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Coping with Kristallnacht: "My Heart Skips a Beat Whenever the Doorbell Chimes"
(Ha'aretz) Judy Maltz - Israeli anthropologist Emanuel Marx was 11 years old on Nov. 10, 1938, when the doorbell rang and his father Yitzhak was taken away. Marx's father's family had lived in Germany for more than 300 years. "I knew then that Kristallnacht was not just another escalation in the series of tribulations, prohibitions and restrictions that rained down fast and furious on the Jews....It announced a fundamental change in our fate." As he walked to school that day, he saw huge flames engulfing the synagogue next to it. "We had no idea then that synagogues around the country were being burnt or that 30,000 Jewish men had already been rounded up and taken to concentration camps." Kristallnacht marked a major shift in Nazi policy toward the Jews. "Up until then, all they wanted was for Jews to leave the country. But from Kristallnacht on, that wasn't enough for them....The Nazis no longer cared what the rest of the world thought about what they were doing, and they could do whatever they wanted."