In this video, Jack Hahn describes his experience during Kristallnacht (“The Night of Broken Glass”) on November 9-10, 1938, in the town of Fuerth (Germany). Jack was rounded up with friends and hundreds of other Jews and forced to march to the town marketplace, where they would stand in rows all night. Because he was just under 18 years old, Jack was not deported to a concentration camp. Source: Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre, 1989
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Video begins with inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: Jack Hahn was in Fuerth (Germany) during Kristallnacht (“the Night of Broken Glass”) on November 9, 1938.
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Cut to Holocaust survivor Jack Hahn, sitting in front of a dark background, and looking to the right of the camera. The camera shows his face and shoulders as he speaks during an interview conducted in Toronto in 1989.
>> Jack Hahn: Since we had some warning…
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The name “Jack Hahn” and the location of the filmed interview, “Toronto”, appear in white text above Jack's right shoulder.
>>…that something would happen, I left my aunt and stayed with a friend. I had been in Fuerth before. Middle of the night, a lot of noise, glass breaking. This was in an apartment in a nicer part of Fuerth. And these storm troopers walked in, and they started yelling at everybody, “Get out!” and they started hitting the man. [Pause] We cowered. I mean we, I don't know the word, but you know, we were trying to hide, but they pulled us all out and we had to march to the, with fixed bayonets, to the marketplace of that town. We saw Jews being gathered from all over the place. There must have been about, 300-400, maybe more, in the marketplace. We arrived there maybe 1 o'clock at night. We stood in kind of a row, in rows, for I guess until at least 7-8 in the morning. They wouldn't let people go to the toilet. It was just impossible. That was a night that— you know, I'm talking about it now. I've found it hard before, but since, you know, it's a long time ago now. The books were all burned right in front of us. The sephorim were burned, the rolls, the scrolls. And it was that night that everything happened. If I had stayed in my hometown— as it happened, in Fuerth, they took everybody above 18 into concentration camp. And I was just below 18, I was 17 at the time, just getting on to 18. So I stayed. In my hometown I would have been in concentration camp.
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Music plays for the remainder of the video. Two credit pages appear in white text on black screen: Interview conducted by Paula Draper, Holocaust Documentation Project, Toronto, 1989, Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre
Directing: Helgi Piccinin; Editing and Colorization: Michaël Gravel, Helgi Piccinin; Audio Mix and Original Music: Pierre-Luc Lecours. [Logo for Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine ethnologique]
Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, copyright 2017.
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End of transcript.