because
of Mein Kampf and the things hesaid, but no one ever thought
(18:14):
he'd actually, you know, dosomething about that.
Thad (18:18):
Um, so everyone just thought, oh yeah, Hitler doesn't
like the Jews, but I mean, youknow, that's that's just the way
it is.
No big no big deal.
Robyn (18:26):
Right.
You know, someone comes inpower and doesn't like a
specific group of people, youdon't think, oh, they're gonna
do anything about that.
So it took everyone bysurprise.
Thad (18:36):
Gotcha.
Robyn (18:36):
Even even knowing that he was anti-Semitic.
Thad (18:39):
Right.
Robyn (18:40):
So Adler says in 1935, so at this point he would have
been about 25, the Nuremberglaws were passed.
And he says, quote, September15th, a new law came into being
that a German family could nothave a Gentile maid, and there
were many Jewish families quitewealthy, too, and they had a
maid and a live-in maid.
(19:01):
They could not have a live-inmaid at the age of under 55 for
apparently obvious reasons.
They also at this time took alaw into effect that did not
allow a Jewish person, male orfemale, to go with a gentile
person, male or female.
At that time I was going with anice young lady I had gone out
with for some time, and we werecamping.
(19:22):
I remember very well.
I had a kayak, and we went outcamping near Hamburg, and there
was a fellow next to us, nearus, in another little camp with
a tent.
We slept in tents.
He wanted to make a date withthis young lady that I was going
with, and she didn't want anypart of it.
He reported me to the Gestapo,and I was arrested for going
(19:43):
with a Gentile girl.
I got six months in prison,solitary confinement in 1935.
When I was released, I becameknown as a habitual criminal in
the eyes of the Nazi Party.
I was a habitual criminal.
I never did anything criminalin my life.
But as far as they'reconcerned, being doing something
(20:04):
against the law was enough tomake me a habitual criminal.
So, you know, he so thathappened.
Thad (20:13):
Do you have to be careful who you're dating?
1935.
Robyn (20:16):
1935.
All right.
Yeah, that'd have him checkedout.
Um but it it gets worse.
Thad (20:22):
It does.
Robyn (20:22):
It does.
From six from six months ofsolitary confinement, uh, it's
hard to beat that.
Right.
Um, but so three years later,three years, on June 14th, 1938,
he was married at the time, hada baby, and his wife was
pregnant again.
And he says, quote, we had goneto a birthday party on June
(20:47):
14th.
So some of so some friends ofours who had come home, must
have been about midnight,somewhere around midnight, four
o'clock in the morning.
We had a banging on the door.
And I thought those were ourfriends coming back to continue
the celebration.
I said, Come on, go on home.
It's enough already.
You know, four o'clock AM, Igot work tomorrow.
(21:10):
The knocking persisted.
I opened the door and twoplainclothes men with guns came
into the room.
You're under arrest.
Under arrest?
What for?
I didn't do anything.
No questions asked.
They didn't push us around atthat point.
I was I got I got dressed andthey took us to a police station
(21:32):
in the neighborhood where wewere.
I got into a room perhaps aslarge as this one here.
There must have been two orthree hundred people in there,
and we didn't know what wasgoing on.
What what are you here for?
I don't know.
I didn't do anything.
We didn't know anything.
Nothing.
We had absolutely no idea whatwas going to happen.
(21:54):
All we knew is we were underarrest.
Around seven o'clock or sixo'clock in the morning, they
loaded us all into trucks and ittook took us to a remote train
station in a place calledFulsburg.
It's a it's a name.
It's a suburb of Hamburg.
The trucks were supported bypolice.
(22:14):
Well, the storm troop thestormtrooper cars, not really
police cars.
The private police had nothingto do with this.
They had a car in front of thetruck and a car in back of the
truck, and one on each side withbloodhounds.
To be facetious, they wanted usto make sure nobody got lost.
You know what I mean?
They took us to the trainstation and we were loaded.
(22:36):
We were loaded into regulartrains, not boxcars, as what
would happen later.
We were not in boxcars.
We went in a regular train.
And then, several hours oftrain ride, we didn't know where
we were.
We had no idea what washappening.
And you can imagine some olderpeople, I mean I was just a
young fellow, but there weresome older people started
(22:56):
crying.
What did what did we do?
When we got to Berlin, theyloaded us back on trucks again.
No, no, no, that's not correct.
We went to a town calledOranienburg, which is a suburb
of Berlin.
How far outside of Berlin, I donot know.
The train stopped.
They shoved us all out of thetrain, and we began to march
(23:18):
towards the camp.
We didn't know what was goingto ha to be, we had no idea.
Along the train ride, some, wehad to run.
There was no walking.
One particular incident Irecall, like it was yesterday.
An old man with the name ofSolomon.
I'll never forget.
He must have been well into hisseventies.
He simply couldn't run.
(23:40):
He couldn't run.
He had to walk.
He couldn't run and hecollapsed and he laid in the
road.
And one of the stormtroopers, atall, young fellow, very
slender, very tall, stepped onhis throat.
This is true.
Unbelievable, but true.
Till the man was dead.
(24:00):
We had to pick up the body andthrow him to the side of the
road.
And we continued on into thecamp, where we assembled in a
courtyard.
And a strange incident happenedat that time.
We faced a barrack, a door onthe right, a door on the left.
People went in the left door,came out the right door,
(24:21):
entirely different people.
Their hair had been shaven off.
They had on a prisoner'suniform, the very white striped
uniform.
My number was 6199.
And a strange thing happened,as I mentioned before.
My parents were separated.
I hadn't seen my father.
He was my stepfather, I mustsay, in perhaps eight or nine
(24:44):
years, right after I was barmitbarmit.
My parents separated for aspecific reason, and I hadn't
seen him in all these years.
And I met him, I saw him inthat camp.
It was it was hard to describe.
My father was a very, very bigman.
He weighed 350 pounds.
I introduced myself and hedidn't recognize me, of course.
(25:06):
We became a family again.
While we were in the camp, Itried to take care of him as
much as I could.
There wasn't much that I coulddo at the time, but I just have
to mention all this because itrelates to a very traumatic
experiences in my life.
We worked ten hours a day, if Iremember correctly.
We slept on straw, on strawbacks.
(25:27):
It was it was just a stackfilled with straw.
I guess that's common, youknow, under certain
circumstances.
Many people sleep that way.
We worked ten hours a day on afield that was approximately a
square kilometer, somewherearound that area.
One area of this field wasquite high.
The other was quite low.
The area that had to beleveled, and what was done was
(25:50):
they had tracks running from oneend to the other.
On those tracks were miningcars.
Now, in this country, a miningcar is square.
There's over is a mining car isa triangular shape, steel
mining cars, and each train hadabout ten of those on it.
On each one of those miningcars, stormtroopers stood, and
we had to run from one end tothe other, shoveling the mining
(26:13):
car, filling it with dirt.
If anyone would have told me atthat time I can run 40
kilometers a day, I'd say,you're crazy.
But I did, day after day afterday, for 10 hours.
The food was barely edible, andI remember one particular
incident.
It so happens, I hate broccoli,and they had broccoli soup for
(26:35):
three days in a row.
And for three days in a row, Ididn't eat anything, just dry
bread.
The other prisoners gave mesome of their bread.
They ate the soup, I got bread.
I just couldn't eat it becauseif I would have, I'd gotten
sick.
Psychological, certainly, butat that point, I'm entitled.
I'm gonna stop here because Ijust I know I was talking about
(26:59):
mining cars, you may have gottenlost some.
The significance of this isthat they were using his group
of people to build the firstdeath camp, which was
Iranianburg outside of Berlin.
So all this that he's talkingabout with the mining cars and
running and how it's you knowhigh on one side and low on the
(27:19):
other, they did not know it atthe time.
But this was Jews being used asslave labor to build their own
first concentration camp.
Thad (27:28):
Holy cow.
Robyn (27:30):
Yeah.
And I mean, so yeah, eventuallywe'll we'll get to a podcast
where we talk about a man whowent in the middle of the night,
escaped Ronienburg to go to adoctor who then fixed him up in
the middle of the night.
It's just interesting that youknow you you hear that with the
different stories, differentpeople you interview.
Thad (27:49):
Right.
Robyn (27:49):
So that's what they were using him for.
So I'm gonna continue.
I just needed to explain that.
Thad (27:56):
Yeah.
Robyn (27:56):
Quote At one time they assembled us in a courtyard.
They had machine gun towers allthe way around, and they were
shooting machine gun bulletsover our head, maybe a foot over
our head.
And they said they made a acommander made a speech.
They said that if Germany thisthis was the time Germany was
taking over the Czechoslovakia,it was like 1938.
(28:18):
They said that if Germany getsinvolved in the war, the machine
guns will be lowered and we'reand we're going to kill you all.
We were hoping this wasn'tgonna happen.
Perhaps um perhaps many peoplerecall a Christian pastor by the
name of Niemoller.
Niemoler had been arrested fromthe pulpit in a little church
(28:39):
somewhere in Midwestern Germanybecause he simply did not
believe the Nazi doctrine, andhe was preaching openly against
it, and he was arrested and putin camp.
And it became like aninternational incident at the
time.
I met him in Sachenhausen.
What they did to this man, onehuman being doing this to
another, is beyond description.
(29:00):
This man is perhaps he was inour camp perhaps six months,
aged twenty-five years old.
Perhaps I shouldn't say this,but they literally made him eat
his own waste.
But he lived through it becausehe had strong faith.
I just mentioned this to conveywhat one human being can do to
another.
When you read this in a book,it's one thing.
(29:22):
When you see it and it actuallyhappens, it's quite another.
I assure you.
He was in concentration camps,including Sachenhausen and later
(29:46):
Dachau, where in a futurepodcast I'll talk about how he
used to meet with the commandantand well, the future commandant
that he was, you know, asoldier, it's fine, but what
they would meet and talk.
They actually had high levelNazis come and try.
To get Niemuler to change hismind.
And he, if you go, I think, Imean, his quote's one of the
(30:08):
most famous ones you see around,you know, they came for the
communists, and then there wasno one left when they came for
me.
That that's Pastor Niemuler.
He spent the re the rest of hislife talking about how he felt
he felt bad that the the Germanshadn't done more when they saw
what was happening, and and hehimself had guilt for it.
That he was in concentrationcamps from 1937 to 45.
(30:32):
What made him what made himturn against the Nazis was when
they started oppressing theChristians.
Thad (30:37):
Right.
I mean, uh didn't he originallyin the early 30s, and he
supported he supported theNazis, right?
Robyn (30:44):
So he thought he, like many Germans, thought that and
good that Germany needed astrong leader.
Thad (30:50):
Right.
Robyn (30:51):
Because chaos had ensued in the twenties.
I mean, you know, like wetalked about politics were
everywhere, the inflation,inflation was going crazy.
It was also in Germany, kind oflike in the United States, we
had the Roaring Twenties flapperera, where people were just
like, woo-hoo! Okay, well, thatwas kind of going on in Germany
um too.
(31:11):
If you've ever um seen cabaret,that uh it's it's that kind of
setting.
Thad (31:16):
It was wild.
And the the Nazis were a theythey were they were the
conservatives.
You had you had the the Nazisthat were the the right wing
conservatives, you had the thecommunists that were the the
left-wing liberals, and uh anduh you know looking at the
political system in the area,Russia was was falling to the
communists, and so you know itwas kind of like well we can
(31:38):
either we can either go back togo back to our traditions or you
have to keep in mind they sawthe whole Russian revolution
happen, not not very many yearsbefore that.
Robyn (31:48):
I mean, it was in 1917, so you know, that was fresh in
everyone's mind, and many peoplewere just like, Oh my gosh, we
do not want the communists comein here.
Right.
Um, you know, anything butthat.
Um and so they had that kind ofmentality too.
But also Germany, they wereaccustomed to a strong leader.
There was ever since theconcert of Europe in Vienna with
(32:12):
Metternich in 1848, I won'tbore you with that.
But what came out was thenGermany had a strong leader.
Well, Kaiser Wilhelm II was asuper special case, but you
know, they they were under oneleader, so they were accustomed
to having, you know, they w theyhad a constitutional monarchy
and they were accustomed tohaving a leader at the top, and
(32:34):
so they thought Hitler would bea strong one.
Thad (32:36):
And he was.
Robyn (32:37):
Right.
So I'm gonna talk some moreabout his time in the camp.
Thad (32:41):
All right.
Robyn (32:42):
Uh quote, while in the camp I had pneumonia.
The commander used to come intothe barracks and expect the
sleeping sleeping quarters.
Well, there were no livingquarters.
We only had beds in a barrack.
Other than that, we stayedoutside.
There was nowhere that we couldrelax or assemble.
No way.
He used to hold his nose.
(33:02):
Ugh, these juice stink.
I can't stand it.
This of course was all inGerman.
One time we were assembled, andI always tried to make it my
business to stay in the backrow.
We always had three or fourrows of soldiers.
I tried to stay in the backrow, not to be conspicuous in
any way.
One time it it just didn'thappen.
(33:25):
I was standing on the frontrow, and as the guards walked
by, they stopped in front of me.
And I dreaded that because Iknew this might happen.
And he said to me, Why are youlaughing?
I was in no mood to laugh, Iassure you.
But as far as he was concerned,I laughed.
He said, You're gonna hang.
In two weeks from today, you'regonna hang.
(33:48):
Hanging means, and this iscontinuing his quote, so this is
him explaining it.
Hanging means they tie yourhands, your hands are tied
behind your back, and they hangyou to tie on a pole, a
perfectly plain pole for 24hours.
After that, you can never useyour arms again.
This was supposed to be donesixteenth of September 1938.
(34:11):
Now, I was released on thefifteenth of September.
My father was released first,and I was released about two
weeks afterwards.
The release came about becauseat that time the Nazi government
was satisfied if a Jewishperson could leave the country,
they let you go.
They had no death camps at thetime.
So my wife had been very activetrying to get me out.
(34:33):
The first six weeks she didn'tknow where I was, if I was alive
or anything, and of course shewas pregnant and had a baby at
this time.
There was no communication, butshe kept on working to get us
out of Germany.
She had family in this countryin Providence, Rhode Island.
The papers were all set andready and everything, and she
(34:53):
went and she got me released onthe fifteenth of September, one
day before I was supposed tohang.
How I got from the camp backhome, I don't really know.
I don't even know what I had onor anything.
All I know is that when I camehome, she didn't recognize me
from ten feet away.
She was pushing a baby carriagedown the street, but I was
(35:16):
home.
There were in many incidentsthat I really have to go back to
recall, whether many peoplewere shot during the day when we
worked and worked among othersI many times because you can't
run much and they would theywouldn't let you walk.
They whipped you.
So I recall one time they gotus out of bed at four o'clock in
the morning with water hoses.
(35:37):
The guys had a ball.
They had a wonderful time.
They got us all out with firehoses and water, just for no
reason at all.
And then they wanted some fun,so they got us all out and
standing in the yard, and afteran hour or so we all had to get
back and continue to sleep if wecould on that wet straw.
I will say that during the timewhen the Austrian guards were
(36:01):
on duty, they had German guardsand Austrian guards.
When the Austrian guards wereon duty, it was horrible.
They were the most brutal ofanyone you can imagine, but they
did with us and we had nochoice.
Many people will say, Whydidn't you fight back?
I equate it with the situationin Ethiopia when Mussolini went
(36:21):
into Ethiopia with tanks andthey were shooting slingshots
against the tanks.
We were in the same positionsomewhat.
How can you fight back?
You had nothing.
You had to take it.
Fortunately, I was there foronly three months.
I know people who left whetherfrom well they had no family
left anywhere, or they could notget out.
(36:43):
And some were all killed, ofcourse.
End quote.
So that was his time um in aconcentration camp, which was
before the death camps, and andhe was released.
So I talked some in anotherepisode about Kristallnacht,
which was just a couple monthsafter he was released in 1938.
(37:06):
Which is when the Germans camein and well, a group of them
that had been partying came andbroke into a bunch of Jewish
doors.
It was the night of the brokenglass.
Thad (37:18):
Oh, right.
Yeah, we talked about that um acouple of episodes back on the
the kinder transport.
Robyn (37:24):
Yes.
And we read an account of uh aGerman guy who had lived through
it.
Thad (37:28):
Right.
Robyn (37:29):
But so this is this is Adler though.
We're we're back to Adler.
Back to Adler.
He says, quote, when I came outof the concentration camp, I
had to report to the Gestapo teno'clock every morning, except
Sundays.
You had to go downtown, reportevery morning at ten o'clock, a
sort of sign in ceremony.
(37:49):
They wanted to be sure I wasstill all right, that I wasn't
sick, you know.
They wanted to take good careof me.
Kristonloft happened Novemberninth.
November tenth in the morningwe stayed at my mother's, and my
wife said, I'll go downtownwith you.
We went downtown, we got on astreetcar.
There was all kinds ofcommotion.
(38:11):
What was going on we didn'tknow.
We hadn't no radio or put it onor anything.
There was no television inthose days.
Didn't put a radio, didn'tknow, and everybody was
whispering and pointing.
We didn't have any idea.
We got downtown, and there werea million people.
The city of Hamburg had threemillion people.
(38:31):
It was a very large city.
And in the finest stores, thefinest Jewish stores, the
windows were smashed, and themannequins were laying in the
street, people were burningbooks, dancing around it.
We had no idea what was goingon.
I turned up my collar, I'llnever forget, and put my head
down and said, God, somebodyshould recognize me.
(38:53):
I'll be torn to pieces.
We went to the Gestapo buildingand there were lots of people
loitering outside on the firstfloor.
I said to my to my wife, I'lltell you what, run upstairs and
see what's going on.
We had no idea.
She ran upstairs.
I don't think she ever ran asfast, a flight of stairs so fast
in her entire life.
She came down, she says, and Iwas hiding, incidentally, in a
(39:16):
building, in the basement of abuilding across the street.
She came over and she said,They're all going to be arrested
again.
This was November 10th, 1938.
She said, You have to get outof here.
How can I get out of here?
We're not ready.
I don't have we went back.
Um, no, we went to the Holland,America line, where we already
(39:38):
had made res remade reservationsto come to this country,
America, because my wife tookcare of all of that while I was
still in the camp.
But we didn't have the money topay for tickets anymore because
it was all confiscated.
My father-in-law, who was wellestablished in business, they
had nothing left.
Everything had been taken away.
And at that time, they'dalready been in this country and
(40:01):
we had nowhere to go.
My wife called a very famousbanker with the name of
Wahlberg, W-A-L-B-E-R-G.
He was a very famous banker inGermany.
He called Holland America Line.
He guaranteed payments for thetickets on November 10, 1938.
I took my wife back home to mymother's and at three o'clock in
(40:22):
the afternoon I got on thetrain.
I left for Holland.
My wife had a sister andbrother that lived in Holland at
that time.
She was married to a Dutchfellow, and they moved to
Holland probably three or fouryears before.
I don't know exactly when.
My wife my wife could verifythe date.
The train where I was on, thisis kind of interesting, the
(40:43):
train that I was on stopped inthe city and at the last German
station.
It stopped for five minutes.
They changed train personnel.
The Dutch person now would comeon and then we would go further
into Holland.
And as we were riding along,customs came.
They came into my car, andevery everyone there had their
(41:04):
own room, which I think seatedabout six people.
But it's not the way it is inAmerica.
It's one long train.
The customs came in and theyasked me for my passport.
I showed him the passport, andI must say that on the German
passport, the fort first pagehas a big, great big J on it, a
red J, so that anyone who opensup your passport knows instantly
(41:27):
that you are Jewish.
He looked at it, there was noproblem.
Where are you going?
I said, I'm going to Amsterdam.
No problem.
Okay.
He gave me back my passport andI was very relieved.
I had, you know, really didn'texpect it to be that easy.
Well, a few minutes later, Iwent walking through the train
(41:48):
towards the dining car.
I wanted to get a cup of coffeeor something, and there came a
black uniformed SS.
Where are you going?
I'm just going to get a cup ofcoffee or some tea or something.
Go back to your car.
So you have no choice.
You have to go back.
And mine was a young Americancouple.
I know it was an Americancouple by the passports.
(42:10):
They came and they asked thisyoung couple for the passports.
He says, Americans?
The fellow says, Yes.
We're on our honeymoon.
Okay, and give them back theirpassports.
He came to me.
Passport, please.
I showed him.
He says, Oh, you're a Jew.
You're running away.
Where do you come from?
(42:31):
I said, I come from Hamburg.
He said, You're running away.
You didn't report to theGestapo this morning.
Get off.
I said, I'm not gonna get off.
If they kill me, they kill me,but I'm not gonna get off.
The train stopped and oneminute was like an eternity.
(42:52):
A minute went by.
Two minutes went by.
No, those watches.
I had a watch, you know, in myvest pocket, those days long ago
that ticked.
A minute went by.
Two minutes went by.
Three minutes.
It's endless.
When you wait for one minute togo by, it's an awful long time.
(43:14):
This the train started rollingto a stop.
I was not out.
They came back and I thought,I'm all set.
But they opened the window andthey threw me out the window,
out onto the platform of thetrain.
They held me.
I was searched.
I mean totally searched.
Nude searched.
(43:36):
They said, something's wronghere.
You didn't report to theGestapo this morning.
You're running away fromsomething.
We're calling Hamburg.
Whether they did or not, Idon't know.
At midnight they let me out andI was allowed to go to another
train that went to Amsterdam.
I stayed in Amsterdam andwaited for my wife.
She was not allowed to come.
(43:56):
The American consul wouldn'tgive her the visa at that time
because she had just had a babyand she had veins in her legs
that were very prominent, and hewanted to wait till that
cleared up.
And then he gave her herpassport.
I waited in Holland for sixweeks until we came to America.
End quote.
So Adler came to America andreally he didn't leave at all to
(44:22):
go back to Germany in 1938.
So he wasn't there for the conconcentration camps to get us.
He was already here.
But he did go back.
Years later, some organizationwas having the Jews come back,
the Jewish people who had beenpersecuted during the war.
And so he hadn't returned.
(44:43):
His mother had been shot andkilled by the Nazis in
Treblinka.
And his sister, who was marriedwith two children, was killed
by the Allied bomb planes.
They found her body the nextmorning with her husband and her
young son.
That was a quote from him.
He uh we will talk in anotherpodcast about the bombings, the
(45:05):
Allied bombings over Dresden andBerlin and Hamburg.
But that's what happened to hisfamily that stayed in Germany.
But he went back many yearslater and he said that, quote,
the lady in charge was a very,very nice lady.
You could really see that shefelt what we went through.
And that, I mean, the city ofHam Hamburg had at one time, I
(45:29):
don't know, I think 60,000 Jewsor something like that.
It was a big city, threemillion people.
We had 60,000 Jews.
There was nothing left.
And all the big stores thatused to be owned by Jewish
people are now have now beentaken over by the Nazi Party in
those days, and eventuallyprobably went through
generations of their father andgrandfather and now they own it
(45:52):
or whatever.
And this lady felt sorry forus.
I asked her, what's the purposeof inviting us?
Do you expect anyone that tochange his mind and come back
and live here after living inAmerica for fifty years?
She said no, no, that's notreally the purpose.
It is perhaps to ease ourconscience a bit.
(46:14):
That was her statement.
We stayed there for, I think,ten days.
It was really nice, very nice.
The city of Hamburg is abeautiful city.
It was seventy-five percentdestroyed by the Allies, and
after the war, through theMarshall Plan, naturally
American money, we built it upagain into a beautiful city.
(46:34):
It really is a beautiful city.
End quote.
So that was Adler's experiencegoing back to Germany years
later.
As I said, I was reading thisin an interview from the
Holocaust Museum.
So he gave his whole story,told everything, and the
interviewer had a follow-upquestion.
(46:55):
Well, she had several, but Iwould just I'd like to read to
you um the follow-up questionthat she asked in his response.
She asked him, yeah, so how didthe Jewish people not realize
this was happening?
He said, Well, I was amongthem.
When Hitler was party number26, and we all said, ah, he's
(47:16):
never going to amount toanything.
It's a great big joke.
Doesn't mean anything.
What we did not realize, Idon't think many of the German
people didn't realize, thatthat's not the right phrase
really.
We're all German.
I was German at that time.
What many people didn'trealize, let's just generalize
it, is that they had the backingof the most powerful people in
(47:39):
Germany.
He had the backing, what how hesold them, I have no idea.
I think maybe the backgroundwas money or power, perhaps more
than anything else, power, andthey financed his whole
campaign.
But there was friction as well.
The so called aristocraticGermans, they were not in favor
of Hitler.
(47:59):
And to prove a point, they madeattempts to kill him after he
was the big man, and they allgot killed in the process.
But he had the backing of thebig industrialists.
They were very much in favor ofhim, and power and conquest of
other countries.
As far as the Jews wereconcerned, they said, Well,
maybe it's not so wrong afterall, because there was no
(48:22):
killing at the point.
When I left, we all knew fromthe book Meinkampf that he was
extremely anti Semitic, but wenever thought, nobody thought in
his wildest dreams, that youcan really imagine that anything
could come to such extremes.
Nobody can imagine.
I don't believe that anyone inthe world can visualize six
(48:43):
million people assembled in oneplace.
And he killed six millionpeople.
Six million It's an incrediblefigure.
Along with five millionnon-Jews, such as the Jehovah's
Witnesses, or anyone who didn'tbelieve his philosophy.
Life meant nothing.
It's the most expendable thingin the world.
(49:04):
Life is the cheapest thing youcan get.
Nobody paid much attention toit at that time.
Nobody.
You can't in your wildestdreams imagine that anything
could go to such extremes.
And actually, the extremestarted in 1940 at the Von Sea
conference in Berlin, outside ofBerlin, where Reinhardt
(49:26):
Heydrich was appointed to be incharge of the quote unquote
final solution.
Of course, Reinhard Heydrichwas killed in Ledisky,
Czechoslovakia.
He was assassinated, and as aresult of the assassination in
Ledisky, Czechoslovakia, thewhole town was obliterated.
Today every living thing,totally, every living thing,
(49:50):
every man, woman, and child waskilled in that town in revenge
for Reinhard Heydrich's death.
When Heydrich was killed out,Eichmann took over the final
solution.
At that time, of course, I wasalready in this country.
End quote.
So the only the only otherthing that Adler, well, Adler
(50:14):
has a lot of other things to saythat we'll get to in other
podcasts, I'm sure.
But one of the things that hetalks about that many of the
other transcripts, um, many ofthe other things I've read,
watched, talk about is beingJewish, being Jewish as a
religion versus being Jewish asa nationality.
(50:36):
And I would say a majority ofJewish people in Germany saw
themselves as Germans first.
So it was like, yes, they wentto a Jewish school, yes, they
went to a synagogue, but butthey saw themselves as Germans.
And that's part of the reasonwhy it was so hard for them to
(50:57):
accept that, you know, they weregetting all of this backlash.
Everyone hated the Jews becausethey they felt German.
And and he talks about that alot, but it's it's just
something to keep I mean, that Ithink is interesting and to
keep in mind when you're lookingat what was going on in Germany
at the time.
Thad (51:18):
They didn't see themselves as a completely different
people.
They saw themselves as justbeing one of the one of the
folk.
Robyn (51:24):
I exactly.
And you read a lot of thestories, um, the Hitler Youth,
which I'm sure we'll get to.
There were a lot of Jewish kidsthat wanted to join the Hitler
Youth because their friends werein it.
That kind of kind of likeAdler, you know, he joined the
because yeah, he didn't care itwas a Jew.
Thad (51:45):
It's the end thing, right?
Robyn (51:46):
And you know, there's one point where Adler's like, yeah,
I went home to my mom and toldher that I joined the army, and
she was like, What are youthinking?
And he was just like, Yeah,well, my friends did it.
Of course.
And of course, he was ateenager, like 20 at that time.
Um, but but yeah, most of themsaw themselves just very much
ingrained with regular culture.
(52:08):
They a lot of them went toregular schools, um, you know,
what would essentially be publicschools before Hitler came to
power.
So it it really was shockingfor a lot of them that they
would be taken out anddiscriminated against so much.
Um Adler even talks about hisuh he did uh like a genealogy
(52:31):
thing through the Red Cross atsome point, and you know, he was
like, Yeah, my family went backin Germany at least 200 years.
It's like we're Germans, we'renot Jews, we're Germans, which
just made it so much more messy,very messy and complicated.
Thad (52:47):
That's it's an amazing story.
Robyn (52:50):
I think I think it's very interesting, and I think when
we look at any time in history,I mean, for me, it's like
obviously this time because Iliterally spent years of my life
studying modern German history.
But, you know, you could talkabout you could spend hours just
talking about one of the acts,the enabling act, or the
(53:11):
Reichstag fire, or anything, youknow, that happened in Germany.
You could spend hours on thatone thing.
But the way to really feel andunderstand what was going on is
to, you know, take a person likeAdler and look at his life, see
what actually went on with him,instead of you know, just going
through, I could go with youthrough with you all through all
(53:34):
the laws and all the everythingthat happened structurally in
Germany, you know.
It's kind of like when youlearn all the Civil War battles
and names or something.
You know, you learn all of theupper level stuff.
I can go over all of that withyou, but you don't, people I
think, don't really understanduntil you're able to walk in
another person's shoes and andsee where they're coming from.
(53:54):
So, you know, that's I thinkthat's the best way to approach
really history in general is bylooking at the person.
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