Droozy
and her family had moved from the small town of Crailsheim to Breslau, a large
German City in the eastern part of Germany. They shared a large apartment with
Aunt Mathilde. One day a loud knock was heard at the door and then three large
Nazi men broke into the apartment, took their swords and cut through the
furniture. The stuffings came out of the couch and easy chairs, the dishes were
smashed against the floor and the three Nazis were roaring with laughter at what
they had done. They called the family some very nasty names and addressed Droozy
as: “You little Jew bastard.” One
of the Nazis grabbed Droozy by the back of her dress at the neck and held her
out of the sixth-story window. As Droozy looked down at the street she could see
Nazi soldiers marching stiff-legged in goose step, legs high in the air, sabers
pointed upward, singing hateful songs. Droozy’s voice froze. She could not
scream as she imagined herself plunging to her death and landing on one of those
swords. She heard the words to the song: “When the Jewish blood spurts from
the knife, then things will be twice as good.” The moments hanging outside
that window seemed like hours. Droozy saw her life wane before her very eyes.
She could feel never seeing her beloved father again (he was already in
America), never playing with her friend Gerda again, lying in the street, a
puddle of blood around her, not being able to breathe. After
what seemed like an eternity, the Nazi man pulled her back into the room and
left with his companions, cursing and screaming out the door, leaving heaps of
rubbish behind. That
night Droozy peered out her window and could see flames against the darkened
sky. She was afraid that Jewish bodies were being burned. She later learned that
it was books by Jewish authors, Torah scrolls and Synagogues (Jewish Houses of
Worship) they were burning. Droozy
wanted out; she wanted to be gone; to be with her beloved father in the United
States, to breathe the air of freedom; to not have to be afraid; to be able to
sit on park benches; to have plenty of food to eat and not to be called dirty
names. She wrote many letters to her dad begging that he rescue her (It was not
easy to do that since an affidavit was needed in which someone would guarantee
that they would take care of a newly arrived family). |
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