At the age of 97, Inge Gershfield's memories of the Kristallnacht pogrom remain as vivid as the day they happened. The now-London resident was just ten years old in 1938 when Hitler's Nazi party unleashed a wave of terror against Jewish people across Germany and Austria.
The Day the World Shattered
Walking to school alone on November 9, 1938, young Inge encountered a scene of unfolding horror. She heard screams and piercing laughter before the acrid smell of burning filled the air. The street was littered with shattered glass, and her family's synagogue on Oranienburger Straße was engulfed in flames.
Uniformed Nazi thugs were singing their party's anthem, Horst-Wessel-Lied, as they carried materials from the Jewish bookshop opposite the synagogue. They laughed and taunted the terrified workers who were powerless to stop the destruction.
When Inge reached her school, teachers urgently told her to return home immediately. "Go straight home, terrible things are happening. Don't talk to anybody. Go home as fast as you can," they instructed.
A Family Torn Apart
Returning to her family's modest Berlin apartment, Inge found her mother distraught and her father, Alfons Lewinski, missing. He had been taken away by the Nazis alongside all the men from their block, destined for the Dachau concentration camp.
Fortunately, Alfons had his Iron Cross medal from fighting for the Kaiser in the First World War. Showing this to his captors likely saved his life, and he was released after a day and night in custody.
The persecution had been escalating since the Nazis gained power in 1933. Inge remembers how "we weren't allowed to go to cinemas or concerts. We could barely be seen in public." Overnight, her school friends stopped speaking to her after their parents forbade them from mixing with Jewish children.
The Desperate Escape to Britain
After Kristallnacht, Inge's father went into hiding within their own flat, leaving the family without income. Her mother Alice took in ironing and studied patisserie to make ends meet, while Inge could no longer attend school.
Knowing their window for escape was closing, Alice and Inge visited the British consulate in Berlin daily to beg for asylum. They faced repeated rejection with officials telling them "come back tomorrow, the daily quota is full."
Finally, in January 1939, their prayers were answered thanks to Frank Foley, a British Secret Intelligence Service officer working undercover as a passport control agent. Foley, later recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations, helped thousands of Jews escape Germany.
Inge's father left immediately when the visa arrived. Inge, her mother, and paternal grandmother travelled from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, arriving in England on January 15 - Inge's 11th birthday. "A very happy day it was," she recalls.
The Tragic Cost of Survival
Not all of Inge's family were as fortunate. The aunt and uncle who had cared for her as a child, Mally and Louis Sternburg, booked passage on the MS St Louis ship carrying 900 Jewish refugees to Cuba.
When the ship was turned away from Cuba and multiple American ports, the couple returned to Germany and were sent directly to Auschwitz. "That was the end of my mother's family," Inge says. "Every member wiped out."
The November pogroms of 1938 resulted in more than 3,000 Jewish men arrested and taken to concentration camps, approximately 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed, and hundreds of synagogues and prayer rooms wrecked by Nazi paramilitary groups.
Despite the trauma, Inge has built a life well-lived in Britain, becoming a great-grandmother to two great-granddaughters. She follows her parents' philosophy: "They lived for the day and they looked to the future. They never looked back - what was, was."
Michael Newman OBE, Chief Executive of the Association for Jewish Refugees, emphasises that "Kristallnacht was a turning point in history that left an indelible mark on those who lived through it." He stresses the importance of remembering this terror to educate about the dangers of antisemitism and ensure it is never repeated.
