Life_under_Siege_The_Jews_of_Magdeburg_under_Nazi_Rule.pdf

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arrests on 10 November, his wife arose very early that morning and standing on
her balcony, Betty Wurmser noticed their friend and neighbour, Julius Schetzer,
walking with two men. She remarked to her daughter: ‘Mr Schetzer, look how he
goes already to business at six o’clock!’ The Wurmsers later learned that Julius
Schetzer was not on his way to his shop, but had been arrested by the Gestapo. 28
Julius Schetzer’s daughter, Sigrid Freeman, recalled her father’s arrest that
morning:
At six o’clock in the morning two Gestapo men came and they arrested my
father. We telephoned my aunt in Switzerland, who sent over a barrister. He
went to the Gestapo and was assured that my father was going to
Buchenwald and that he would come home on the first Transport [group
deportation] out. 29
My mother was completely finished. She was not even able to ring my aunt in
Switzerland. I rang my aunt in Switzerland, but Mummy was completely
finished! 30
Sigrid Freeman recalled going to the main railway station that day when her father
was sent to Buchenwald Concentration Camp and remembered the orderliness of
the event:
People were upset naturally and we were puzzled as to what was going to
happen. But the people who were taken, there was nothing else to do, but to be
orderly with the Gestapo – there was nothing else. 31
Sixty-one-year-old Rabbi Dr Wilde, arrested on that morning, provided a
highly detailed account of the Reichskristallnacht. He, like the majority of the
Jewish community, was detained in prison cells and then deported to Buchenwald
Concentration Camp on 11 November. After being arrested, the rabbi was
28 H. B., op. cit., 15 August 1997.
29 S. Freeman, op. cit., 13 May 1998.
30 S. Freeman, op. cit., 3 June 1998.
31 Ibid.