Oral history interview with Bill and Friedel Katz
Excerpts from transcript
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn513497
Clip 1
Bill: In 1932, I was the youngest editor of a liberal paper in Berlin and I learned that Hitler will have a big meeting, mass meeting, in Halle, which is another city.
I went there, I put on a swaztika, because it is better to be prepared when you go in a mass meeting of the Nazis, and everybody had a swaztika, and I looked much more Aryan than Hitler by the way.
And he made a speech, and the whole speech was against the Eastern Jews - the Jews from Poland, from Russia, refugees, people who had come to Germany to make a living. And he said they are responsible for Germany losing the war in 1918, they are responsible that we have inflation, they are responsible for the big economic crisis we have now in Germany, which started in 29 as you know, they are responsible for the unemployment.
And I had an idea, I said I will write either many articles about it, or some day I'll write a book about it. I didn't have much of a chance to write articles because very soon he became the Chancelor in Germany, the leader in Germany. They closed our newspaper, they arrested some of my colleagues, I was able to hide myself. And I saw, on the first of April, the big day against the Jews in the whole of Germany when nobody tried to defend or help the Jews. I saw the 2nd of May,1933, when the Nazis occupied all the buildings of the unions and took all their money and nobody protected the unions. And I saw the book burning of the 10th of May,1933, where the whole German culture was burnt. And I decided that this time, this is no more Germany, this is a Nazi land. And I left the 17th of May, 1933. I left for France...
